The Song That Cost Everything It Earned

In the early 1990s, Rich Mullins was one of the most commercially successful artists in Christian music. His anthem Awesome God filled arenas and sold millions of recordings. By every industry measure, he had arrived.

Then he made a choice that bewildered his peers. Mullins instructed his financial managers to pay him only the average American worker's salary — roughly twenty-four thousand dollars a year — and direct everything else to charity. He never even knew how much his music earned. He didn't want to know.

He left Nashville and moved to a small dwelling on the Navajo reservation near Window Rock, Arizona, where he spent his days teaching music to children. No entourage. No luxury tour bus. Just a man with a hammered dulcimer and a calling he valued more than comfort.

When asked why, Mullins said something that cuts to the bone: he believed the gospel demanded that he hold his gifts with open hands. He couldn't sing about the God who gave everything and then hoard what that singing produced.

This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, "I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Sacrifice isn't just giving up something painful. Sometimes it means releasing something wonderful — success, security, applause — because the Most High has shown you something better.

What are you holding tightly that God is asking you to open your hands and release?