Regarding Giving and Receiving

A friend asked me if the economy had impacted my giving, or if I felt there was a message from God in the current economy. This is a copy of my response.

I actually think our attitude towards giving and receiving needs a major overhaul. I'm not suggesting that we be ungrateful to God or that we don't get a blessing when we hear about the things God does for others, but I am suggesting that sometimes our surprise at God's generosity is bordering on offensive.

As Micheal Pink puts it:
When I tell my wife that I’m depositing funds into the household
account, she doesn’t hold her breath hoping against hope that I will
follow through, nor does she call all our friends with giddy excitement
when I follow through on my promise. She knows and trusts me. But with
God, we act surprised like we just won the lottery when He provides
abundantly for a pressing need, precisely because we don’t know Him
very well, nor do we fully trust Him. After all, His ways are higher
than our ways or some such excuse. Consider this…

I do agree that we must give more when things are bad. It's the old story about stone soup which I won't repeat because we've all heard it thousands of times. But the point is true enough and echoed in Christ's own words when he said, he would save his life shall loose it and he who would loose his life for my sake shall have eternal life. Christ also said that he came to give us abundant life, or life to the full. So I don't think that Christ is saying, martyr yourself and you'll gain heaven. I think He's saying the tighter you cling to the things you think you have the more it slips through your fingers, but the more you look to me and set aside worrying about the physical world around you the more abundance I'll heap on you.

We can always spare a dime no matter who we are, but some people have lots of money to give away. Others of us may have something else which God has blessed us to give away: love, understanding, companionship, trust, respect, encouragement, kindness, patience, or even humor. Whatever it is that God shines on you is yours to reflect into the world. If God has healed you of something, run out and lay hands on others. Not because you are surprised by the miracle, but because you will never run out of healing as long as you give it away. That's not how the world works, but its virtually a law with God. When he gives you money, give some away. When He is patient with you give that away too.

It's our unwillingness to give away what God blesses us with, especially concerning love and grace, which keeps the pews empty week after week. The world is dieing to get what we have and we have despised them for it.


A. R. Bunch

Christian vs Christ Follower

I love this video!

We should get on with it.

Here's a good shot in the arm from my friend Mike Pink.


“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” (Phil 1:6)

I thank God that we are no surprise to Him today. He knew what He was getting when He formed us, called us, and ordained us for good works prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10) He knew we would not walk perfectly before Him despite our promises to the contrary. He knew exactly what He was getting when He chose us. We need to get on with it.

We tend to live such a performance oriented acceptance paradigm that makes us feel we have to earn His blessings and favor. That somehow if we kicked the dog, argued with our spouse or otherwise fell short of the mark, we would not receive His blessings. What tends to happen when we blow it is that our heart condemns us (1 John 3:20-21) and we deny ourselves the privileges God has provided. It’s not that God is holding back on us. We hold back on ourselves because we count ourselves unworthy.

To which of the people Jesus healed did He first require some proof of performance? Some proof of worthiness? Do you think the thousands of people He healed in those three and a half years were all spiritually mature and walking out their lives in an unblemished way? Of course not.

Another Response to an online Group

I wrote this in response to a statement I made about faith and obedience.

I admit that obedience can't be completely throne out. It's hard to discount it, for its certainly pleasing to God. But if we think about the kinds of things we can do to please God we get a clearer picture of obedience, which in turn can shine a light on verse like the ones you quoted.

For example: Loving one another, giving, loving your neighbor as yourself, extending grace and forgiveness, sharing the Gospel, healing the sick, taking in the homeless, etc. All these things please God. All these things trace back to loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, which I'd point out was what Jesus said all the commandments hinged upon. Hence, John 14:21 in context should read, "He who understands loves God utterly and completely, as well as loving others and himself; it is he who loves me."

The gentlest way I can put this is to say that it seems clear to me that God is more interested in our faith than our obedience. But God is working with me to get over my fear of offending people so let me dive into a stronger way of putting it.

There is an obvious connection between the law and our modern understanding of obedience, which is misunderstood and therefore the cause of many disagreements among Christians. Are we talking about being obedient to the law or obedient to God.

If I asked most Christians which is true:
A) you can obey God and not the law, or
B) you can obey the law and not obey God.

Most Christians today would answer B. After all, how can you obey the law of God and disobey God? It's easy. We call these people pharisees. Conversely, it is also possible to obey God and disobey his law. That's why we have Grace in Jesus Christ. Simply put, the entire old testament proves that people suck at obedience. Therefore God used a better way, a new covenant.

I would say that obedience to the law is worshiping what was created instead of the creator. In this way it is no different than worshiping a tree, which is made by God but is not God in itself. We call this idolatry. It doesn't matter what you elevate above God a tree or the principals of Christianity, its still idolatry. Actually to make matters worse what most Christians seek to obey isn't the commandments of God at all but really there own denominations recompilations of the law, which is the same as obeying that which is made by man. That's what Paul was talking about on Mars hill when he said that God doesn't need things made by man to be worshiped, for "in Him we move and breath and have our being."

