Return on Investment

This entry is specifically for Christians.

I’d like to talk today about the idea of “return on investment” (ROI).  It’s a term usually used in business  and is a measure of the gain or loss generated on an investment.  It is the net profit divided by the cost of investment.  ROI is expressed as a percentage rather than as an absolute amount.  Investors want to maximize their ROI.  If they do, they are doing well!  In general, I think, business people are looking for a ROI that is around 5-10% and are probably quite happy if it is a bit higher.

An interesting thing about ROI is what can happen when the investment is small.   For example, if you buy a stock for a penny, and the next day it increases by only 1 cent, have you made a good ROI?  Yes – you’ve made a great return!  You’ve made an ROI of 100%.  Of course, if all you bought was a single stock, then you didn’t make much.  But if you could find a lot of those investments you would be extremely successful.

I’d like to apply this to investing in our own lives.  I’m talking about the Christian life here.  Our goal is to grow and to become more Christ-like.  To do so, we have to invest in various activities and disciplines that help us along this path.  It’s hard work. 

Anyway, it got me to thinking about the ROI for various activities that help us grow as a Christian.  Are there some low cost, high ROI type of activities that we can do?  Some “penny stocks” that give a great ROI?  It seemed to me that those would be worth considering. 

So, I thought about this from my own personal perspective and experience.  Are there some activities that I have engaged in in my own life that didn’t require a huge investment, but paid back with a big return?  Yes, in my personal experience there are some.  In fact, I identified three high ROI activities that, in my personal experience, are an excellent investment for your own spiritual growth.

Without further ado, here are my top three in reverse order.

#3.  Writing things down. 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a bad memory.  By the time I got to college, I was already organizing my personal life around that limitation.  I knew that I had to take good notes in class and that I had to write down my schedule or I would forget.  And, at the encouragement of some good friends, I started also taking my own personal notes whenever I would study the Bible or pray for things.  It became a habit for me. 

Now some of you are not blessed with a bad memory – or at least you don’t think you have a bad memory.  You think “I don’t need to write this down – I’ll remember.”  And, probably, you usually do remember, at least for a time.  But I bet you forget in the long run.  Admit it.

The other thing you need to add to an investment of writing things down is to hang on to your writings.  And, occasionally, look back at them.

I consider this a very low investment.  All you need is a writing utensil and a piece of paper (or electronic device – easier to store things).  Everyone can do it.  It takes a bit of discipline.  But that’s about it. 

What’s the payoff?  The payoff is being reminded of what God has done for you.  Despite your claims about having a good memory, you will forget.  It is human nature.  One thing in particular you will really forget is how desperate or lost or clueless you felt before God intervened.  We tend to diminish our feelings after the fact.  Thus, one of the things I try to do is to write out my feelings when I am in the midst of some difficulty.  Once the difficulty has passed and we “lived through it”, we tend to minimize how bad it was.  And, along with that, we diminish what God did, as if it wasn’t that important.

Scripture is full of examples where God tries to help us out with “memory aids.”  Many different characters in the Bible were told to build a monument of some sort, or establish some type of ritual or remembrance to help us not to forget what God has done.  Passover is a remembrance.  Jacob built an altar after his dream so generations after him could remember what happened.  Jesus told his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me.”  If we don’t, we forget.

So, the first low investment item on my list involves:  1) writing down your thoughts, prayers, etc., 2) keeping them somewhere, and 3) reviewing them every once in a while.  It’s not that hard to do, and it pays back good dividends.

#2.  Giving thanks. 

I’m talking about giving thanks to other people and I’m talking about giving thanks as a form of prayer.  Here’s another low investment, high payback activity that not only benefits you but also encourages the people around you.  It’s a true win-win situation.  Can you ever lose by being thankful?  Can you ever be too thankful?  Not in any practical way.  It’s just a good habit to develop.

My first experience with this was in third grade.  I guess my parents had taught me the importance of thanking people already.  One day the teacher was handing back our graded tests, so she had to go around to each kid in the class and give them their paper.  When she was all done she went back up to the front of the class and launched into a lecture on manners.  She said “I passed back this test to every single one of you and not one of you thanked me…except for Kevin.”  It felt good to be acknowledged but, since I was also very shy, I was mortified.  Hah!  I probably avoided thanking her after that so I wouldn’t get singled out again.  But it did impress on me how my thanking her, which was an incredibly simple act that I didn’t even think about at the time, had a big impact on her.

