I love a good story. Do you mind if I share a true one with you?
Sally was almost penniless. When her husband Jeb died years before, his life insurance had paid off the mortgage, but that was about it.
Now the house was deteriorating around her. The car had been junked long ago when she couldn’t keep up with the repair and insurance bills. She got by on just a few dollars each week for groceries, and when the electric bill got too high she decided to live by a Coleman stove and candlelight.
So Sally rarely left home. How could she when everything cost money? Coffee at the café was eighty-five cents. Even with her senior citizen’s discount, movies cost $3. (Wonder how long ago this story was written??) A walk to the park required shoes, and Sally’s only pair were clinging together by a few bits of thread.
So day after day, Sally stayed at home and creaked back and forth in her rocking chair. “Life was supposed to be better than this,” she thought. “It started out so great. So full of promise. But now it’s passed me by.”
And so she lived—just barely lived—for years. Destitute. Lonely. Defeated. Until one day, when an old acquaintance from across the country remembered her childhood friend and decided to look her up.
Miriam was heartbroken when she saw Sally’s living conditions. She decided to stay a few days to try to encourage her friend and help straighten up the house.
And in the course of helping her old friend, Miriam made a startling discovery.
Tucked away in the file drawer of Jeb’s old roll-top desk was a folder labeled “FOR SALLY.” Inside, Miriam found an old bank savings book. The last entry had been made twenty-two years earlier, just before Jeb had died. The bankbook indicated a balance of $87,000.
But that wasn’t all. The folder also contained a yellowed envelope, sealed and inscribed with Jeb’s handwriting:
To Sally, With Love Forever
“Do you know what this is?” Miriam asked.
Sally searched her memory. She remembered the last days of her beloved husband, the tender words that had passed between them as they realized that the end was near.
Then the memory hit her. In the grief and heartache of the days and months following Jeb’s death, she had forgotten one of the things he had said: “When I’m gone….a file for you…in my desk. Important.”
Now, as Miriam watched, Sally opened the envelope carefully. Inside was a single folded page and a key. Sally began to read:
My Dearest Love—
My time with you draws short, but I want you to know that I have provided everything you will need once I am gone. Check the bankbook in this file. Then take this key to the bank with you. In loving remembrance of me, please enjoy life to the full!
With love forever,
Jeb
Sally and Miriam discovered that the key was to a safety deposit box at the bank. As they lifted the metal lid, their eyes widened as they discovered several bundles of cash totaling $32,000, a pile of stock certificates, and three folders of rare coins.
That afternoon, a stockbroker informed them that the stock certificates were worth $550,000 on the current market. A rare coin dealer appraised the coin collection at $47,000. The bank calculated twenty-two years’ interest on the savings account which brought its total from $87,000 to more than $254,000. All told, Sally was worth more than $883,000. She had been living in misery and despair when more money than she would ever need had been available to her all along.
(from The Secret by Bill Bright)
Sally’s story makes me cry. Even though it has a happily-ever-after kind of ending, it sadly reminds me of the way too many Christians are struggling through their lives—poor, alone, weak, and needy.
“Although God has promised us all the strength and help we will ever need, many of us try to ‘go it alone' because we are unaware of the boundless resources God has provided in the person of the Holy Spirit,” writes Bill Bright. “As a result, we live like Sally—unfulfilled, fruitless and spiritually malnourished—while the key to joy and abundance is within our grasp…I am personally convinced that if today’s Christians better understood the Bible’s basic teaching about the Holy Spirit and then invited Him to release His power in their lives each day, they would experience unprecedented joy and personal fulfillment. More than that, our verbal and nonverbal witness for Jesus Christ would sweep the world!”
I think he’s on to something. We need to know more of the Holy Spirit.
For me, this sermon series on spiritual gifts has really helped. It has been a timely reminder of God’s perfect plan to “sweep” Vineland. Timely, I believe, because we just built a beautiful new church that He longs to see filled with precious people rescued from Satan’s kingdom of darkness and despair, people who will need to be taught, encouraged, loved, served, and supported. Timely because we now have been challenged and instructed on how this can be accomplished.
It’s our job.
But is it even possible?
Again, we need to know more of the Holy Spirit. He lives in each believer. He comforts, guides, teaches, encourages, and helps. His purpose is to glorify God and He does so by empowering and enabling God’s children to live for that purpose as well. His mission is to give them, not stocks or rare coins, but the guidance and strength necessary to accomplish God’s agenda of rescuing a people for Himself. People in Vineland.
So He graciously distributes to each Christ-follower a spiritual gift or two to use within the context of the church body. These gifts are to be discovered, developed, and disseminated or deployed for the benefit and the building up of others in their faith; they are not given for personal gain or self-promotion. Working together toward a common goal, each one faithfully exercising his or her unique and important role in the function and operation of the church—what an incredible plan! What a high calling! How Living Faith (and Vineland!) needs those gifted evangelists, hosts, comforters, encouragers, helpers, teachers, givers—everyone the Spirit has chosen for a myriad of gifts—to be busy for the Kingdom work He has purposed in advance for us to do. The pews will be packed.
And all of His resources are already available to us. And if we don’t appropriate them, we will only live like poor Sally, struggling through a meager existence, unable to see beyond ourselves, purposeless and unfulfilled, when vast riches are at our command. But when we give the Holy Spirit control of our lives, the spiritual lock box springs open. The Lord God Almighty gives us everything we need to honor Him, to use our spiritual gifts to help others, and to experience life to the full, for out of his glorious, unlimited resources, He will give us the mighty inner strengthening of His Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 3:16)
Did you like Sally’s story?
Just don’t let it be yours. Destitute. Defeated. You have the key to an abundant, joy-filled life.
Release the amazing power of the Holy Spirit through your spiritual gifts.
We all need you.
--Eileen Hill
