As I reflect on my recent trip to Southern Africa, one of the things I did was to go to church and worship the Lord with other believers.
Despite the bright scorching sun and many other odds against them like poverty, I was moved by the faith and love of God of Christian folks in motherland. They all sat quietly and attentively in an unfinished four walled building, without a roof. That was their new church building still under construction.
As the word of God on giving to the Lord was being preached the congregation spontaneously responded by moving to the altar to give their offerings. Some were ululating whilst others sang songs of joy as they gave to their Lord. They were fully determined to build the house of the Lord and they really believed that God loves a cheerful giver. Some like Hannah (1 Samuel 1) who did not have the means at the time made money pledges towards building sand, bricks and for meeting other building expenses.
As we follow our God-given plan for this year to "read the bible in a year", let us remember the words of Jesus in Luke chapter 16 vs 1 which read:
ALSO [Jesus] said to the disciples, There was a certain rich man who had a manager of his estate, and accusations [against this man] were brought to him, that he was squandering his [master's] possessions.
Let us discern and understand that life is not about earning money just for our enjoyment. Like everything else we have e.g. the breath we breathe everyday, money is a gift from God as explained in the book of Haggai, "all silver and gold is mine, says the Lord"
God therefore expects us to worship him with all our possessions and everything about us and that includes money. He expects us to give to the poor, to build his church, to be a blessing to others and not to hoard it.
Above all God loves people that remember him just like we all want to be remembered on our birthdays. He has already said he will honor those who honor him (1 Sam 2 vs 30) so there is nothing to fear or lose when we give our time, talents, skills and possessions to God. On the contrary we can only fear the consequences when one day the Master asks us to give an account of how we used the possessions we were given
Our desire should be to hear the Master say "well done good and faithful servant"
All bible quotations are from The Amplified Bible.
To follow our bible reading plan in a year, read Psalm 44-45, Deuteronomy 15 – 23 and Luke 13 – 16, this week.
Farai Mutsambiwa
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