Giving From God's Abundance

Recently, while reading through Deuteronomy 16, I discovered some fresh Truths regarding giving. Specifically, God's loving design for giving from His abundance...

Giving from God's Abundance - God Loves a Cheerful Giver

Every man shall give as He is able 

according to the blessing of the Lord your God 

that He has given you.

Deuteronomy 16:15

As you read through Deuteronomy 16, you will find the ordinances concerning the Passover meal, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths.  With each command concerning these observances, the Lord built in a remembrance.  The time of the passover supper, sunset, was to serve as a reminder that they came out of Egypt at sunset.  The Feast of Weeks was to serve as a reminder that the Israelites were once slaves in Egypt and to be careful to observe God's statutes.  The Feast of Booths was set aside by the Lord for the Israelites to rejoice and be "altogether joyful" in the produce that the Lord had blessed them with.

Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles. No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed:  Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the Lord your God has blessed you.

Deuteronomy 16:16-17

This wasn't the first time in Deuteronomy that rejoicing and sacrificial giving are mentioned in the same breath.  In fact, it seems to be a continual theme - and one that it is reiterated in the New Testament.

For God loves a cheerful giver

2 Corinthians 9:7b

When we cheerfully give, we are finding our enjoyment in the Lord.  When we rejoice, we are expressing joy from within.  We are happy in our giving because God is at the center of it.

That which we sacrifice comes from the Lord.  He provides all that we have to sacrifice - not only in a physical sense monetarily or through items that we have, but also at a heart level through our time, spiritual gifts and service.

I want to camp for a few moments on the following verse from Deuteronomy 16:15...

For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

The Miriam Webster definition of sacrifice is...

: an act of offering to a deity something precious
especially : the killing of a victim on an altar
2 : something offered in sacrifice
3a : destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else
b : something given up or lost {the sacrifices made by parents}

I don't know about you, but this definition doesn't seem to invoke any feelings of joy.  In fact, taken at face value, this definition conjures up feelings of pain and loss.

Yet the Lord states that we WILL BE altogether joyful when we partake OF the sacrifice.  I will be expanding more upon "partaking of the sacrifice" next week in my post, Eat Your Tithe - Say what??

Giving From God's Abundance - The Pain of Sacrifice which Leads to Joy

For today's blog post, I want to focus more on the pain of the sacrifice which leads to joy.

No One knows more about pain in sacrificial giving than our God and Father.  He sacrificed His one and only Son, so that we who were dead in our trespasses could be alive in Christ Jesus who took the punishment for our sins on the cross at Calvary.

The Lord did that for US!  Let that sink in.

And not only that!  ANYTHING that He asks us to sacrifice, He has given us!  All that we have is basically on loan to us from the Lord.  Although it may feel like it is ours and the pain of sacrificing whatever it might be seems more than we could bear or sometimes sadly, more than we are willing to give, ultimately, ALL that we have is the Lords!

In light of His great eternal sacrifice for us, it seems selfish to hold on so tightly to that which actually already belongs to Him.

And then there are those things, that even in our sinful flesh, we easily sacrifice... that which we do for our children. (I thought it was interesting that the Miriam Webster definition of sacrifice gave the example of "sacrifices made by parents". ) 

Now I realize that sadly there are selfish parents out there who don't sacrifice for their children and my hearts grieve for those kids, but for the most part, I believe that parents are self-sacrificing when it comes to their children.  The dad who gets up at 4 a.m. to bring his son to the ice rink to practice for ice hockey or the single mom who works two jobs so that her child can go to college or the mom who homeschools, sacrificing much of her time, just to name a few.  And then there are those parents who are called to make bigger sacrifices.  The ones who send an adult child into the armed services to serve their country, many times in harms way or the parents who send a child off to the mission field.  I'm sure in both cases their hearts are so heavy to let them go, but they do so joyfully, knowing that their child is serving their country and/or serving the Lord.

Whatever the Lord calls us to sacrifice, in His love and mercy, He has also allowed us to enjoy it.  When we give the gift back to Him, we are expressing our gratitude through the letting go and acknowledging Him in recounting the gift that He blessed us with in the first place.  As a result, we will find that we can rejoice as we let go.  In so doing, we will see that the pain of sacrifice has indeed led to joy.

For similar posts, please click on the following:

Eat Your Tithe. Say What??

May we all give from God's Abundance and be altogether joyful. 

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