Put Five Dollars Worth In

Everyone has their own reasons for the different actions that they take, but there is one thing that I've seen more than a few people do that has always confuses me. What I'm referring to is when someone goes to the gas station and puts a very small amount of gas in their gas tank. When I see this I really wonder why and for some reason five dollars seems to be the small amount I hear most often so I'm going to stick with that for the rest of this post, but I've seen people put a dollar or less in their tank which really blows my mind. Now I understand that if you can't afford more than a few dollars then that's what you have to use, but in many of the cases I've seen this is just not the case. Often putting small amounts of gas in the tank isn't a result of people not driving far, it's just a habit of bad money management that means they stop at gas stations more often. Why they don't just fill up their tank has always been one of life's little mysteries to me.

In today's prices five dollars of gas would be almost enough for me to make the round trip from home to work and back. It wouldn't purchase a full two gallons, and if I made a habit of putting only five dollars worth in my car, I would be stopping every single day for gas, always running on or near empty and would probably find myself running out of gas quite frequently. Because of this, I fill my car up so that I can go the longest time without having to stop again and I don't wait until I'm running on fumes to fill up again (at least most of the time).

While the amount of gasoline that you put into your car is not really a significant aspect of life there is an underlying mentality that can surface in other areas of our lives and this mentality can have serious repercussions. Specifically, I'm thinking of how much effort we put into our Christian walk.

Do we attend church on a regular basis (Heb 10:25)? When we are there do we participate? Do we get everything out of church that we can? Do we commune with God regularly (1 Thess 5:17)? Do we praise Him? Do we read the Bible? Furthermore, have we meditated on the Bible and made it a part of our lives (Psa 1:2, Psa 119:11)? Even if we do all these, how do we do them? Do we do them heartily, or just enough to get by (Col 3:23)?

What is our attitude when it come to our Christian walk? Are we putting just enough to get us through the day into it, or are we doing more than that? Spiritually speaking, are we running on empty or is our tank full? I've heard a statement that is just good old common horse sense, but it applies here. Serving the Lord hard is easy, but serving the Lord easy is hard. If we are only putting in the minimum we have to, how can we ever expect to get more than the minimum out? How much of our spiritual gas tank do we leave empty on a permanent basis?