The Cost of Opportunity Lost

I just read an interesting article about homeless shelters and it brought to mind a humorous story from when I used to pastor a church down in MD.  We had a guy who gave his life to Christ after having lived a very rough life, including having lived on the streets at various times in his life.  He was/is a great guy and was passionate that we start a homeless ministry in our church.  The problem was the town we were in only had a population of a few hundred and definitely didn’t have any homeless people.  He was adamant though that we spend a lot of time and money equipping the church for this ministry. 

The lesson of course is you have to know your area and reach out in the way that will make the biggest impact.  Now yo might say, “But Gilbert what if you could have reached even just one homeless person?  Wouldn’t that have made it all worth it?”  The answer is two-fold…yes, everyone matters to God, but at the same time we’d have to ask “How many people did we fail to reach because we spent all of our time and money on something that had a minimal impact?” 

This is called the “Cost of Opportunity Lost” and it applies well to our current series where were looking at how to have margin in our lives.  For every thing you say yes to with your time or money, you are by default saying no to hundreds of other things, some of which would have been a much better use of your limited resources.  So before you jump at the next thing that sounds like a good idea, stop and ask yourself, “Is this a God idea?”