Sometimes, God keeps
quiet. But today, it just wasn't the 'sometime'. In fact, He was extremely
vocal.
It started off right
at the beginning, during pre-service prayer. We read about the five loaves and
two fishes in the book of John. Always I see this scripture from God's point of
view, seeing how great Jesus is when we entrust him with the little that we
have. But today, it spoke to me very differently. The boy gave Jesus ALL that
he had. It's like the case of the poor widow with two copper coins. The
disciples knew that they didn’t have enough, which was why they chose not to
give. But the boy had little, yet chose to entrust ALL that he had to God. It
just made me reflect on my life, how much of my resources have I entrusted God
with?
While praying, I was
thinking of the calculative mindset I always have. Me being Asian, I tend to
calculate how much more I need to save up for my own needs and not responding
to the spirit when I need to. This is how much I get a month, and I will have to
take away my rent, my bills and whatnot, and I will have...uhh just this much
left for you, God. A sudden feeling of shame came over me. There's just so much
more that I can do.
A figure popped in
my head out of the blue halfway through the sermon. It felt like God was
telling me to pledge that much for the church building fund. 'God are you
crazy?!' was my immediate response. That's double of what I gave last year, and
more than half of my allowance. But but...if I tithe, and give offering, and
cook for cell group and bless others, I won't have enough left to give You that
much! All the excuses started flooding in. It's ironic how today's sermon was
about faithful giving - not reasoning with the economy of the world but of
heaven.
"Whoever sows
sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap
generously." God has promised us blessings when we give generously unto
His kingdom, but it is us who will have to unlock His blessings. He blesses us not
only so that we will be blessed, but so that we will be blessed to bless
others. It's rather profound, and it's almost unexplainable by human logic. But
our God doesn't work with human logic, and so we should not try to understand
Him with human logic.
