Give Abundantly

"You can spend too much.  You can save too much.  But you can never give too much." Gregg Matte, Senior Pastor at Houston's First Baptist (it might not have been those exact words, but it was close)

Yesterday's sermon talked about Mary POURING perfume on the feet of Jesus before he was to be killed out of John 12.  And the picture of how much she was GIVING.

"Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you." - Luke 6:38

You know when you get a bag of chips, and open them up, and all of the chips are down at the bottom and there's nothing but air in the top half of the bag? I always feel like I'm getting ripped off! Why don't they just make those bags smaller?  When it comes to giving, there are so many Christians who give just like that. On the outside, they make it look like they're giving a lot. But in reality, they aren't really sacrificing anything.  

We are so selfish with our material things.  Now, aren't you glad God doesn't withhold his blessings like many withhold their gifts?  God says, "When you give sacrificially, I'll fill your box until it overflows!" You either believe that if you obey God, he is going to bless you, or you don't believe it.  But if you do believe it, then you should act on it and give God an opportunity to pour out his blessings on you.

I realize that God has blessed certain people with the ability to give more than others. A single mom holding down two jobs just to pay the bills won't be able to give nearly as much as a wealthy businessman. But whether you're rich or poor, God sees the sacrificial spirit inside of you and blesses you abundantly when you give!  But let me ask you this, which really hit home to me.. Have you ever driven through a poor neighborhood and seen the people and thought, "those poor people", "I wonder how they got to this place", or "I bet he was doing drugs before he was living like that"?  Ever had those thoughts?  I know I have, and my pastor admitted he had too.  But what about when you drive through a rich, glamorous neighborhood and see big mansions, do you ever have those same thoughts of "oh, those poor people"? I bet not, or at least not as much.  It's better to live in a shack and know Jesus as your savior, and give sacrificially; rather than to live in a mansion and not know the Lord.

When I was in television I was struggling to make ends meet and still gave as much as I could.  Not all the time, but time to time when I knew I had an extra 10 or 20 dollars to spare.  That was so hard for me to sit there and try to examine how I could give 10 percent, save 10 percent, and live off 80 percent when I was getting food from the Salvation Army pantry.  When I moved to Dallas and doubled my income, the first thing I did was set up a budget to give 10, save 10, and live off 80.  There's been some rough times through that, but the Lord has continued to bless me.

Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it. -Erwin Lutzer

NO MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU MAKE, GIVE SACRIFICIALLY AND GOD WILL BLESS YOU ABUNDANTLY.