True giving

DEVOTION

2 CORINTHIANS

TRUE GIVING

2 Cor 9:1-5

9:1 There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the saints. 2 For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action. 3 But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow, but that you may be ready, as I said you would be. 4 For if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we — not to say anything about you — would be ashamed of having been so confident. 5 So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised. Then it will be ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given.

NIV

We are still talking about this gift from those in Corinth to others somewhere else. It appears Paul may not be as confident in their generosity as he keeps telling them he is or he wouldn’t have spent so much time on this issue. Perhaps that is why so many pastors spend so much time preaching about tithing. Of course tithing has nothing to do with this kind of giving although it would seem this giving still requires a great deal organization. It would seem this just isn’t a move of the Spirit on an individual’s life to give to someone in need. It appears this has to be a concerted effect on behalf of the whole assembly to collect a united gift that will be sent on its way, even to those who are not personally known to the givers. Could this be the basis for the modern church missions programs? It seems everyone needs to be a apart of this giving, as we saw, each according to what he has, not to what he doesn’t have. But we should all be giving something, up and beyond what we pay to run our church. Of course in those days the people did not pay to run their churches. There was no salaried pastor or in some cases pastors, along with a paid support staff of secretaries, multimedia people, and such. They did not have a big building in need of a paid janitorial staff. They did not have large campus areas which required garden equipment, like mowers, or snow removal in the winter for us up North. They did not have to be concerned about the utility bills, the mortgage, and other expenses for the building. All they needed to do was to gather a gift to send off to others in need. How confused we have become about how God desires us to live. We gather ourselves together and pay out large amounts of money to be gathered together, when in fact we are not actually together at all, but just physically being in the same building, while others are struggling to just get by. But we still set aside a small portion of our church budget to missions so we can feel good about ourselves. Is this really the way God intended it to be? Is this true giving?