The Christ Who Never Checked the Balance

Rich Mullins wrote Awesome God, one of the best-selling worship songs in Christian music history. Royalties poured in year after year — enough to make him wealthy by any measure. But Mullins never saw the money.

He arranged for all his earnings to flow into a trust managed by his church. Each month, he received only the average American worker's salary. He never asked how much the trust held. He didn't want to know.

Instead, Mullins moved to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, where he taught music to children. He drove a battered Jeep. He wore jeans and almost never wore shoes. When friends urged him to at least check his account balance, he refused. "If I know what I have," he said, "I might start thinking it's mine."

In 1997, Mullins died in a car accident at forty-one. He never learned how much he had given away.

There is something in that story that echoes the heart of the Almighty. Scripture tells us that Christ, "though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus held the wealth of heaven in His hands and never clutched it. He emptied Himself — not reluctantly, but freely.

Sacrifice is not giving away what you will never miss. Sacrifice is releasing what you could have kept, and never looking back to count the cost.