Two for the Plate

           One form of ingratitude is doing everything for oneself. It's like the little girl who won two dollars for doing memory work and she put it in the offering plate. The preacher saw that and said, “I'm sure you'll receive a blessing for that.”

            She said, “Yeah, now maybe God will let me do something that I want to do.”             Some people are that way. They think, “Okay, God, that was a tough thing that I did for you; now, surely, you will not let anything bad happen to me.”

            Jesus suffered shame on the cross. We should do everything we can to serve him out of our gratitude toward him, not his gratitude toward us: 11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place where he offers this blood for sins. But the bodies of the animals are burned outside the camp.12 So Jesus also suffered outside the city to make his people holy with his own blood.13 So let us go to Jesus outside the camp, holding on as he did when we are abused (Heb. 13:11-13.)