Why Give? ...and How to Receive

While we were at a weekend retreat focused on preparing for missions, the Lord really opened up our eyes to more of a biblical view on giving. For some reason we had a very horizontal view on giving – not the correct, vertical view.

Let us start off by clarifying that all we have is the Lord's: our money, possessions, gifts and abilities, passions, desires, etc. And the more we live with that mindset, the more free our lives will be. When we hold all of ourselves in an open palm up to the Lord saying, "All of this is yours Father, do with it what you will," then the anxieties and worries of the day seem to fade away.

When we look over our finances we like to come at it with the thought of, "How much of Your money are we going to use this month on ourselves?" Now to get back to our initial mindset. Our initial view of support was that people were giving to us. In reality, what happens is that we give to the Lord, and then He, in turn, turns around and uses that to build His Kingdom on Earth. In this case you would give to the Father, and He would then bless us with those gifts.

It's common to hear of the giver giving for wrong motives, but as receivers we need to have the right heart about the other side of it, as well. The giving and receiving is vertical not horizontal.