My roommate came out of the grocery store. “I’ve gotta tell you what just happened!” This is the story:
She went down the coffee aisle. There were 5 bags of the coffee she wanted and she took all of them. She got up to the register and told the cashier, “This was marked reduced for sale.” The cashier punched it in and it came up $6.99. My roommate told her, “There’s a sign back there saying it’s on sale for $3.74.” The cashier decided to go back and look for the sign. Soon she came marching back, gripping the sign in her fist. Maybe she thought if she squeezed it hard enough the price would go back up! She barked, “Hold on, I have to check with the manager.” My friend waited.
Meanwhile there was the big burly guy with a backwards baseball cap and tattoos all down both arms waiting in line behind her. He heard the whole conversation. “Stand up for yourself. And I’ll stand up for you too. You go girl!” The cashier came back and took her stance behind the counter, as if in a bitter faceoff. “Well, we’ll have to give it to you at that price, but someone made a big mistake! Then she got snotty and said, “You better really enjoy this coffee because you’re getting a good deal. You really only should be getting one.” She was trying to intimidate my roommate into putting it back. As my friend was walking out with her 5 bags of coffee the cashier just kept repeating, “You better reeeaallllyyy enjoy that coffee.”
The cashier had turned from an engaging, friendly, soft spoken woman into a bitter, stern, resentful and confrontational one. The devil never is happy about us receiving the favor of God and he will influence unsuspecting people to try to get us to back down from taking what God has intended for us. The woman didn’t have any personal vendetta against my roommate, but something made her angry. We have to remember that it’s a spiritual battle out there. Well, my roommate didn’t back down.
Psalm 68:19 tells us God “daily loadeth us with benefits.” And When Jesus finished feeding the five thousand, “He said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost” (John 6:12). So if we’re not seeing God’s daily benefits, we must be missing or overlooking the fragments. Often we are too concerned about getting the big blessings and lose the benefit of the smaller ones. When the disciples gathered the fragments, they ended up filling twelve baskets full. That’s nothing to scoff at.
God tells us, “He who gathers little by little will increase [his riches]” (Prov 13:11AMP). We can’t allow the devil to steal, hide or intimidate us into giving back what God’s given to us. We need to receive it and be truly thankful, even if it’s fragments..
Proverbs 13:22 says, “The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” It’s already there, like the super deal on the coffee, but we need to be bold enough to recognize the favor of our God and take it when He makes it available. We can’t be shy when it comes to receiving from God.
Let’s recognize the fragments and gather them up. My roommate refused to be intimidated by the cashier and all 5 bags of coffee came happily home with us!
Love, Carolyn
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