Giving cheerfully

God loves a cheerful giver (2nd Corinthians 9:7).

Two members of the same congregation left church together one Sunday morning. As they crossed the street, one of them began to complain bitterly. “Well, we heard it again this morning. We’re supposed to give willingly, give regularly, give generously. Give, give, give! When are all these appeals for money going to stop?”

His friend turned to him and said, “Bill, you remember my son Jim, don’t you? When Jim came into the world, he cost me quite a tidy sum. I had to pay for the doctor bill and the hospital charges, buy a crib and car seat, and so on. In addition, money had to be spent on medicine, food, clothing, and other such items. As Jim began to grow up, expenses increased. When he started school, we spent money on transportation, books, and fundraisers. In due time we were told that he should have braces on his teeth—that was quite an expenditure, I assure you! He entered high school, and now we had the expenses of uniforms and a car for him to drive. And then he went away to college—you can imagine what that cost!

“Well, as you may remember, just a few weeks before he was to graduate, Jim became critically ill. We paid for every test and procedure that was available, but the good Lord was pleased to call Jim home to heaven. Bill, since we buried our boy, he hasn’t cost us a single additional cent—no, not one cent!”

It is a bit of a truism that “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.” Jesus promised that His church would survive every hardship that Satan could throw against it—the holy Christian Church will still be offering shelter to the hopeless and the despairing right up to the day that Jesus returns in glory. But no individual congregation is promised to exist that long; all across America there are empty church buildings that were closed because their congregations could not afford to keep them in operation.

God loves a cheerful giver. In a sense, your giving to the support of Christ’s work in a local congregation or in foreign missions is a measure of the joy that you have in your heart over being a Christian. How much do you appreciate hearing the Word of God, in church or on the radio or TV? How much do you appreciate having a member of the clergy to talk to when tragedy darkens your life? How much do you appreciate having a church to go to for baptisms, weddings, and funerals? Do you appreciate God’s work in your life enough to cheerfully support it? Please join me in praying:

Lord Jesus, we thank You for Your gifts won for us by Your death on the cross—release from guilt, reconciliation with God, and the promise of everlasting life beyond the grave. We thank You for placing so many Christians churches in the world from whom we are privileged to receive this Good News. Help us to never take Your churches for granted, and give us the desire to support them so that they will always be a part of our lives. Amen.