Opinion › Feature Article       23.02.2019

Giving Liberally To God

GIVING LIBERALLY TO GOD
A man once contributed the money to build a church. Later he lost all his property. “If you had the money you put into the church,” someone said to him, “you could start again.” But the good man wisely replied, “That is the only money I have saved. If I had not given it to the Lord it would have gone with the rest. Now it will always be mine” (Charlie Riggs, Learning to Walk with God). We gain by giving. We lose by withholding.

CHAMPION OF THE POOR
Andrew S. Miller, national commander of the Salvation Army stated on behalf of his organization that when its human services work is done right, one cannot tell the difference between the spiritual and social work of the movement. He states that they are blended with a harmony that knows no distinction between our faith and compassionate response to the needs of others. May believers today be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, fathers to the needy, and friends to the stranger. God calls us to be servants in a troubled and tortured world (Henry Gariepy, Portraits of Perseverance).

CONVERSION
When we come to Christ, He does not just patch us up. He renews us. He doesn’t just reform us. He transforms us by His power. Conversion is a deep work. It goes throughout our entire beings, throughout our minds, throughout our bodies, throughout our lives, our business lives, our family lives, our neighborhood lives. We become partakers of God’s nature (Billy Graham).

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS OR GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS

The (legendary) story about a man who went to heaven. At the gate, he was told, “You have to have a thousand points to come in.” The man was sure he would make it because he had been involved in many church and service activities. So, he confidently began to recite his good works. “I went to church every Sunday. I was an officer there, and I was a member of Kiwanis and other community activities.” Good came the reply, “that is two points. “Two points!” The man’s heart lurched. “Well, I also had a perfect Sunday school attendance record when I was a kid, and I was chairman of the United Fund canvass in our section one year, and I worked with the Boy Scouts.” “Fine,” came the reply, “that is two more.” What else? “By now the fellow was desperate. He scraped up all he could think of, including cutting a widow’s lawn when he was a kid and taking a minister out to dinner---for a grand total of six points!”

Dejectedly, he finally said, “That’s all I can think of. There isn’t anything else. I guess I’ll just have to throw myself on the grace of God.” That is a thousand plus came the answer. “Come on in” (Leighton Ford)!

SELF-CONFIDENCE
I heard about a man near my home who was going to buy a cow. He was a Christian and as he passed some fellow to buy a cow from a neighbor a mile away. His Christian friends suggested that he should say, “If it is God’s will, I am going to buy a cow.” He said, “No, I’ve got the money in my pocket, and I am going to buy the cow.” About an hour later, he returned along the same road. He was bloody, bruised, and his clothes were torn. He has been set upon by some robbers who happened to know he had money in his pocket. His friends asked him, “Where are you going now?” He said, “I am going home if the Lord wills” (Billy Graham). He has learned his lesson.

FREEDOM IN SIMPLICITY
“The lust of affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic. Christian simplicity frees us from this modern mania. It brings sanity to our compulsive extravagance, and peace to our frantic spirit. People once again became more important than possessions” (Richard Foster).

JESUS CHRIST THE GOOD SHEPHERD (JOHN 10)
He was the Good Shepherd who came into the desert, braving the hardships and risking the peril, in order to seek and to save only one lost sheep. Indeed, he laid down his life for the sheep. It is only when we look at the cross that we see the true worth of human beings (John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ).

As William Temple expressed it, “My worth is what I am worth to God; and that is a marvelous great deal, for Christ died for me.”

ETERNITY AWAITS THE SAVED
A story is told of two strangers, a small boy, and an older man, fishing on the banks of the Mississippi River. As time passed, they discovered that though the fishing was poor, the conversation was good. By the time the sun began to sink in the west, they had talked of many things. At dusk, a large riverboat was seen moving slowly in the distance. When the boy saw the boat, he began to shout and waved his arms to the attraction of those on board. The man watched and then said, “Son, that boat is not going to stop for you. It is on its way to some unknown place down the river and it surely won’t stop for a small boy.” But suddenly, the boat began to slow down, and it moved toward the riverbank. To man’s amazement, the boat came near enough to the shore that a gangplank could be lowered. The boy entered the boat and turning to his new friend on shore, said, “Mister. I knew the boat would stop for me, for you see my father is the captain of this boat, and we are going to a new home down the river.”

When the ship of death stops for the child of God, we can be confident that it is our father who has called home one of His precious children. Death is not the end of life but the beginning of the larger, eternal life that awaits those who love and serve God (Henry Gariepy, Portraits of Perseverance).

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