Tag: Proverbs

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Can God Get A Loan?

hundred-dollar-bills

If you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord – and he will repay you! Proverbs 19:17

I found this verse interesting. People always talk about being ‘the hands and feet of Jesus’ to help those who are in need, but how about the ‘bank of Jesus?’ I think a lot of us look at giving to the poor in terms of what we have financially, we make comments like, “When God blesses me with extra, then I can give to others.” However, I get the impression that God works like this, “You give from whatever I’ve already given you, and then I’ll repay you based on your kindness.”

To me this puts a new perspective on Matthew 25:40 (MSG) where Jesus says, whatever we do to those overlooked and ignored, we do it to Him. Proverbs is saying that we are not giving our money to the poor…we are giving a loan to God, he’s just predesignated that he wants the money to go, and he wants it to go to those who are overlooked and ignored. This promise from Proverbs is not limited to “Christians.” I see tons of secular businesses that are very successful, and many times if you look behind the scenes they are highly involved in charitable giving. I just think the Church should be leading the way…

This is personally something I have to work on. My family is definitely not rich, but that cannot be an excuse! Join the Conversation…What do you think? Is God’s credit good enough at your bank?

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Contentment

Bread SliceWe all do it! We read the Bible, sometimes so fast that when we are finished, we couldn’t tell someone what we just read. Growing up in a pastor’s home, in church, and in Christian school, I did a lot of that. It was never personal. I don’t really remember being taught to study the Bible for personal spiritual growth or to understand my God more, I only remember being taught to read it because it was the right thing to do…well that didn’t help me at all…nor did it help the 90% of my “Christian” School classmates that are either sitting in a chair in some church somewhere not using their gifts and talents for Christ, or they are off the Christian journey all together.

All of that to say, I was reading through Proverbs 30 yesterday and ran across this prayer from Agur. I have read Proverbs 30 before, but I never paid much attention to what it was saying: The entire prayer is great, but two areas stuck out to me, one I will blog about later after I have time to think about it, but here is the quote from verse 8b-9

“..Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Talk about Contentment! “Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.” This is a hard prayer to pray. Especially when it is so much easier to pray “God give me more!” “God bless me more!” Agur was content to have his needs met. When I read this, I said ‘Wow!’ because it jumped out at me, but I have to be honest, this is hard to grasp. At first I didn’t even highlight the verse because I didn’t want to be responsible to live it. It may just be because I live in America and the one with the most money and the biggest toys win. Honestly, God has provided for all of my needs, but I wonder if I lived in a third world country where poverty is the daily expectancy, would I be content with ‘just enough?‘ Ouch, this one is tough…