The Lincoln Challenge

So Grace Temple was amazing today.  Last week we started a series on money which has been really helpful for me because I tend to worry about it more than I should (which should be none).  Today we discussed the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30.  There were so many things that I didn't know - like that a talent, ONE talent, is 20 years worth of life earnings in silver.  So five talents is about four million dollars in today's earnings for the average person, and one talent is about 800,000 dollars.  So the sermon today was about being a steward and knowing how to invest the money (or insert anything here) that the Lord has given you and make it more.  A steward by definition is someone who manages something for someone else.  In this parable, each servant knew that when the master gave them the money that they were supposed to invest it for him and give it back at a later date; that was their occupation - a steward.  The fact that the third servant who received one talent buried it in the ground out of fear and made no profit is dishonorable to the master because it was not the servants money to do that.  You don't get to decide how many talents you receive - you decide what you're going to do with the talents you're given.  So living out of fear and hiding your talents reaps no profit or growth.  Fear is the weapon of the enemy.  The two servants who invested the money showed their faith in their master by works, but the servant who buried it showed his faith by what he did not do and he blamed his faults on the master, saying, "Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid".  It was not the servants place to judge the master's acts when the servants job, his life occupation, was to manage the money his master gave him by investing it.  The two servants who did invest the money reaped much benefit from it.

So when the service was closing, Pastor Dwayne gave us a challenge.  He said the elders of the church have prayed and prayed about this and they really feel led to do it.  So they took a couple hundred five dollar bills from our missions fund and passed the offering plates around so each person could get one.  "The Lincoln Challenge" is to find some creative way to invest that money in the next month and bring it back on July 10th with the original five dollars and the profit you made from it and give it back to the missions fund.   He challenged each one of us to really be asking the Lord what he wants us to do with it to invest it and follow what he says.  So I'm going to be praying :) He also encouraged us to share our ideas with one another, so if you do have any ideas of how to invest it, you can leave me a comment :)

This is not only supposed to be done for this one month with this one five dollar bill, it's supposed to teach us how to do it with one hundred dollars, and one thousand dollars.  After all, all money is the Lord's. Why shouldn't we do our best to honor him with it?