The Things We Give to God

Do you ever think about what you give to God?

This morning, very early as I was just waking up with the sheet and the blanket pulled up around my neck in the cool bedroom, I raised one hand up and gave God a wave and a smile and a greeting, “Good morning, Father, I love You,” I whispered.

As with any action or behavior, this one was born out of some things I’d been thinking in my mind.  Since Wednesday of this past week, I’ve been mulling over something Beth Moore said in our video Bible study that wasn’t even something that made a great impact on me at the time.

It was just a fleeting, brief thing I heard in passing, so to speak, as I was making notes on the lesson details that were making a great impact on me, as a woman, because they are basic life issues:  joy and anguish, set in the context of Scripture references to birth, and specifically connected to childbirth. 

Beth was painting some beautiful, large strokes with the Scripture brush she was using to help us see that joy can be birthed from anguish and through anguish, and that joy and anguish can co-exist.  I hope, if you have opportunity, you will be sure to get into her study on the Book of James:  Mercy Triumphs.

I’ve thought a lot about the things I learned on Wednesday, and the small thing that stuck in my mind was so vague, so brief, so fleeting that it was almost a concept, not even formed yet into words strung together to make a real thought.

It was overshadowed in my thoughts for a particular reason:  she mentioned it in talking about her grandchildren and how she fell completely in love with each one upon hearing of their impending arrivals.

Because I could totally relate to that, my mind had its own rush of memories of having had that same experience on two separate occasions ( I have only two grandchildren to date), and I promptly fell in love with them and began daydreaming about them long before their birth-dates.

Needless to say, the love became like a living thing from the moment I saw them and will continue to grow, until the day somewhere in the future when my physical life gives way to my fully spiritual life, and only God knows then how love will be when we reach heaven and eternity.

I fully expect to continue to love my loved ones forever and ever.

In speaking of her relationship with her grandchildren and their obvious desire and delight to be with her, Beth mentioned the small thing, and it lodged in my mind and got covered over with a hundred other thoughts, but it prompted me to write in my notes that day:

“What does our joy in and toward God make God feel?  Consider the process of falling in love with our grandbabies; consider my own story.”

My own story is that I have had so much fun with my grandbabies from day one!  I have a million stories to tell of the cute things they did and said, not to mention the utterly profound things they’ve said as children that was almost too deep for an adult, much less children!

The Scripture says, “out of the mouths of babes…”

Seriously, my grandchildren have said things that affect me deeply because they were, and are, so foundationally true in life, both physical and spiritual.  I hope to share more about some of those things later.

But, my heart-thread thought today is to look deeply at the things I give to God, and how that makes Him feel.  He loves me because He is God and He loves, so nothing I can give Him will make Him love me more.   

Much like me and my grandbabies and the delight they gave to me in the forms of a picked flower, a pretty rock, a hug, and so on;  no matter what they gave me, I loved them with all of my heart.

One of the things they gave me that I treasure to this day,  was the opportunity to grab my Bible and head outside to the swing to read Bible stories and talk and laugh and swing together.  My granddaughter, in particular, had a love for the stories of Jesus and the people in the Bible.   What joy!

What joy do I give to my heavenly Father as I get out of bed every morning?   The joy of seeing me reach for His word with absolute delight and anticipation of what He will say to me today?

The joy of hearing my prayers of praise for the greatness and the grandness of Who He is and the forgiveness of all my sin and the resulting salvation He has given?

The joy of seeing me pause throughout my day, while in a particularly difficult set of circumstances, to remind Him (and me) that I am depending on His goodness and kindness and faithfulness to see me through each one?

The joy of seeing me in attendance in His house of worship each and every Sunday, wearing a full-faced smile as I greet His other children?

The joy of seeing me return good for evil to others who’ve hurt me or offended me or behaved irresponsibly (in my own opinion!) ?

The joy of seeing me embrace His Son as my Savior who saved me once and forgives me daily as  I ask?

The joy of seeing me as I listen attentively to His Holy Spirit as my comforter, counselor, constant companion, and guide into all truth?

The joy of seeing me studying His Word, The Holy Bible, really studying it and not just giving it a quick and brief reading, or neglecting to open it at all for days on end?

How do I spend my time, my energy, my money?  I use the word “my” very loosely for there is nothing I can give to God that He didn’t give it first to me and all I can do is return a good investment on what He has so abundantly provided to and for me.

How about you?  What do you consistently give to God?

I turn from my examination to what I give to God to the question of what I give to Him that I can stop giving to Him.

