Stepping Up To A New Level Of Blessing
GNLCC Proverbs 3:5-10 2 Corinthians 9:
Have you ever blessed someone with a surprise gift that you knew he or she was going to love? There was a sense of expectation of joy and delight in your own heart as the person open the gift. Sometimes the person’s smile or ahhh made it worth it to you to have paid for the gift. You recognized that there is a special joy in being a blessing to someone else.
But then there is also a sort of dark side to be a blessing. Take for instance Karen who was a single mom. Even though times were hard, she saved together $75 to have a special day for her 12 year old son John. Karen decided she would give John $50 to go buy some shoes and she would spend the $25 on herself. She took the money out of her special hiding saving place and called in John. She said “today is our special blessing day”. John was as delighted to receive the $50 as she was to give it. She put the other $25 back into the hiding place.
John rushed down to the store to purchase the shoes. The ones he intended to purchase came to 48.99 with tax. But John saw a later style of shoes and they came to $74.88 with tax. John then decided to go back home and get some of the money he saw his mother hide away. John took the money out of the place and went and bought the shoes.. Boy, was he ever going to impress his friends with the new shoes that he had brought.
When Karen comes home, she sees a piece of paper on the floor. It’s a receipt for a pair of shoes, $74.88. Karen goes to her secret hiding place and looks for her special day blessing envelope. It’s not where she placed it. She finally discovers the envelope in the trash torn in half. If you were Karen, how would you feel inside. Hurt, Angry, Disappointed, Sad. Would you rush to find John, or would you wait for him to come and admit what he had done?
Suppose you put the envelope on the table at dinner time, and asked him, “John did you get the shoes and were you thankful.” Suppose he ignored the envelope and said “yes mom, I got the shoes and they are wonderful. Thank you so much for blessing me with them.” Now how are you feeling about the gift and about John.
Well you may have a glimpse of what goes on in the heart of God when He blesses with things to make us happy only for us to come back and take from Him. You see, all the money that we have comes from God, because everything in the world belongs to God. God says here, I give you this money. You keep 90% of it and let me have the other 10%. At first we are glad to get such a huge amount, but then we go out and we see things that we want. And rather than wait to get them, like John, we sneak back and take the 10% that God had wanted to use to bless others. How many of you here intended to tithe, but then the car note was higher, the cell phone bill was more, or the mortgage with taxes, costs more than you had thought it was going to. There’s a lot of John lurking in the hearts of believers.
The amazing thing about God, is that God only asks for the 10% in order to bless us with more than what we had before. Yet so many of us are not willing to step up to a new level of blessing. There are three reasons we do not give. 1. We simply are not thankful for what God has done for us. 2. We are simply greedy and do not care for what God has done for us. Or 3 we are afraid that God will not come through for us. For those of you who are in group one or two, this sermon is not for you. Your problem is, you have not gotten saved and you need to make Jesus Christ Lord and Savior of your life. I want to talk to those of you who are afraid to trust God.
First let me ask you, what are you trusting in? Is there anyone foolish enough to trust in their job as their source of income? Do you know how many people have lost good paying jobs in the last year. Jobs that they thought would be there for a lifetime. Most of us are at will employees which means we could lose our jobs tomorrow by doing absolutely nothing wrong. Someone in a boardroom could make the decision to want to make more money and your job is gone.
Is there anyone foolish enough to trust in their retirement savings plan. Enron has proven how quickly our 401k’s can go up in smoke and how others can steal our wealth out of greed. Most of us have our retirement funds in places controlled by people who do not follow the ways of Christ. Yet we have entrusted our future to them.
Are you trusting in your own financial savy. You know you will always be able to get a job. You know you will always be able to get ahead. The reality is, we are all just one day away from disaster. Hurriciane Katrina showed that everything you have worked for all your life can be taken away in just a moment of time. Can you really predict the future.
Money is the greatest threat to our relationship to God, because money can in fact become a God. Money tells us what we can and cannot do, where we can and cannot go, who we can and cannot be with, where we can and cannot live, what things we can and cannot have, and what dreams we can and cannot aspire to attain. Our money and our ability to spend it in the way we want is what we trust in. But Jesus said, “Matthew 6:24
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” In other words, your trust and your faith is either in God or in your money. Do you believe God is good enough and loving enough to want to bless you? If the answer is no, than I’m no longer speaking to you.
We must get away from this idea of thinking, God does not want me to enjoy life. God does want you to enjoy life, but sometimes we short change ourselves into thinking what it means to enjoy life. To enjoy life is not necessarily having the right care with all the gizmos, or the right designer clothing or the right home or whatever. To enjoy life is to have the favor of God upon your life, because God even prevents things from happening that were headed directly for us.
The other side of the coin, is that sometimes God will send some headaches into our lives, just to show us we cannot trust ourselves and our great plans for the future. When we trust in our money, we have put our feet on slippery rocks. We’re standing, but for how long.
God is straight forward and hones with us about long term life. Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Why do we believe we can sow deception and reap blessings. If we were read your name and your giving, some of you would get angry or embarrassed and would not show back up to church. God has said, we reap what we sow. How many of you would like to have an abundance. God has an abundance plan. It’s called Proverbs Proverbs 3:9-10 Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; [10] then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
If you’re scared to trust the Old Testament, are you at least willing to trust what Jesus had to say. Luke 6:38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Do you see how God gives you the choice in the matter. Wasn’t it a serious mistake for John to have taken the blessing money? It made him dishonest, it put a strain in his relationship with his mother, and he could not really enjoy those shoes if he had much of a conscious. Worse than that, he missed out on the next thing His mother was probably planning on giving him. What have you missed out on, because of your unwillingness to give as God ask you to do? Have you ever thought about what you may have left behind.
