Welcome to Part 3 of the message entitled 'How God turns our offering into a supernatural blessing.'
God can very well take anything He wants anytime. Isn’t that true? But, He comes to us as either directly, explicitly as He did with Abraham, or through the Holy Spirit working in us, as we pursue God. That, “I need to give something more to God. There is something that I am withholding. God, there is something You want to give me but You are holding off on it, because I don’t understand Your plan. I am not sure of where You want to take this? I am thinking in the natural realm, You are thinking in the supernatural realm.” In order for me to think like God, I need to ask God. We need to ask God tonight, “Lord, what is there in my life?” We are not talking about sinful things, that is already a given. We don’t want to be unrighteous people bringing offerings to God. God does not want that. God wants us to walk righteously, and then say to God, “Father, I have eliminated sinful practices from my lifestyle. I am a vessel dedicated to You. Now, Lord, is there anything in my life that I should offer up to You as an offering to the Most High God? Is there a vow that I need to make, so that You can call me up higher to walk with God, to walk with God and to be a blessing to the whole world? How can I be a blessing to the whole world, how can my generation be a blessing? How can I be a blessing to the whole world, how can my generation be a blessing?”
When I realize that, first of all, everything belongs to God anyway. Whatever I have today, even my breath belongs to God. Secondly, it takes faith to say, “Lord, even though I am going to give You something that cost me, my very heart, I know beyond a shadow of doubt that You are One who will reward those who diligently seek You. Those who give unto You Lord, You will not short change. Father, if I give anything to You at all, You will always give back, multiplied, manifold. Hallelujah! God will never take something from us, from sincere hand and a sincere heart and never give it back to us the same. Isaac was given back to Abraham as the decided inheritor of all of the blessings. At that point, the promise was in development. We need to understand that. When God makes a promise, it’s good because it’s His word, but it is developing materially in our lives as we yield to Him. In other words, promise is there, it’s solid. But the formation of the promise in our life, when it crystallizes, it comes directly in proportion to our obedience in our offering to God.
Abraham offered up Isaac. Hannah offered up Samuel. What will you offer to God, so that God can take you to the next level? When I thank God with a thankful heart, “Lord, thank You for everything You have given me. When I have faith that God, when He moves me by the Holy Spirit to give up something that He is going to multiply, I am going to act on it. That’s the third thing.
First, I realize it belongs to God anyway. Anyone who comes to God and finds it difficult to give up something to God, not because it’s an emotional thing, such as giving up a child on the altar like Abraham; but because they think it belongs to them and they can do better with it than God can, then they don’t have the thankful heart of the faith. When we understand that it belongs to God, and God will not short change me, then I can move forward and put feet to my faith as it’s said. I can act on it. Because if you read in 1 Samuel 1, it says here in verse 27 [King James Version], For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him:
Now, did she take that and forget her vow. No. She remembered her vow that she vowed in her distress, the offering she made unto the Lord, that You can have my son. I am going to leave him in the temple. Lord, I have given him back to You.
Verse 28 Hannah says, Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. And he worshipped the Lord there. [King James Version]
What happened to Samuel? He ruled Israel like no other prophet, to the point where the Lord did not let his words fall to the ground. God was so confident of Samuel, He was behind him. That He made sure when Samuel spoke, God supernaturally made it to happen. That’s what God does.
When we offer something to God, He makes something supernatural come out of it. I want to give you a case in point, one of the examples- In our own lives; as a testimony to the Lord, the faithfulness of the Lord. When we lived in a single bedroom apartment, many years ago, we had a long hall and other than the bedroom, that’s all we had. And we wanted to furnish the place and both of us felt the Lord move us to dedicate that unto the Lord. Now, the Lord didn’t demand that. But, He put that out there to see how we’d respond. What we did was we said, “Lord, we are going to use this space not for normal social gatherings like most people do. At that point of time, when that was the only large space we had in the apartment, where we can decorate and so forth; we did decorate it, but it was for the glory of God. And we had people there to worship the Lord with us. We said unto the Lord, “Lord, though we have a small apartment, and this hallway can be used for things and decorations to our liking, we want to put that on the altar for You, so that people can come to this hallway and worship You. And so everything we did in that particular hallway was unto the Lord, to do His ministry. Now people wondered when they visited, “Why didn’t you furnish it like most people do? Why didn’t you have an arrangement like this or that?” And we said, we gave it to the Lord. And to the natural mind, that living room space seems to be only for that kind of purpose.
