| Reflecting God’s Generous Love |
by
Gordon MacDonald for Generous Giving
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“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5).
From time to time in the Scriptures, we are reminded that generous giving began in the heart of God. It is at the very core of the effort God made to redeem mankind through the work of Jesus at the cross.
“God has poured out his love into our hearts,” Paul wrote. We cannot afford to consign these words to mere theological rhetoric. Paul had experienced this love. Having been raised and trained in a law-conscious frame of thought, he knew what it was like to feel as though he could never measure up. He knew the debilitating demands of a religion that said that one was never good enough.
And then he had come into touch with the grace of the God of Jesus Christ. This was a dimension of Israel's God he’d never known. And once he became aware, he never stopped extolling the praises of a God who led with his love, his generous love.
This was not a conditional generosity that flowed from heaven. “When we were still powerless,” Paul wrote, “Christ died for the ungodly.” These familiar words threaten to pass over our heads without the contemplation they deserve. They offer at least two messages to us. The first is that we were and are loved by God, through Christ, even though we have done nothing to deserve His affection. In fact, we have often thwarted that love, much as a teenager irrationally rebels against his family.
The second thought is equally important: The God who gives to us so generously has provided a pattern of giving for us to adopt. At the heart of our giving is a certain mindset: We are to give to the one in need, the one who is weak, the one who is oppressed, not because they beg us to do so, not because they promise to praise us or flood us with appreciation, and not because we expect immediate results. But we give because we love!
What happens to our gift once given is between the receiver and God. It was ours to give, and our expectations and conditions stop there. If there is some kind of return, appreciation, or result, so be it. We are permitted to delight in such a moment. But this is not why we give.
We give because God gave. We give as God gave. And we give as generously as God gave. And that requires great maturity and obedience on our part.
© Generous Giving, 2002. Used by permission of Generous Giving. All rights reserved.
Generous Giving is an educational stewardship ministry that seeks to encourage givers of all income levels—as well as ministry leaders, pastors and teachers and professional advisors—to fully understand and embrace what it means to live generously, according to God’s word and Christ’s example.
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