I watched Secret Millionaire for the first time all the way through tonight and was overjoyed by it. The Co-founders of Curves fitness were transformed by moving from their comfort zone into the Third Ward of Houston, Texas. Some might say the Third World of the Third Ward. That would be an over exaggeration because the poverty we see in America really is unlike poverty in developing nations, but when you are used to an affluent lifestyle it is quite shocking to see how people live on less than ten dollars a day.
What Gary and Diane Heavin experienced is exactly what all followers of Jesus need to experience. When Jesus said go and make disciples, He truly meant go – away from your comfort zone and into areas where you can take your comforts and give them away. What is amazing is how doing that – going, and giving – not only blesses those whom you comfort, but it also blesses you. And Gary and Diane demonstrated that first hand during this episode of Secret Millionaire.
The other beautiful aspect of this show was that it proved that going out and blessing others doesn’t necessarily require going around the world (although I highly encourage that); instead, we can all be blessed by just going across our home towns into areas we otherwise have never gone. We simply have to cross the street and get to know someone. As we grow closer to people we don’t know, we begin to want to bless them with what we have, whether material gifts or spiritual/emotional blessings, and from that place of relationship we can then impact their lives and our own.
This doesn’t mean someone with material blessings going to areas of material poverty in all cases. Instead it could mean someone who has very little money but who has time and who gives that time helping disabled individuals. Or it can mean someone who is free going into a prison to bless prisoners. It simply means taking the comforts one has and finding people who don’t have those comforts. The results are multiplication of the comforts, gifts, and blessings.
We really do reap what we sow. Sow blessings and reap blessings abundant – not only for the ones we bless but for ourselves as well. Secret Millionaire is well worth a watch if you haven’t seen it yet.