Unlocking True Generosity

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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Then, with the crowds listening, he turned to his disciples and said, “Beware of these teachers of religious law!  For they like to parade around in flowing robes and love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces.  And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets.  Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public.  Because of this, they will be severely punished.”  While Jesus was in the Temple, he watched the rich people dropping their gifts in the collection box.  Then a poor widow came by and dropped in two small coins.  “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them.  For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.”  Luke 20:45 – 21:3

Every time we get near Jesus in teaching mode He utters something that turns our thinking upside down.  When he pointed at the widow’s gift and said she gave more than everybody that day, even though she had given the smallest amount, He was showing us the key to opening true generosity in our lives; it’s never how much you put in the offering plate, or the size of the check you put in the envelope to a charity, it’s how much you keep that determines the size of your gift.

It’s amazing how children get this, while adults seem to struggle with it.  Our youngest child is having a birthday today (one with a zero attached…prayer please…happy birthday, sweetheart 😊 ).  When Carrie was little, perhaps only about 4, she overheard her mother and me talking about the income and outgo problem; there was a little too much month left over at the end of the money.  She went to her room, then came back to join us at the table.  We looked at that sweet, innocent face as she held up her pudgy little hand and opened it to reveal four pennies.  It is impossible to forget those words, here, Daddy, you can use my money.  Like the widow who kept nothing back, our little one had emptied her savings to help.

The condemnation of the preachers at the beginning of the story is for pride and the misuse of money.  Well, it seems there’s nothing new after all!  These proud, greedy leaders would have scoffed at the widow’s donation, or perhaps used it to guilt others into giving more to fatten the treasury, but one thing they were never going to do is follow the widow’s example.

For You Today

The Gaither Vocal Band has a song that keeps running through my head, Give It Away.  Think of the widow that day:

If you want more happy than your heart can hold;
If you wanna stand taller, if the truth were told,
Take whatever you have and give it away!
If you want less lonely and a lot more fun
And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
Throw your heart wide open and give it away![2]

Gloria Gaither tells about writing that song.  Let’s give her the last word today:

Bill’s grandfather used to say, “There are basically two kinds of people in this world – givers and takers – so decide which one you want to be.”[3] 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com     Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] Watch the video of Gaither Vocal Band singing Give It Away

[3] From Gaither.com

Leftovers

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Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Late in the afternoon his disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late.  Send the crowds away so they can go to the nearby farms and villages and buy something to eat.”  But Jesus said, “You feed them.”  “With what?” they asked.  “We’d have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people!”  “How much bread do you have?” he asked.  “Go and find out.”  They came back and reported, “We have five loaves of bread and two fish.”  Then Jesus told the disciples to have the people sit down in groups on the green grass.  So they sat down in groups of fifty or a hundred.  Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them.  Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he kept giving the bread to the disciples so they could distribute it to the people.  He also divided the fish for everyone to share.  They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftover bread and fish.  A total of 5,000 men and their families were fed.  Mark 6:35-44^(NLT)

From what I know about church people after 40 years of ministry, and how dinner on the grounds looks, this was a much bigger miracle than even the Gospel writer knew!  Mark says they all ate as much as they wanted; beloved, even if all of them weren’t Methodist or Baptist, I can see the fish sandwiches lined up to the moon and back!

And yet, the miracle report intensifies, in that, after twenty-thousand men, women, and children (give or take a Sunday School class) ate their fill.  And, what started as a meager lunch for one person, five loaves and two fish, became twelve baskets of left overs.  One reality is unmistakable; God does math differently than they teach in fourth grade, or M.I.T.   With God, subtract a fish or two and you wind up with twelve baskets-full and a disciple holding each basket with mouth open and chin hitting the floor in disbelief!  

There is a lesson you can distil from this that’s a better catch than you can make at any secret fishing hole you ever heard about:  When God blesses you with the go-ahead, you’d better hand it out faster than you’ve ever dreamed…or the left-over blessings will swamp you!

I have a friend who has a generous spirit; he and God kept my back from disintegrating back in the 1990’s.  I sneezed too hard one time and literally dislodged everything from its proper connection to my spinal column.  For the next year an ice pack became my best friend.  My other best friend, my chiropractor, knew how to re-introduce my spine and sanity, and did so without ever charging me.  (Those were the days before my family could afford health insurance).

When we moved 500 miles away to serve in another state, my friend, a man of obedient stewardship, took me to lunch.  He had taught me a lot about what it means to be available to hold the baskets of left overs for God’s people.  He had a knack for making money, but he was even better about finding ways to give it into God’s harvest. 

At lunch that day he said he wanted to give me something he didn’t own, so that I could not own it too!  Really!  He handed me a $100 bill; then he said:  Preacher, keep this in your wallet.  When the time comes that you see a need that you can’t fill, remember how this got in your hand, and be obedient to God.  If it leaves your hand to bless someone else and God doesn’t replace it, every part of the Bible is untrue.  If that ever happens you let me know.

It’s been more than 18 years and I’ve found that just the opposite is true – God doesn’t just replace it when I give that bill away; God multiplies it faster than I could imagine.  What God has done with multiplying that first $100 has made my jaw drop to the ground more times than I can count. 

I like being a disciple holding God’s basket!

For You Today

Let me sing a phrase for you this morning from a popular Gospel song I love from the Gaither Vocal Band: Give It Away – well…. not sing…but listen anyway:

If you want more happy than your heart will hold,
If you want to stand taller, if the truth were told,
take whatever you have and give it away.

