“And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you…” (2Cor. 12:15)
A loyal son often took his widowed mother shopping for clothes and household goods. The mother was a real bargain-hunter and often she would drag her son from store-to-store for hours, looking for the best possible deal.
One day, the son took his mother to buy a new pair of shoes. He just knew it would be an all-day trip going into many stores before finding the “perfect” pair of shoes at the “perfect” price. Therefore, when they went into the first store, he took the clerk aside and said, “When she tries on a pair of shoes she likes, tell her the price is twenty dollars. But don’t worry, I’ll pay you whatever the real cost is.”
Well, the scheme worked. His mother fell in love with an elegant pair of shoes worth two hundred dollars! “How much are these?” she asked the clerk. “Twenty dollars,” the clerk replied. Knowing what a great bargain she was getting, she said, “I’ll take them.”
A few weeks later, the son was passing by the shoe store and the manager, looking very concerned, called him in. “What’s wrong?” asked the son. “Didn’t my check for two hundred dollars clear?” “Your check was okay,” the manager replied, “but the problem is your mother keeps bringing her friends in for those twenty dollar shoes!”
Just like this son, the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “I will very gladly spend and be spent for you for you…” He knew that true love will cost you something.
We say that we love Jesus but what has our love for Jesus cost us, lately? What have we truly sacrificed, lately, that shows our love for Him?