One of the good qualities of God’s children is preservation. It shows how important and precious God given things are to them. They know they have come at a great understanding and under great burden and are with a mind to rejoice in them. Time and again people spend their resources unwisely for various things and in various ways, because they do not have the ability to value their possessions. They waste their resources, but God’s people spend them for God’s delight. The ability to value possessions and spend resources for God’s glory is something that flows from Christ alone. It helps preserve everything He gives and avoid wastage. It is one of the reasons they are able to live well in contentment, though having less. Their heart’s desire is to be able to cope with the surroundings to achieve God’s desires. And they do it by preserving God given things. Hence, God also keeps their possessions giving them honor over the rest. “When they were filled, He said to His disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost’” (John 6:12).
We often witness people wasting resources once they achieve their purpose. At other times we see them simply having no regard for what they have. It is lack of regard for God’s blessings. Though they cannot consider them as God’s blessings, it is nonetheless the only reason they are able to have. But when Christ becomes our wisdom we lean toward saving resources thus, leading to the development of the quality called contentment. Of all the people on earth the least one to worry about preserving anything is Christ. He of all, for what He is and is able to do, does not have the need to gather up the leftovers. Yet, it is what He did. He was preserving the Father’s grace that appeared in time of need. Even many believers fail to reproduce the act of Christ after having received God’s grace. They take grace for granted. One reason is lack of wisdom for it and the other is negligence in applying the wisdom in them. What we learn from Jesus’ preservation is we are always with more by the Father’s doings. So, let’s look at some steps that may help fine tune our minds for it.
- Having God’s word. “For this is the word of promise: ‘AT THIS TIME I WILL COME, AND SARAH SHALL HAVE A SON’” (9:9). God’s word helps focus on the things of God. Therefore, when we receive things according to His word, we also acquire the mind of safeguarding or preserving all that He gives. One must have the word of promise to have the mind of Christ. It was the word of promise (“You are My Son, today I have begotten You”) to Christ from the Father that Christ’s prayer was heard and He preserved the Father’s abundance.
- Exercising the penitent heart. One who has repented concerning his previous nature must regularly be producing the fruit of repentance. It yields the following. “For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter” (2 Cor. 7:11). With these qualities our heart will react exactly as Christ’s when He ordered to gather up of the leftovers. We would feel it to be wrong to waste or disregard the Father’s grace.
- Paying attention. “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). Be sure to not be carried away by various teachings. If it doesn’t help in bearing the fruit of repentance or if it is coercing you to distance from it, you should step away from it. Paying attention to strange doctrines will not help you preserve the Father’s grace. Prosperity gospel is one such substance besides the gospel of traditions and rituals. They do not teach or encourage contentment and thus, betray the idea of preserving the things of God.