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A Cheerful Giver

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich."
2 Corinthians 8:9
(NJKV)

I went to church at Trinity Lutheran in Waukesha, WI this past Sunday. The minister had a wonderful sermon about not only being generous in our offerings but also being "cheerful" in our generosity. I know, sometimes the church really hammers home how important it is to the budget that we keep giving more and more. But not that day. That day he was expressing to us how important it was for us to give cheerfully and give out of thanks to God.

He says it was a "privilege" for us to give. Now how is that possible? Well, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a "payment" for our sins. He loved us that much, He wanted to do that. He showers us with His grace and mercy every day and we--as His children--are getting all fustrated and repulsed at the church because we feel we are giving too much of "our" money away already!

A statistic showed out of so many churches, the people who gave the most either made more than $100,000 a year or made less than $20,000 a year. That shocked me. Because middle class is right in between there. What's going on? Have we really been thanking God as much as we could? Has our society become lovers of money and putting that before Christ? You might say "No!" "Of course not!" "I just put an extra $20 in the plate last week"... Yeah, but were you really happy about it?

Look at it from a different perspective: Look at the price God paid for us... Isn't it only fair that we thank Him for paying that ransom by "paying Him back" with acts of thanks? Shouldn't we joyously want to give back as much as possible as a way of saying "thank you" for loving us that much? Shouldn't we be ever so cheerful to give and then want to keep on giving because that's how Christ was when He was on this earth? He was always giving, always helping, always trying to teach us to give more than receive.

Whether you give $1 every Sunday or $1000 or anywhere in between, do it out of joy and thankfulness to God. Do it because God loved us that much He paid the ultimate price with His Son and that my friends is priceless.

I pray you all have a blessed day. Until next time, may God teach you to be "A Cheerful Giver". Amen.

God Bless,
Tiffany Rae