I really shouldn’t work on my financials just before I go to bed. Some may say, “Yeah, it is too depressing” and some months it could be, but that is not the reason. I just really love math--the working with numbers and calculating how things will work out. This was obvious in my career choices I looked at in high school. Accounting, Civil Engineering and of course the field I was in for six years Meteorology, which relies heavily on calculus, which I also enjoy. So the problem with me doing my finances late at night is I get awake, jazzed up and have to then unwind before I can sleep. Yes, my wife thinks it is sad and weird.
I remember reading several books that relate math principles to our Christian walk. Now on the surface math is pretty black and white and is void of emotion and feeling, though as I said I get pretty excited working with numbers. In our Christian walk, emotions are at the heart of what we do. We understand how much we are loved by our Heavenly Father and that feeling of love causes us to do things that would normally seem, shall I say crazy? Or to put it in the words of Paul, causes us to be “fools for Christ.” Emotion is a big part of this walk with Christ.
Another aspect of this walk is lying. I believe we would all say it is wrong to lie. Probably go as far as to say it is a sin. Yet each one of us has lied for a good cause at times. I consider it a good thing to tell someone in the middle of a crisis that it will be ok, even though you don’t know for sure if it will. Or the time you told your child they looked super in the clothes they had picked out for the day, even though you are pretty sure the fashion police would nab them if they existed. So, the walk isn’t always so black and white.
How does math relate to the Christian walk? By basic math, addition and multiplication. The books I have read talk about the shot gun approach to evangelism as opposed to the personal one on one approach. Now, they take it to the extreme calculating that a person preaching to 500 people a day, every day for a year, would have talked to nearly 200,000 people by the end of that year. Pretty impressive! If they then did that every day of their life it would take over 41,000 years to talk to everyone on the earth right now. Ok, a little less impressive and obviously not doable. So the adding falls short.
Let’s look at multiplication. If you focused on three people for a whole year-- sharing God’s love and opening His word with them, well that would be four of you at the end of a year. But if the next year they each talked to three people, as you would again, there would be twelve at the end of the second year. Seems kinda slow going, two years and twelve people. But, if that pattern continued it would take a little over eighteen years to share with the whole world. A year sharing with three, is more productive than a day talking with 500. Even if it is just sharing with one person--not three for a year-- in a little over 30 years the whole world would hear.
Who are you going to share with, who are you going to spend time with, who are you going to serve this next year, focusing on their salvation, not judging but showing God’s love? I know it is just math and it falls in the realm of earthly things; but, if we do nothing, it is even simpler math as to how many people will hear about God’s love: Zero
It’s simple math,
Randy
