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Responses (sorted by date)
adriennelynne: forgiven :) (11/10/06)
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The Liar lies to me alot. He always uses Scripture and borrows voices of people I love and whose love is evident in my life. Last night he hit me hard and I am still reeling. For a long time I have believed, because my parents told me so, that to give money to God in a public way was sinful. It was 'showing off' and God was not pleased with that. They encouraged me to give quietly and in a way that did not draw attention to the giver, but to the generosity of God, the ultimate Giver. Whenever someone gave in a way that drew attention to their generosity, Satan would tell me using my parent's voices that 'they have gotten their reward: the applause of people'.
Being generous is where I find the most pleasure in serving God. I love to give away what I have been given. I like doing it in secret, It is fun when people can only say, "An amazing thing happened! We were going to have our electritity turned off and suddenly the entire bill was paid in full..." and only God and I know it was because I was willing to go down to TEP and pay the bill. It brings me great joy to cook for the Village or spring for pizza or find small, secret ways to give to others. I like hearing about needs and then thinking of ways to creatively meet them. And I am often embarrassed and ashamed when that gets exposed.
Satan is always yelling and drowning out God's whisper. He says I just do it for show and that exposes my false heart. He says I am not generous, but that I am just trying to draw attention to myself. He says that I am arrogant and not humble. And, of course, there is arrogance wrapped up in my mixed bag of motives, so I have believed that Satan knows me best. That he is right and that my giving is fraudulent and not acceptable to God. So when I spend a morning cooking for the guys at Teen Challenge or some other fun thing, I hear Satan saying, "You just do it for the applause." and that successfully removes the joy and pleasure of taking good things and giving them away and thus trusting God with the money and stuff he has given me.
Several people asked me last night after the service if I wanted the money back. Frankly, I was stunned by the question. I couldn't imagine asking for it back. As a matter of fact, God played a cool trick on me. I had carefully gone to the bank and determined how much I was willing to give away and I made sure I got a roll of quarters and forty one dollar bills as well as a few fives and tens and a twenty. Then Sunday night, in order to be 'fair' to the row I missed, I had to pull out my wallet and give the people on that row cash I had intended to use for other things. And, of course, I only had larger bills left in my wallet. So I found that God was asking more of me than I thought I would be giving. I remember laughing to myself and thinking, "God, this is so like you! Making me give away forty more dollars then I had intended."
By the way, I looked through the mail from Saturday when I got home last night. An envelope regarding an insurance settlement was included in the pile of mail. In it was a check. The check was for $42.07. It was given to us because the insurance company had made a mistake a year ago when calculating what we were owed. We would never have known we were owed the money. Funny that I opened it last night.
I prayed alot last night. I prayed about my shame over doing good things like being generous. God said to repent and turn to him. To trust that he loves me enough to point out to me when I am being arrogant and when I am just giving 'for show'. He told me he takes great pleasure in my generosity. It makes him sing.
So here's the deal. God is generous to me. I am generous to others. I have learned and am learning to feel the pleasure of my Father when I give away what I cannot keep. I urge you also to find ways to be generous, so that you too can feel the pleasure and delight God takes in his kids when they take their stuff and share it with others. I am hereby renouncing Satan and his lies. And I choose to believe that this very public blog is intended to show the glory of God played out in the life of a generous man. Besides, it is part of my repentance. It is part of my new found belief that God loves both public and private generosity and that he does not write off whatever I give that is 'found out' by people. Please pray that Satan will shut up.
Aaargh, it is hard to hit the Upload button...
Rod |
