I did something that is very out of characteristic of myself recently. I paid money for a service I use for free. See, I’m super cheap. If I want something bad enough, I’ll get it. But I have to identify several different ways I will use it to justify to myself it is worth it. Many times I just say no because it will only serve one singular purpose.
Think about all the services you and your ministry use that are free:
- Slack
- GMail
- Chrome
- YouTube
- Spotify
- GitHub
- Dropbox
- Soundcloud
- WordPress
- YouVersion
- Biblegateway.com
Valuing What You Have
One ministry I have been investing into recently is doing family-friendly, Christian video game Let’s Plays. The free thing I paid for is an app called Hearthstone that I have been doing live streams with. If I was somehow able to look at how many hours I put into the game, I would not be shocked if the number of hours is over 150. This number is only dwarfed by the time I put into Minecraft.
Now, I didn’t have to pay for the game, but recently I decided I had played the game for several years without spending a cent. If someone were to ask me my top three favorite games, I’d definitely put this game in the second spot. So I’ve played a lot of it, used up their bandwidth, and talked trash about the game when it glitches out on me. But I had not shown any actual appreciation in the one way that keeps the game alive, money.
You can’t pay the bills in a positive tweet of the game.
So I dropped $50 on the game.
Honestly, that little bit was a steal for how much I’ve already played and definitely worth it. I love the game.
Does Your Time And Money Line Up With What You Value?
I wonder if sometimes, just because something is free, if we actually value what we consume financially? Sometimes we are not able to give. I could not imagine a year ago spending fifty dollars on a new game that does cost money, let alone playing a free game that I wouldn’t have to pay for and already know I love.
I could certainly spiritualize this conversation, noting if we are tithing enough, taking our support staff out to eat, buying our volunteers birthday and Christmas gifts, and giving back to the community that lets us share our message to the public, but maybe that’d be a little over the top. đŸ˜‰
Let us make sure we are valuing things in our lives more than just with our words. Let’s give to what we hold dear.
For those who are as frugal as I am, how do you break out of your penny-pinching ways to give to what you value? For those who are not, what does giving to things you value look like for you?
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