Giving Challenged

 

 

I scored low on giving. 

If you have ever taken those spiritual gifts tests; giving is considered a gift.  My high marks were encouragement, mercy and teaching.

I’ve carried that thought of ranking low on giving for a while.  Or more truthfully; carried the shame. 

Great gift ideas don’t come naturally to me.  I watch other people in amazement with the ability to give great gifts.  For Christmas, my daughter’s boyfriend gave me fancy chocolates and a special bottle of wine, the same kind they celebrated with on their one year dating anniversary. 

I gave him some birch bark stuffed inside a Mason jar. 

It was my idea of the beauty of nature that I made into a pencil holder because he likes to write.  The poor guy.  He unscrewed the lid to see what was inside.  The least I could have done was to think to put some pens in it.  Nope.  Ugh.

This subject of giving was not even my idea to write about.  I wait on the LORD when it comes to what to write.  This was the subject matter and I have sat with it for a few weeks.  I have other ideas stacked up, but until I got this one out, they had to wait.

Timing on this particular subject of giving has been one of the latest things I have had to live and learn in.  It’s a new place.  Recently I was invited to come and teach at a Women’s Conference in Durham, England along with my husband who was asked to share his testimony.  We don’t have the funds for this trip that is supposed to happen in May. 

Enter new territory.

We have had to ask others if they would want to partner by giving to a fund to help make this happen.  I have never had to ask for this kind of help.

Asking others to give.

It was backwards to me and it is embarrassing.  Having to ask others if they would be interested to give is a definite pride breaker for me.  There were days in the past when we could have done this financially ourselves.  Now we are being asked to do this when we financially can’t.  Yet, we reach out in faith to ask, burying what people may think of us to do what we know is something that could bless others and grow faith; teaching others the heart of their LORD.

As I looked into the subject of giving, we received our first donation.  On the check was a little post-it- note. 

“Love you! Happy to help!”

The heart of the giving jumped out at me.

 2 Corinthians 9:7  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

They were cheerful givers.  I wasn’t expecting this.  I was feeling like a burden.

They saw a way to help.

A way that they could.

 

I wrestled with the idea of giving and had this boxed and locked up idea that giving was financial.  Because finances weren’t there in us, my sense of joys in giving were tainted with shame and lack and embarrassment.

I began to see things differently. 

Our spiritual gifts are for the giving. 

Encouragement, mercy and teaching is what I wanted to give.  I love to give like that and I do it without thinking of it as giving.  It is merely thinking of another and being happy to help in a way that I am able.  It comes from a place of love.

All that we have is first from the LORD.  It’s what we do with what He has given us that matters. 

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change

Seeing all of the Spiritual Gifts and the ways people use them are places for giving.

I began to see what I had to give and not what I didn’t have.

We give in ways we don’t even think of; our attention, our time, our words, and more.  Even touch is a form of giving from a neck rub, to a gentle stroke to a pet.  We use our strengths in even little things like screwing a jar lid off for another to the greatest gift of giving birth.  Giving is doing something good with someone else in mind instead of oneself.

Grand Daddy Giver:  For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son…

For-Giveness 

Forgiving another is a giving like no other. 

Forgiving restores relationships, washes away pasts, frees from burdens and shame and puts faith and hope into a new day as the opened door pours out love and life.

…so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.

Even when you may think you have nothing to give, you still do.  I visited one of our family friends.  She had prayed for me often through my childhood and on.  She was near the end of her fight against cancer.  I went to visit her with my mom and our son who was quite young at the time. 

My son became restless and I knew I would need to leave.  Before leaving, I asked her if I could pray for her.  She was unable to speak and she nodded her head.  I placed my hand on hers and my little boy put his hand on her, too.  As I prayed out loud for her I had a strong sensation.  I finished and said, “Amen.”  Then I said to her, “You were praying for me just then, weren’t you?”  She nodded her head, yes. 

From her bed, unable to even speak, having nothing; she gave.  She gave to me during my prayer.  She prayed for me.  We can always pray for another for as long as we have breath in our bodies and our minds are able to carry thought.  Her prayer in her last days was a gift like few others.

We have much to give because we have been given much.  May you know the cheerful places of thinking of others from a place of love for their good and your joy.   

Give outside the box. 

From the book “Come Away my Beloved- Devotional” by Frances J. Roberts

Mercy is the extension of My grace.  Whenever you show mercy to another, you express My love.  I rejoice in forgiveness.  I do not give grudgingly.  You have been told to give cheerfully of your substance; now I say unto you, do the same in the Spirit.