The Millionaire Who Chose a Dirt Floor

In the 1990s, Rich Mullins wrote Awesome God, a worship anthem that swept through churches like wildfire. The royalties alone could have afforded him a comfortable life — a nice house, a tour bus, the trappings that come with Christian celebrity.

Instead, Mullins asked his church to set up a financial arrangement: he would receive only the average American worker's salary. He never even knew how much his music earned. Everything above that modest wage went directly to charity.

Then he moved to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, into a hogan without running water, to teach music to children. He traded stadium stages for dusty classrooms. He gave up comfort not because he had to, but because he believed following Jesus meant holding everything with open hands.

Mullins once sang, "If I stand, let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through." He stood on that promise with bare feet on a dirt floor.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Sacrifice is not always giving up something painful — sometimes it means releasing something wonderful because you have found something even better.

What are you holding tightly today that the Almighty might be asking you to release? The God who gave His own Son will never ask you to sacrifice more than He already has.