After church, Debby waited in her car for her daughter, Jeannie, to get back from Sunday school. Debby’s mind was occupied with her financial problems. Debt she was facing had made her reach a point of desperation.
When Jeannie returned, she got into the car and told her mother that she had learned a new song about “a cross-eyed bear named Gladly”. It took Debby a while before she realised that the hymn was really “Gladly The Cross I’d Bear.”
This little incident made Debby almost forget her problems but her mind soon returned to the words of the preacher echoing through her mind. He said that when we sow money as seed, we would receive money back from God.
Really?!
I often tune in to Christian television stations and hear how people’s money problems get solved after they have sown money to churches or organisations. The ‘testimony’ is often followed immediately by a request to sow money into the particular ministry.
I have heard of many people who sowed money and who were indeed blessed after that. I have also heard of many people who sowed and, like Debby above, are still waiting for something to be sown back to them. What should we do then?
The truth is that God is indeed a Giver and He gives to everyone who has the same attitude. It is wrong however, to give with the expectancy to receive something back simply because we gave, almost as if we are handing God an invoice for what we have sown.
I speak of experience. I sacrificed something to God many years ago and expected God to reward me. When it did not happen the way I expected it to, I complained to God for receiving nothing in return.
God answered me in the following way: “Son, when you were born I saw you struggling in your blood to survive. I said, ‘live’, and here you are.” (Serious complications during my birth almost caused me to die). “I have blessed you every day of your life since. I gave My Son Jesus to everyone who accepts Him as Saviour, and that includes you. You are not in debt to Me because of this. I do what I have promised by staying with you and I have never forsaken you for one second. Everything I gave, I did so freely. I never told you that you are in debt to Me and yet, here you are, giving Me an invoice for the money you sowed! I owe you nothing, My child. What you sowed, did produce a harvest in other people’s lives. You would not want to change that by claiming their harvest for yourself, would you?”
I asked God to forgive me and He tore my invoice to pieces and it gave me a freedom that I never had before. The freedom to realise that we live dead centre in the grace of God.