I can stop complaining and grumbling about every little thing, I can stop giving Him disrespect and stop wasting all the good gifts He has given to me. 

I can daily show Him my love and respect and appreciation and worship of Him through my actions and behavior in my personal and quiet alone time, my actions toward my family, my friends, my neighbors, and those whom I meet in the daily routine of life.

I can behave as the ambassador of Christ that I truly am because I have repented of my sin, received God’s forgiveness through His Son and my Savior and daily surrender control of my life to God through Jesus by the help of His Holy Spirit, and live to point others to God in Jesus Christ. 

In God’s Word, Jesus said:

 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 

Already you are clean because of the Word that I have spoken to you.

Abide in Me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

 I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. 

If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples.  As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.  Abide in My love.  If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.  These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is My commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down His life for His friends.  You are My friends if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give it to you.  These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”

                                                                                             ---John 15:1 -17 (ESV)

O Father,

You give joy!   Help us to give You joy because our whole hearts delight in You!

Thank You so much for all of the great and good gifts that You bestow on us.

We give You praise!  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Happiness, Holiness, and Chocolate

 

“Are you happy now?!”

What comes to your mind when you hear or read that question?

Many times I remember a story from one of my grandchildren’s visits to the other grandmother’s house years ago.  While I have forgotten the details of this particular story, I always recall with a grin the word-induced picture  my mind draws of what it must have looked like when my then-three-or-four year old grandson asked the kitty cat that question.

Seems that some kind of struggle was playing itself out when he picked up the kitty by the scruff of the neck, and placing his sweet face near the cat’s face and looking with his beautiful blue eyes solidly locked on the cat’s green eyes, asked with some force:  “Are you happy now?!?”

Which of us have not been caught in a life-struggle of some stripe when we haven’t thought the question, even if we did not voice it out loud?

What would it mean to be truly “happy” in this life?  What would be required for me to be ‘happy,’ I wonder to myself this morning.  How important is “happy” anyway?

My devotional from Our Daily Bread for today, written by Julie Ackerman Link, carries two questions:  “Are parents trying too hard to make their kids happy?” “And is that having the opposite effect?”

 This was in connection with an article  written by Lorri Gottlieb on “the subject of unhappy young adults.”  The author’s conclusion was “Yes” to both questions.

The idea in the devotional is that the “easy life”  (absent of trials and difficulties and failure of any kind) would make any one truly happy is based on the mistaken belief that God, “the Lord will be the kind of parent who protects them from all sorrow and disappointment.” 

When folks find out that is not the case, they may become disappointed with the Lord our God, though a faithful reading of His word reveals that He never promised an ‘easy’ life.  “He lovingly allows His children to go through suffering (Isa. 43:2; 1 Thess. 3:3).”

Ms. Link writes, “God’s goal is to make us holy, not just happy (1 Thess. 3:13).  And when we are holy, we are more likely to be truly happy and content.”

The focus for me today is that “mistaken beliefs” give all of us (children and adults, alike) “a false view of the world.”  And, when we base our life on any belief system not founded and grounded in God’s Holy Word, the Bible, we are in for some serious and very faulty views about life.

We might even miss the real truth that being “happy” is not the most important part of life, and that the truth about being happy is that it isn’t nearly as important as being “holy.”

And, while the Bible has a lot to say about happiness and holiness, it teaches that “without holiness no one will see God” (See Hebrews 12:14 NKJV.)

Ms. Link’s devotional ends with this poem:

“Must I be carried to the skies

On flowery beds of ease,

While others fought to win the prize,

And sailed through bloody seas?” – Watts.

And with this phrase:  “A contented person has learned to accept the bitter with the sweet.”

 Reminds me that I battle the desired preference of always the sweet, never the bitter, please!

 I so love milk chocolate and can stand only a bite or two of deep, dark, pure bittersweet chocolate.  And, then only when paired with sweet tea or smooth and sweet chocolate coffee!

It’s the same with my preferences for life:  no tangled webs of difficulty, please!  Only the smooth, high road for me, my Father.  I am delicate, You know, and love to live in comfort and convenience.  I say this lightly, and only with half-truth, for I do prefer that, but know that is in stark opposition to what the Lord God calls forth from His children.

Which always reminds me of Dr. Charles Stanley’s faithful admonition that the Christian life can only be lived out in and by God’s biblical principles, not our lives’ preferences.

May God continue to hold us up by His faithfulness and fill our hearts with love for Him and for each other.