If it sounds like I'm making too much of this concider listening to "Room of Grace" by John Lynch. I've already mentioned that obedience is connected to pleasing God. Striving to Please God is a dangerous thing to do. Its like imagining God on the other side of a grand canyon called, "your sins and failings," and you decide to try to reach God by feverously knocking dirt into the canyon from your edge. You just get further and further from God. The other option is enter grace and find out that Jesus is standing nect to you, saying, "you sure do have a pile of things to work on, can I help?" If you want to believe option B you will need faith.

And that's why faith is better than obedience.

Crisis of Faith

To the Yahoo Group...in response to an honest question about questioning God.
________________________________

Generally when I reach a crisis of faith its because I'm living in expectation instead of expectancy. Not to be cute or trite about it, I have come to believe that God will always come through for me, and that it will often look nothing like I think it should. In fact God has shown an interest in destroying some of the good things He placed in my life earlier, as a way of moving me into things he wants for me next.

This is universally true with me. God leads me into tight corners, prunes away perfectly good things, sours my milk, even cuts a wound in me from time to time. It's all to move me into what is next. Yesterday's weapons don't work against tomorrows demons. I don't get my new shield when I see an enemy draw back his bow. I get my new shield when the arrows are descending upon me.

I need to KNOW that I'm provisioned to stand in the spot I'm called to stand in. I'm called to be a man, I'm called to be a husband and a father. God did this to me, He didn't even ask if I wanted it. He made me to want it, he awakened the desires so I would beg him to give it to me, then he gave it to me and most of the time I don't feel at all prepared for it, lol. After 37 years as a single man God is giving me a wife and three daughters. I'm so far outside my comfort zone I don't know which way is up. Yet I KNOW God has prepared and provisioned me.

By his stripes we are healed. To me that means a perfectly good tree had to be wounded so that the orphaned branches could be bound into that spot and live. As an orphaned branch that is restored to the vine I give God full authority to prune my life that it may bare good fruit.

But as you say, their are days when the fog sets in so thick I can't remember the promises God made me. On those days its hard to believe that their even is a God. I think that Dan's question has come across the minds of every true believer at some time or another. That's when we must lean on each other.

A. R. Bunch

Repost: Faith in Action

"Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (Isaiah 45:1-2)

God promises Cyrus that He will open the gates of an otherwise impenetrable city for him. Most people would not know how to take a promise like that. They want to spiritualize it away. They want to delay it ‘til the future, preferably the after life. But Cyrus lived in the here and now and believed he was born for precisely that purpose... to subdue nations, not metaphorically, but in practical reality.

This brings me to the second point I wanted to make in the previous blog on this topic... Don't tell me what you believe... Show me! Or more to the point; don't try to impress God with your ability to quote His word back to Him. He's not impressed. He expects us to meditate on His word. What He is impressed with is faith. (Heb 11:6) Faith talks, but it also walks. If your faith doesn't have legs, if it doesn't take action in sync with your words, it's dead.

So here's my challenge to you: Meditate in God's Word. Press in. Let His Spirit impress upon your heart anything He chooses. Then act as if it applied to the here and now. One time in a parking lot of a state park, I was praying before work. A homeless mother and two children who lived in their car pulled in so she could sleep and the kids could play. I was concerned and approached the woman in her car, but she was already asleep in the back seat of her trashed out car.

The Lord let me see she was suicidal, but I didn't know what to do. I walked away and prayed. The Lord took me to Matthew 6:13 in the Lord's Prayer where it says, "Deliver us from evil". I knew God wanted to deliver this woman from the evil oppression she was under, but I wanted to just pray for her from across the parking lot and go back to work. When I asked the Lord if He wanted me to deliver her from evil, (to be the vessel He used to deliver her), He asked me if I saw anyone else in the parking lot?!?!

I knew He wanted me to act NOW on the Word. I did and within the hour she was born again, healed of an affliction and her friend who arrived on the scene also got born again on the spot! Moral of the story... Don't put off ‘til tomorrow what God intends for today!

Michael Q. Pink

Here's a cool repost from our friends at afterlife.tv:

If you don't know them, they are committed to a vision of doing church differently. I'll try to dig up some of their awesome material on religion bytes. Totally inline with the philosophy of this blog.

Keep Going - Don't Stop!

Hebrews 12:1-2
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.


In the Greek Olympic games of old, a unique race was run. The winner was not the runner who finished first --- it was the runner who finished with his torch still lit!

There are times in our lives when we feel like we just can't continue in the race. These are precisely the times when the enemy loves to assault us to the point of breaking and torment us saying "You'll never make it to the finish line, you may as well just quit now". This is the time we need to cling on to God's promises! The Lord will soon reward our diligence for all our toiling here in this world. Paul said, "Let us not grow weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we do not faint".

Let's allow God's wonderful promises to strengthen and comfort us in each circumstance so that we can run the race --- not to finish first, but to run together, side by side --- the flame of our torch reaching the finish line blazing brightly with fire for Him!

Reflection Question's by Pastor Joe:

1. Have you grown weary?
2. Do you need to allow God's promises to strengthen and comfort you today?

Sample Prayer / Commitment:

"Dear God thank you for showing me that its not what place I finish that matters but that I finish...strengthen and comfort me today and help me to keep pressing on toward the finish line. In Jesus name, amen."

Please forward this email to a friend and help spread our daily devotional!
Consider supporting our ministry by making a donation - click here.