Category: Better Together

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 6:5-13 (day five)

This short passage in Matthew acts as an invitation. An invitation from Jesus to move from the shallows into the great depth of life in the Spirit. As Jesus is describing how His people should pray, he invites them into a secret place. A place that you enter knowing you’re walking on holy ground, where you shut the door, and you commune with the eternal, majestic, loving God of all creation. There’s a sense of wonder in that secret place, where the noise of the rest of the world is silenced and we get to hear from One who loves us. We get to lay out our burdens and watch as He takes each one of them from us. We get to hear the vision of the life that He has for us. Our disillusionment with the world turns into amazement of how the Spirit is bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

If you want to journey into the depths of the life God has for you, start in that secret place. Start with this prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray. As you continue to pray faithfully in this way, you’ll find splendor in that secret place.

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 6:5-13 (day four)

The word ‘hallowed’ is not a word we use very often.  The dictionary definition for it is “holy and consecrated’.  When Jesus gave us instructions on how to pray, this is the first phrase of His example.  Hallowed gives us insight into the character of God.  When we understand that the very nature of God is holiness and how wide-reaching this description truly is, all the rest of this “Lord’s Prayer” makes sense.

The infinite holiness of God is really beyond our full comprehension.  Our finite minds cannot take in all the aspects of infinity.  Stop and reflect on how an understanding of God’s character can impact what we do as a church.  We are Better Together, and when we portray an accurate picture of God to the world around us, He is glorified.  A unified picture is multiplied when we walk together, serving our hallowed God.  How will serving a holy God impact a lost world?

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 6:5-13 (day three)

“They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men.”

Jesus had witnessed the Pharisees’ public theological oratory and prayers. It didn’t do anything for him. Reaching for a way to describe what he saw as spiritual theater, Jesus came up with “actor,” which is what “hypocrite” originally referred to in the ancient world. “What you see there are Academy award-winning performances,” Jesus might as well have said, “but it certainly isn’t true intimacy with God.” Jesus knew that people have pretty good phoniness detectors. They likely already knew that what they saw was often hogwash. But hey, what’re you gonna do? Jesus’s revolutionary teaching declared that they could find God without these thespians. He showed the way to raw, risky, and real life with God through genuine prayer.

Re:Verse passage – Matthew 6:5-13 (day two)

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. vs. 6

This verse speaks of the intimacy of prayer. Oftentimes we think of the public, corporate prayers that accompany worship services. But Jesus is speaking about our one on one time with the Lord. It is an opportunity to confess those sins that no one is aware of except God. Our language and posture change when we know that no one else is listening. The words we use may lack varnish, but they tend to be more sincere. When we are alone to confess those times where we have grieved the Lord, it is not a time to show your command of language, it is a time to be honest. We need to spend more time in private confession and see how it impacts every other conversation and public prayer.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day seven)

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed; vs 8

God never gives us anything out of grudging obligation. He always happily and graciously gives out of His love for us. He always provides when we need it. He is always there when we need Him. Yet, it seems that when we return the gift it is out of grudging obligation. We count to the exact percentile of 1/10th of our paycheck. We hold money back when we see a rainy day coming. We let our circumstances dictate our giving. What would it look like for us to give to God as He gives to us? It begins in the heart. Money has a hold on our heart stronger than almost anything in this world, but when we trust God over money, our giving will no longer be out of grudging obligation but out of love.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day six)

There is no way around this, the kingdom minded person is a generous giver. They are giving because there is always a good kingdom return on their investment; it bears lots of fruit, and that makes them glad. And by giving I mean money. That’s what Paul means when writing to the Corinthian church.

Our church family doesn’t beat the national average, roughly 20 percent of our church family has a rhythm of giving a tithe (the Old Testament command to give 10 percent of your first fruits to the temple). So out of, say, 500 possible unique givers at FBCSA, only 100 actually give regularly. Consider the harvest of those 100 faithful, cheerful givers: a dedicated and gifted ministerial staff, beautiful new and historic facilities, planted churches, ongoing ministry and missions, mobilizing thousands to the international mission field, supporting career missionaries through cooperative giving, supplying resources to the poor in our city, beautiful creative arts-the harvest is plentiful! BUT imagine if 50 percent gave cheerfully and expectantly, rather than just 20. 70 percent?

What if generous givers (not defined by quantity, but the quality of the giving) weren’t the minority in our church family? What if we transcended the national average? What if we all really believed Jesus when his said, “It is more blessed to give, than to receive.” Can you imagine the harvest of that kind of generosity?

Maybe that is why so many of us struggle with giving generously. We rarely connect our giving to the harvest. We disconnect the giving from the yield. So we either give because that is what we just do, or we don’t at all. Paul says, “be a giver, and watch what God will do with your generosity.”

Do you believe Jesus and Paul? Out of what he has given you, do you give cheerfully and consistently? Is there a rhythm of Gospel generosity in your life?

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day five)

Last week, we read about the early church and how they lived in community with one another. That blissful picture of the church devoting themselves to fellowship and meeting each other’s needs almost sounds like a utopian society, out of reach to us. But I think our passage this week sheds light on how they managed to live together in this way. They were generous.

This image Paul paints of sowing and reaping shows us that generosity is meant to be proactive, not reactive. Planting a seed is a proactive act, you sow the seed in faith that it will grow into a harvest. The same is true with generosity, we proactively sow generously into our relationships, and we have faith that God will turn that into abundant, life-giving community.

Paul is talking about finances here, and we certainly must be proactive in giving financially, but the rule also applies to our relationships.
We can sow generously into a relationship by giving that person our time, our attention, our prayers, giving encouraging words, and sharing our lives in a way that might feel vulnerable. If we want the kind of life-giving fellowship, unity, and joy that we see in the early church, we have to be proactive and sow generously into our relationships, knowing that God is faithful to turn that into a plentiful harvest, just like He did in the early church.

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day four)

These verses are a favorite proof-text for health and wealth preachers.  “If you give abundantly to our church, God will give abundantly to you!”  Wrong.  It is as if God is obligated to give you a lot if you give the church a lot.  The only ones who get wealthy with this kind of theology is the preacher giving the message!

God wants us to be generous and cheerful givers.  Notice in verse 10, God gives on both sides of the equation.   God supplies the seed and then, when we sow it, He brings a bountiful harvest.  From God’s supply, others are blessed.  It is never about personal enrichment, it is about producing thanksgiving to God.  For God, it is always about the heart…what is the motivation of the heart?  Ananias and Sapphira gave a nice gift to the church, but out of a deceitful heart.  (Acts 5)  Give out of a grateful heart of thanksgiving!

Re:Verse passage – 2 Corinthians 9:6-12 (day three)

“Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion.”

Tugging at heart strings, appealing to feelings of guilt, and priority-shaming have all served as tools for attempting to bend the will of people toward open-handedness. Sometimes it works. Coercion of any kind, though – even “benign” – will result only in short-term gain, not long-term transformation. Nobody says, “that time I gave more money to the church in order to feel better about my extravagant vacation has made me a person of joyful generosity.” Instead, straightforward and transparent statements of need, reports of gratitude, and questions that ask directly, “What are you willing to do with your treasure?” will place the church in unity with Paul’s declaration that all the forcefulness we can muster is no match for the whisper of the Holy Spirit.