Encouragement: Doing your Giving

Here is your daily encouragement words and thoughts. Today I bring you encouragement from Matthew 6:1-4

6:1 “Be careful not to display your righteousness merely to be seen by people. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father in heaven.
2 Thus whenever you do charitable giving, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in synagogues and on streets so that people will praise them. I tell you the truth, they have their reward.
3 But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your gift may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.

Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Mt 6:1-4). Biblical Studies Press.

Giving is an important part of our worship. We receive some important instruction from Jesus in this passage. He warns us to do our giving in secret not to be seen by other people. This can be very difficult when we want to be identified as participating with God and to encourage other people to do the same.

What we fail to remember is this God we worship is huge. He created everything out of nothing. C. S. Lewis wrote "By definition: For God to be God, He has no needs because he created everything from nothing."

So with this in mind we are back to viewing our giving as something that we need to do in order to grow in our relationship to God. It has nothing to do with what God needs but it has everything to do with our need to give and give with a joy filled heart.

So we must learn to put away our trumpets and give to God in secret. Funny thing is that it is often easier to give more this way. I think it is because we have moved from giving to "God's need" to giving as a participation in worship in response for what He has done for us.

Amen

Music Encouragement Third Day - Offerings