Invest in People

I’ve not been very good at investing finances for the future. Linda and I are now playing catch-up for the a day when we’ll be too old to work for our income. But neither of us regret it.We do regret some expenditures when we bought things we could not afford and saved less because of it. But we don’t regret our overall priorities in life. For us, our lives were always about investing in others, putting time, energy, and resources into people and into ministry. We gave sacrificially to ministry projects when finance experts would have told us it was foolish. We made ministry choices that did not favor our financial well-being. But then again, we never thought of ministry in terms of our financial well-being.While we’ve not been good at a lot of things, and if we had our life together to live over again, there are things we’d do differently. But the one thing that we would choose to do all over again would be to invest in people. The rewards of time spent with others, pouring into their future, teaching, mentoring, encouraging, inspiring, counseling, could never be quantified. There could be no greater pay-off than to see people making good choices, living their lives and leading their families to follow Jesus, and avoiding the pitfalls of sin while walking the narrow path. There is no greater fulfillment in life than that.That’s why commitment to and investment into church is such a big deal to me. When I was 17 and in need of a family, it was the church that came to my rescue. God’s people invested in me. I can’t help but feel an obligation to pass that on.This is what the author of Hebrews was talking about when he wrote, “And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25 HCSB).The church is not just a place for you to go on weekends, though you should do that faithfully, too (see the above verse). It’s a family that God has given you, an opportunity to invest in others. Ask God to show you the people he wants you to invest in. It might get messy, but it will be worth it.I saw a posting on Facebook this morning that brought about these thoughts. It was a young adult entering ministry. And I remembered the hours I had spent with her parents many years ago, teaching, mentoring, praying. The trajectory of that life changed, partly because of time I invested in a young family many years ago. Nothing beats that. Nothing.