Do you think its desirable to step up to a new level of blessing? How many of you want a bountiful harvest in your health? …In Your Home where everybody gets along and love each other?…on your Job with peace of mind? At school, where you excel in class and stay out of trouble…in all of your business affairs with profits going up?… in your marriage where love stays alive?….in your income where there’s money, left over at the end of the month. And then some ?…in all that you do, as you walk through life. All of these things have a relationship to tithing which indicates where we are putting our trust and our confidence. You don’t move to new level of blessings, just by trying to get things on your own.
If you are to receive God’s blessing then you must obey God’s law first of all. God has given us so many great promises concerning the sowing and reaping of our increase into His kingdom. One such passage in the Bible is found in 2 Corinthians 9:6-11, "But this I say, He which plants a few seeds is only going to get a few plants, but the one who sows a lot of seeds is going to reap a lot of profit.
Giving to God of our tithes and offerings is directly related to our attitude toward God and our trust in His faithfulness to fulfill the promises that He has given to us! It does not matter which type of church you are in for the vast majority of Christians who go to our churches, their attitude toward giving to God is that they will only give to Him what is extra or what we might consider “leftovers” after they have used up as much as they needed and wanted first.
Pastor Toby and I have some beautiful black plates with gold silverware and some crystal glasses. Suppose we invited you over to dinner, and we brought out this delicious looking steak with potatotes and vegetables and we put it on our plates. But for you, we went to the refrigerator and brought out some leftover pieces of pizza, some leftover Chinese food, and some leftover chicken and set it on your plate. We then said grace, and began to eat. Now how do you feel with your plate of leftovers. That’s how we treat God with a lot of our giving. Let me find something leftover. If we don’t like leftovers, as special guests. I don’t think we should expect God to like them either! God expects our best and only our best.
In order to Step up to a New Level of Blessing, we have to look at how many ways we have stepped down that keeps us from being blessed. How many people I know that won’t give God what belongs to Him in the first place! In the giving of their time – they will work 8, 10 or 12 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week and if you ask whether they took time to pray or thank God for the ability to work, they say that they are too tired. We only receive so many hours in a day and a week. If we plan to give God our leftover time, we will discover there is not any left.
What about in the giving of the tithe of you ability or talent? What do you service wise for the good of the church. We should realize that any talent, ability or knowledge that we have are the result of God’s blessing to us! What do we do those blessings? We need your participation as a church. God needs your participation
It’s no wonder that God can’t reach out and bless some of us! I believe that God wants to reach out and touch us but we can’t feel His touch because we are too worn out from doing our own thing!
The congregation of our church has always been generous in your times of needs regardless of what you have been giving because there are always some who are willing to sacrifice more than their fair share. We are in the hole financially as a church, not because there are not enough willing to sacrifice for the kingdom beyond tithing, but there are too many who are not even close to giving what God requires of His people. Forget about what you owed, or how far behind you might be. Just start clean, and making changes this week.
We need to start realizing, all of our financial decisions are indication of whether we are trusting God or not. When you decide to go into debt for a purchase, that’s not necessarily trusting God. You have to have something in hand and be willing to give it up in order to have made a statement of trust that God will replace it and add to it in the process. All of our giving is a sign of what’s taking place in our hearts. For the most part, we decide how many bills we have and what it is we’re willing to commit ourselves to any period of time.
Did you hear the story about 2 men from Glenville New Life who were marooned on a Desert Island. One of them paced back and forth because he was worried and afraid that he would die on that island while the other man was just laid back, relaxing and dozing while singing a praise song. The first man said, “Aren’t you worried?” The second answered, “No, I’m not worried at all. I make $100,000 week and I tithe faithfully to my church. I know Pastor Rick will find me!
Or maybe you will like the story of the Preacher who was attempting to break all records in the drive to raise money for Missions. He wired all the pews to an electric current and when he asked for people to stand who would be willing to donate at least $100 to missions, he hit the switch and almost everyone jumped up! (Now where is that switch I had a minute ago?) Notice that I said, “Almost everyone jumped up”. There were several tight fisted people who wouldn’t get up no matter what and were electrocuted rather than give in the offerings.
I hope that all of you know that we are far more interested in your spiritual well being than we are in getting your money. You see we all suffer when you refuse to Step up to the next of blessing. When you miss out, we all miss out, because we are one family, one body of Christ, with one Lord. I don’t know how to get you to be willing to trust God in more. I do not want to pray, Lord teach so and so to trust you more, because I’d be praying for some very hard times to come into you life in which everything around you would fail you, and only God would be left.
I think we grow more when we make a choice on our own to choose to trust God. Because then it’s a choice to love God. When we choose to love God, we value God for who He is, and not necessarily for what we are begging Him to get us out of. Our giving of our money, is proof of what’s in our hearts. God never asks us to give what we do not have. No one needs to be ashamed of what they give, because a tithe is a tithe. The person giving $60 a month may be a far more faithful giver than the one giving $600. I doubt if there is any faithfulness involved in the person who is giving nothing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself now and change, rather than be exposed before all believers of all times at the judgment seat of Christ.
Stepping up to a new level of blessings, always means choosing to first be a blessing to others. It begins with your attitude toward giving back to God.
