Living Hand to Mouth on the Words of God

I was just a child the first time I heard it said that a good woman could throw more out the back door than a good man could bring in through the front. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why the man’s wife wanted to throw all of their stuff in the back yard.  Years later I realized that the front door/back door visual was a way of saying that the woman was being wasteful. I got that.

I was raised by people who believed in conserving and preserving, and I wasn’t always a fan of the practices we employed. Conservation isn’t so attractive when you’re the youngest of three little tomboys and you hear your mother reminding your sisters to “Save the bath water!” Let me be clear. I envied Cyndie getting to take that first sparkling clean dip.

You probably have similar stories. We’ve all been told to “Waste not, want not,” and we’ve been cautioned that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” This from well-meaning people hoping to teach us that we could get ahead instead of scraping by, if only we’d be careful to save what we had in hand. Scrimping and saving is great economic advice, my friends, but I’m here to tell you that we need to reprogram our thinking where it concerns our walk with Christ. Let me explain.

Every wonderful thing this Jesus is has been given to us and we can claim all we want if we’ll continue to come back to Him to receive. Come and receive, come and receive, it’s the only way we can experience the abundant life that is Christ in us, living through us.  We can’t use the graces of Christ economically and make them last. We can’t stockpile Who He Is and parse Him out. If we try to find the goodness, mercy, grace, patience, forgiveness, faithfulness, and kindness of Christ in us, we’ll always be sorely disappointed.  These gifts are in Him.

My name is Shellie and I’m a spiritual pauper. I have to live hand to mouth on the words of God.