If you want less lonely and lot more fun,
and deep satisfaction when the day is done,
throw your heart wide open and give it away.[2]

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] ^©2006 Gaither Vocal Band

Crabby Kids

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Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Soon the people began to complain about their hardship, and the Lord heard everything they said.  Then the Lord’s anger blazed against them, and he sent a fire to rage among them, and he destroyed some of the people in the outskirts of the camp.  Then the people screamed to Moses for help, and when he prayed to the Lord, the fire stopped.  After that, the area was known as Taberah (which means “the place of burning”), because fire from the Lord had burned among them there.  Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt.  And the people of Israel also began to complain.  “Oh, for some meat!” they exclaimed.  “We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt.  And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted.  But now our appetites are gone.  All we ever see is this manna!” Numbers 11:1-6^(NLT)

The Lord had some crabby kids in the wilderness.  God had sent Moses to get them out of the hands of their Egyptian captors and lead them to freedom.  The trip, even for a huge group, several million strong would have been only a few weeks.  However, their crabby complaining stretched the journey to forty years.  I know what Moses must have felt; I once drove straight through from Florida to New York with three siblings under 12 in the back seat of my car!  During that trip my crabby kids showed me the real meaning of Bill and Gloria Gaither’s song:  He Touched Me.

Churlish behavior is the consummate definition of ingratitude for what you have.  Humankind has made that something of an art form, never being satisfied for more than a nanosecond over what God gives.  Impatience in the wilderness makes you crabby!

In the wilderness the people churned-up complaints against Moses for a lack of meat and veggies.  They wanted leeks, onions and garlic; God provided them manna from Heaven.  Where once they worried about eating at all, as soon as God gave them a food source that completely met their need, they graduated to demanding five-star dining.  Thus it has always been for us.  Those of Adam’s race are not thankful by nature.  

·       Adam and Eve weren’t thankful with a perfect garden environment and a perfect relationship with God; they had to have the kind of knowledge God possessed. 

·       Cain was not satisfied with all the produce of the ground, he killed his brother because his brother possessed favor with God, and he wanted that! 

·       King David wasn’t happy with all the riches and power God had given into his life; he had to add another man’s wife to his collection.

John D. Rockefeller was the world’s richest man in the last decade of the 19^th century.  When asked once, "How much money is enough money?" He replied, "Just a little bit more."[2]  Abraham Lincoln was walking down the street in Washington with his two boys in tow, both of them screaming their lungs out.  A passer-by asked him, what’s the matter, Mr. President?  It is said Abe’s answer was:  What’s the matter?  What’s the matter with the whole world…I have two children and three walnuts!

Most of us will never know the riches of a Rockefeller, or the power and prestige of a King David or Abraham Lincoln.  We will never have a perfect environment like Adam and Eve.  And if those rich, powerful, and blessed people could be churlish and ungrateful in all they were given, what makes us think a little more than we now have will make us any happier?

If the task of parenting were to alter course a wee bit in our culture, from teaching children they can have/be anything they want (which is the nauseating phrase I hear – and have also used), to:  you can be exactly what God wants you to be if you listen and obey Him…it seems contentedness would be a lot more common in the human family.

For You Today

As the children of Israel learned in the wilderness, longing for the things of your former captivity only makes you cry; onions have a way of doing that!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy:  Pixabay.com

[2] New World Encyclopedia

Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart

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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them.  People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”  1 Samuel 16:7b (NLT)

 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.  Galatians 5:25 (NLT)

I heard a new hymn this morning; actually it was written by Rev. George Croly in 1854, so its new-ness is only to me; I love it already! 

Listen carefully to this prayer for God’s presence and leading.

1 Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart, 
wean it from sin, through all its pulses move. 
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as you are, 
and make me love you as I ought to love. 

2 I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, 
no sudden rending of the veil of clay, 
no angel visitant, no opening skies; 
but take the dimness of my soul away. 

3 Did you not bid us love you, God and King, 
love you with all our heart and strength and mind? 
I see the cross there teach my heart to cling. 
O let me seek you and O let me find! 

4 Teach me to feel that you are always nigh; 
teach me the struggles of the soul to bear, 
to check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; 
teach me the patience of unceasing prayer. 

 

5 Teach me to love you as your angels love, 
one holy passion filling all my frame: 
the fullness of the heaven-descended Dove; 

my heart an altar, and your love the flame.  [2]

My heart an altar, and your love the flame

Anyone who has ever tasted of the presence of God by His Spirit understands the heart-cry of this prayer – the hunger of a soul to have God’s indwelling presence to guide and bring personal spiritual awakening and alertness. 

This hunger is the soul’s cry to be able to please God more than anything.  And I have to confess that, in all the years since the Spirit of God first moved my heart to claim Jesus Christ as my Lord, I have never gotten over the pull of that hunger.

Another song made popular by Bill and Gloria Gaither says exactly how this hunger to serve God plays out in the soul…the longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.

So we have two realities here, the pull of our heart’s hunger to please and serve God, and the precious joy of that desire growing with the years as we serve Him.

It’s not a promise that everything will taste better, or heal faster, or go smoother; it’s a heavenly reality that God is faithful and loves you, no matter what happens.

For You Today

Make your heart an altar for the Holy Spirit to burn with God’s love.

There’s nothing sweeter.

There’s nothing truer.

There’s nothing more eternal!

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[1] Title image:  By Ziko-C, via Wikimedia Commons

[2] Information on the hymn and image of George Croly:  via Hymnary.org