But when we said to the Lord, “Lord we are giving it to You.” The Lord blessed. The Lord brought people, and they heard the Word, they heard the truth. And they were fed. We were blessed. Not too long after that, the Lord did a miracle and moved us from that one single bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house. And in that place, both of us, my wife and I gave to the Lord, the basement. Now the basement was not your typical basement, unfurnished, with everything hanging from the ceiling, the insulation and wires; it was a fully furnished basement. We had the carpet; we had the walls done, everything beautiful. So you can actually put an entertainment center there or do whatever you want, make it into business place. But we both once again said, “Has not the Lord multiplied us, can we not give this place to the Lord? Again, there we had that as a family altar to worship the Lord. Once again, sometime later, the Lord multiplied and gave us a much larger place, with a prayer room, a worship place right next to our master bedroom. That was in the design of the building that we had sought the Lord for. This is what the Lord will do.
We can never say to the Lord, “Father, if I give something to You, I am not sure if, I’m going to have satisfaction. If I am going to see that thing prosper? If You are going to touch it supernaturally?”
God will always give us much more than we ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3: 20)
Here is Samuel and here is Isaac. Isaac, when he dug the wells and even when the enemies stopped it, the Philistines, God gave a hundredfold increase. Isaac not only was materially blessed, much more importantly he became the progenitor of the Messiah of the whole universe. He was the forefather of Jesus Christ. What grater blessing can a man hope for! How marvelously the Lord did! When, Abraham overcame his carnal instinct to hold back that dear son, “Instead of saying, not so Lord. Some of the movies unfortunately, some of the Hollywood depictions erroneously and blasphemously portray Abraham as struggling, screaming at the Lord saying, “No, no!” and falling to the ground. Nothing of that sort is recorded here, in the scriptures. Even though, he would have definitely had a struggle, he obeyed and that is the point. When the Lord demanded, he gave freely everything that God wanted. He believed God. He believed God, he had faith that the God who is asking me of this, will surely give me much more. He can raise Isaac up. He can do anything. He is the God of the impossible.
Hannah, though she would have wanted it, in the human sense, “My firstborn to stay with me- to raise him up, to take him to school, to sit with him, to play with him, all of those things.” She said, “It's better that I give him to the Lord.” What happened to Samuel? Surely, he made her the happiest, most blessed mother of her time. To see that boy grow up in the righteous ways of the Lord, to the point that he can call down thunder, he can subdue Israel’s enemies, even with his prayer. To see this man was going to anoint the Messiah’s forerunner, King David, to see all those things. You think that would compare to what she would have had, if she would have kept back that offering!
I encourage you to give to the Lord that which belongs to Him anyway, when He comes to You and puts His hand on something. In a personal example and it’s not mine only, a number of people I know have done this. As far as music, when we had secular music, before I was committed to the Lord. When I liked secular music and had instruments, and to me I could not find contemporary Christian music at that time, many years ago, that really I thought was original and captivating; I used to lean towards some of the secular music. Now, it wasn’t bad music. It wasn’t perverse music. It was just sometimes, just about Nature or so. But still, nevertheless, it was an area which I didn’t surrender to the Lord, trusting Him.
When I decided to surrender all my music to God and said, “Lord, I am going to trust you and wait upon You that, what You want to do with the music and the talent You’ve given. Whatever You’ve given into my hands, I will wait upon you and see what You are going to do. It’s yours. No more will I go to the secular realm. I don’t care if it’s jazz, with no words, with anything that seems to be a particularly worldly, sinful, but it has to glorify God. That may be Jazz in genre, it may have a pop beat, it may be classical, whatever the genre, that’s not as important. What is the spirit behind it? What am I using it for? When I did that, the Lord blessed me with equipment and a wife that sings as you know and worships the Lord, children that love to sing unto the Lord, so much more that I could have never dreamed of, than if I would have held on to that secular music.
Similarly, when someone who is making a profit in some way, they are seeing a profit, something good, not perverse. But at some point, the Lord comes knocking and He says, “I want you to offer that up. It may be sports, it may be business. At the drop of a hat, when I say, “Lord, I will offer this up to You, it belongs to you anyway” or “Lord, I am praying for something, a breakthrough in my life. But I see that something is blocking it. “Lord, I have already pushed away sin from my life; I have already determined that I am going to follow You. But is there something more that I need to do?” What a wonderful place to be.
Please join us for, ‘How God turns our offering into a supernatural blessing’- Part 4 and the conclusion. Until then, may God richly bless you!
