Morning devotions that I wanted to share.

Matthew 11:11 Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is ^[a]least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

In contrast to the great people in the history of the world John was the greatest.  He was greater than Augustus or Julius, Alexander the Great or Cyrus the Great, Isaiah or Jeremiah, David or Solomon, Elijah or Elisha.  John the Baptist, this one lonely prophet in the wilderness, was the greatest of all born of women.  That is standing on a pretty tall apex.

But the most insignificant member of the Kingdom of God is a place beyond John, an inner circle into which John is not admitted.  This is not about who is greatest in the Kingdom.  This is about the supreme value of being a Kingdom worker.  Sometimes in our role in a small ministry context we can feel utterly insignificant, those feelings are completely misguided. 

By an act of grace, so there is no room for pride, we are called to be workers, even co-workers with the Lord, in the cause of Christ.  In the economy of Heaven the faithful servant in the smallest role, in the least church in the most remote corner of a backwater community has a place beyond Kings and Emperors.  It would be better to be an evangelist with no congregation and only one Bible study a week with only one potential disciple than the sit in the White House, or own and run a multinational conglomerate.  Our struggle, or at least my struggle, is that we loose sight of the economy of Heaven.  

When the shoes and the car are worn out and need replacing, and the bills slightly exceed the pay, when the apparently fruitlessness of our efforts and the well-healed life of the secular is all around us, it is hard to say, “this matters”.  WE want to say, “What matters is this up coming doctor’s bill”.  When there are few that come to Bible study or services, but plenty for everything else it is easy to say “I am going fishing” John 21:3 I write this from my heart not to you.

In an act of faith, almost as profound as our original faith, we say, “I believe what Jesus said”.  We choose to believe that being in the Kingdom is greater than anything on earth.  We choose to love God more than mammon.  We, by an act of the will, say I will value what will matter in 10,000 years.  Who knows what eternity will hold.  Perhaps 10,000 years from now someone will come up to you and say, “Honored sir, may I please have the honor of standing with you for a moment, on earth you were a minister of the Gospel, an I merely ruled and empire.”