Acceptable Gifts

Our church is kicking off a new sermon series on giving. Eric and I heard this series the very first time we attended Liberty Church. To be honest, it's the reason we ended up there! How many churches can say they had an increase in membership following their yearly sermons on giving?

I have been thinkin' on this week's challenging message. The speaker spoke of Cain and Able...how God found Cain's gift was "unacceptable"... and he noted that God seems to have some type of system for evaluating our gift-giving. They we looked at several verses of Scripture in the New Testament for clues as to what is really an "acceptable" gift in God's eyes. Through Scripture, we determined we are to give out of what we have.

Well, it's easy to try to quickly calculate "what we have" in our American-financial ways of handling this whole giving scenario... but when entering even our incomes here, we'll find that just about every one of us is in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. In essence, we have much...

He went on to discuss that our bounty of blessing extends far past the financial realm (and, by the way, he also indicated the whole 10% as an offering was merely a starting point for giving...and if you research the Bible, you'll find early day believers gave multiple 10%s to God)...
The speaker said he had been watching his child play during a sporting event when he got that moment... If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. Where time seems to slow and you're staring at your child and linger on what an unbelievable blessing that child is in your life... and stand amazed that God has chosen to bless you in such a way... The he said something like this:

Have you given an acceptable gift back to the Lord out of that abundant blessing?

That one caused my heart to skip a beat... How do I even begin to give back to Him for such an outpouring? And then my mind began to go over the endless list of abundance that God has poured over my life... and somehow, I know that there are plenty of areas of my life where I'm not giving an acceptable gift....

He also mentioned several other great points about Cain's warning to take care of the sin crouching at his door before it masters him... am I mastered by greed and selfish thinking because I have neglected this crouching sin at my own door? We look at Cain's sin of slaying his brother Able, but I'm not so certain I haven't done the same thing.

Good stuff. Challenging stuff... You really ought to check it out for yourselves and let the Holy Spirit work in your heart as you listen to the message...It's an incredible series... I'm ever challenged by it. I pray this year I grow in Him and offer Him my first-fruits of time spent with Him, instead of my crumbs... I pray I offer Him my best...and that He would find my gifts pleasing because I'm gaining even clearer vision of the heaping hill of blessings over my life... and I pray I give gifts that are acceptable - out of what I have... RICH blessing.