Good Morning Friends,
Some who preach the prosperity Gospel promote the wrong kind of charity and the wrong Spirit when it comes to what we should pass on to the next generation. Certainly, we have a call to serve each other but the prosperity approach is too much about self-interest and what is in it for the giver instead of love of God and others. Oh, no doubt, God can use them all but when someone loves what they are giving to, it changes the dynamic, for then it is not a market transaction, it is something much more valuable. The object is to give to God by loving and seeing in others we help, something we desire to emulate. The thing to measure is love. And that is a very hard thing to measure. Still perhaps we might be led to compassion for those children blamed for their father’s and mother’s sins. We need to break the cycle of insanity with a legacy of love. So, Are You Giving And Forgiving For The Right Reasons?
Scripture: When the Lord your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, “It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to occupy this land”; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to fulfill the promise that the Lord made on oath to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, then, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness; for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness; you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water. And the Lord gave me the two stone tablets written with the finger of God; on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken to you at the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly.
Deuteronomy 9:4b-10 (NRSV)
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Luke 6:36-38 (NRSV)
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.
Malachi 3:10 (NRSV)
Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake. Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes. Let the groans of the prisoners come before you; according to your great power preserve those doomed to die. Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors the taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord! Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation, we will recount your praise.
Psalm 79: 8-13 (NRSV)
I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, keeping covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments, we have sinned and done wrong, acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, and to all the people of the land. “Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as at this day, falls on us, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. Open shame, O Lord, falls on us, our kings, our officials, and our ancestors, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
Daniel 9: 4b-10 (NRSV)
Message: The reality is that if we believed Malachi, we would be giving a lot more than we do. The problem is that the most sensitive awareness in the whole body is the connection that runs between the heart and our personal bank accounts. And the reality about this typically touches our greed and guilt. The thing is that self-interest is not all bad but if we do not love all that follows is pretty much rubbish. The beauty of our creation is that love activates the benefits of giving with an attitude that makes all the difference in the world. What matters is our love. For if we really love God, we will know that God owns it all and that God gives us money to test and see what we really believe in and in what we truly love. And even though we can read Bible example after example of God rewarding those who give we are often afraid to give because of what we are losing. Our head learns through the Bible lessons that God rewards those who give, but if our heart is not there it just does not take. The message found in Luke weaves in the concept of mercy and forgiveness as a precursor to giving. So, get out of your head that it is the amount of the gift that is the most important thing. Oh, it is relevant but what I have found is that the frequency and the attitude in the giving is what ultimately matters most. Friends, giving first and foremost is a decision of the heart. Then we begin to realize that it is a privilege to share in the service to the Lord’s people but also to anyone in need. Friends, I do not think I need to tell you to give, because that part of your brain that processes giving wants to keep it for itself out of fear. But I can tell you that if you want an abundant life invest in your heart. We are to love the people we are with and love the places we live and work and worship. So, again giving is a test of sorts as to what we trust and what we love. And if we meet the test, we will discover the joy in giving. Friends, there is a privilege in sharing especially when it is in service of what God is doing. It is not so much about reciprocity but in discovering that giving is a blessing in and of itself, so to give is to receive. Friends, God provides left-overs and those who receive those left-overs have left-overs. God gives liberally and so to, if we love in abundance, we will find that there is more than enough of everything our hearts desire.
And So, like our giving, our forgiveness invites God and other people to forgive us and give to us, but the purpose is all to bring us into a better relationship with God. It is not about us but God. As Daniel points out, our God is always ready to forgive and so too, we should always be ready to give. The psalmist invites us today to pray to this God for mercy in this regard. He invites us to admit our sins and ask for forgiveness, and with God’s own help to love. So, what we are really doing when we ask for God’s forgiveness for the sake of His name is that God pardon our sins so as to add to His divine reputation as one who always hears prayer, always forgives and is a God of Love and Grace. His mercy, then, would for generations be the subject of our high praise. Luke however in his Gospel takes a different look at human sin. We know that there is no such thing as a solitary sin or a victimless crime. Every sin I commit certainly affects me adversely, but it changes me, a little or a lot, so that my prayer to God is also damaged, and my relationship with my family and the whole human family is also injured. But when someone else appears to be in that situation, Jesus does not want us to make it worse by judgement and condemnation. He seems to be speaking specifically about sharing news about the sin with other people and making the sinner’s life worse rather than better. Because all of us are sinners. If we treat other sinners badly, we invite the same judgement and condemnation to come back and hit us on the head. On the other hand, forgiveness invites the other to forgive. And Jesus promises that we will get way more back than we give, specifically of forgiveness. The reward is our forgiveness by Jesus Christ, the judge of the world. And when Christ forgives, He promises to dump a whole truckload of mercy on us. So, let us all consider how we can emulate Our Lord by dumping truckloads of forgiveness and mercy on anyone who has damaged us. The message is about what kind of God we feed. One that prompts fear or one that prompts love.
Pray we give into God’s plan. Pray God relieve our doubts and ends our fear. Pray serve a God of Love by being more loving, forgiving and giving. Pray we always give the glory to God. Pray we realize that trusting in money is pointless. Pray when we give, we give cheerfully. Pray we realize that the opportunity to give presents itself daily. Pray we do not get weary of doing good. Pray we are obedient to the Spirit of giving. Pray we are not only cheerful, but out of a desire to praise God, grow our ability to give in abundance. Pray we understand the power of kindness and the power of an act of generosity. Pray we understand that the sacrificial act of the love of Jesus on the cross can spill over into our lives in acts of giving that glory to God. Pray we change the way we think and act.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 