GIVING TO MISSIONS

You will never out give God. You give with your puny little shovel and God gives with His great big shovel. The giving hand is the receiving hand. The Lord Jesus said ”Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Luke 6:38. You give one way and God gives four ways. Our giving will never match or exceed God’s. The Bible is all about giving. “For God so loved that He gave”. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift”. “He that spared (gave) not his own Son but delivered him up for us all”. Life is all about giving - to God and to others. A man complained after church one time to the pastor and said “All that I ever hear at this church is give, give, give”. The pastor responded “Thank you sir, that’s the best definition of Christianity I’ve ever heard”.

Many times when things get tight at a church financially the first thing that gets cut back is the mission’s giving. Maybe this might be the best time to increase mission’s giving or take on a new missionary. Some years ago I had a staff member who gave a testimony that went like this, “Things have really gotten tight around my house, and I better raise my offering”. He understood the principle laid out in Proverbs 11:25 and 26 “ There is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that which withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself”. Proverbs 11:25, 26 is a paradox. A paradox is a seeming contradiction. It doesn’t seem possible that you can give and have more after you gave than before. How can you scatter and yet increase? It is because of the blessing of God. Do we not need the blessing of God more than we need anything? “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich and he addeth no sorrow with it”. Proverbs 10:22. The thing I need more than anything else is the blessing of the Lord. If I don’t have that I don’t have anything.

I remember a pastor telling one time of a large sum of money that his church had saved up to meet a need. A larger need of another church came along and the first church gave the money to the second church. I am sure that the first church experienced a great and unique blessing of God. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus said so. Acts 20:35

The way up is down. The way to be great is to serve. The way to be big is to be little. The way to live is to die. The way to be loved is to love. The way to receive is to give. The reason to receive is to give to someone else. I believe the way for a church to be really blessed of God is to do more for world-wide missions and for others. I believe the more we help others the more God will help us. God has promised to provide all our need. (Not our greed). How is it that He could ever fail?

One of the first things that a new church should do is to take on a missionary. The reason: God blesses a giving church and makes it a receiving church. Let us not build selfish churches but loving, giving and generous churches.