The only effort you have to expend in order to be a good “thank-er” is to be observant when other people are doing things that they could be thanked for.  I’m guessing that the other kids in my third grade class never thought that being handed back a piece of paper was a service to them.  It doesn’t have to be over the top, but when you are interacting with others, it is a simple thing to ask yourself “is there someone I should be thanking here?” 

Even God appreciates thanks.  There is an interesting situation with Jesus where he heals a group of ten lepers and tells them to go show themselves to the priests so that they can be declared clean (Luke 17).  All ten are healed but one of them, when he sees that he has been healed, comes back and finds Jesus and gives him thanks.  Jesus expresses a bit of wonder than only one came back to give thanks and tells the man that his sins are forgiven.  That’s a pretty good ROI right there!

Prayer is something Christians are commanded to do.  It is just communicating with God.  It shouldn’t be that hard.  But it is!  I didn’t list prayer itself on this list because I find that prayer requires a significant investment – although the benefits are huge.  But giving thanks is one aspect of prayer that can be just plain easy.  Prayer includes asking God for help, praise, confession, commitment…a whole host of things.  But, by far, the easiest type of prayer to give is a prayer of thanks.  Thank God for the things that have happened to you during the day and for the situation you are in.  In most cases (not all, of course), it is simple.  It just takes a bit of time and a little thoughtful recall.  And so, giving thanks is another low cost, high return activity that I put second on my list.

#1.  Scripture memory.

Memorizing scripture is something we make kids do in Sunday School, but I don’t know a lot of adults who spend any time on this discipline.  In my opinion, that’s a mistake.

Now I know the first thing many of you will say:  “I can’t memorize things.”  As I mentioned before, I’ve known that I had a bad memory all of my life.  But in high school and college I committed myself to working on memorizing scripture and I asked God to help me do it.  Personally, I believe He did.  At one point, when I was in my early twenties, I had about 10% of the New Testament memorized.  Admittedly, today, I could not recite any of the long passages I had memorized back then.  But they are still in my mind.  They still affect my thinking.  I remember the principles even if I can’t quote them word for word anymore.

The second thing you might say is “why should I memorize anything – I just Google it.”  In the old days, people would say “that’s what a concordance is for.”  It’s true – those are good tools.  But the “return on investment” for scripture memory is much higher than you might imagine.  It helps you to connect scriptures together and it really helps you when it comes to the practical application of scripture.  Your mind is constantly looking for connections as you go throughout the day.  When you have memorized scripture in your mind, it gives you the chance of connecting scripture with the situation you are in in real time.  Sure, you can always look up different topics in the Bible and find a list of relevant verses.  But that is rarely what we do.  Instead we just try to figure out the right thing to do in each successive situation we are faced with.  If we have a memory bank of scripture to draw on, it enables us to think more Biblically.  Further, our mind is great at categorizing things that have personal meaning to us.  Frequently there are situations that I find myself in where I recall a verse that has personal application to that situation.  It’s not something you would find searching in a concordance because, in general, it’s not a passage that has a broad meaning on the topic.  But it means something to you.  Those situations are very valuable from a Christian growth perspective.

I would also say that scripture memory gives the Holy Spirit a bigger vocabulary.  I know that sounds weird.  But does God speak to you?  God speaks through scripture.  When it is there in your brain, He can bring it to mind at the right time to help guide you and direct your life.  Personally I have found that to be a profound influence on the direction of my life.

When I memorize scripture, I don’t do anything fancy.  I simple write the verse out on a card and then review that whatever chance I get.  College seemed like the perfect opportunity because I recall spending a lot of time standing in line for something or other.  And every time I stood in line, I pulled out my stack of verse cards and started working on trying to memorize the next verse.  It doesn’t require any deep thinking.  You don’t even have to have studied out the verse or know what it means.  All it takes is a little discipline.  If all you ever do is work on scripture memory during the times you are stuck in line waiting for something, you can accomplish a lot.  Try it!

The payback from scripture memory is lifelong.  Once scripture is in your brain, it has been my experience that it is always there to be recalled.  Sometimes I still have to look it up to remember the exact wording, but I know where to go and I know it is there somewhere.  Verses I memorized thirty years ago come to my mind in direct application to something I am facing today.  That is real payback!  So, to me, scripture memory is the best ROI for a low investment effort that you can get. 

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So, that’s my list of low investment activities that can really help you grow as a Christian.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore the hard things – the high investment activities – we can’t.  But why not add these low investment activities as well.  When it comes to Christian growth, we need all the help we can get!