Thursday - Act On It - The Night That Changed the Poor
Why does it matter if God uses the poor? Why does it matter to us, if we’re not poor by the world’s standards, if this is a night that changes the poor? We may not be nomadic shepherds sleeping with the sheep in a field, but this still matters to us.
We are in spiritual poverty. It’s different from material poverty, but very important to recognize.
A sign is offered to us, from the poorest among us to the wealthiest, and it’s a poor baby in a manger. This comes to us direct from God, though his heavenly messengers. God helps us see our own poverty – spiritual and material – by his standards rather than our own.
When we see our own spiritual poverty compared to Jesus, we realize we need to get up and get to this baby, get to Jesus’ bedside just like those shepherds. A spiritually or materially wealthier group may not have bothered – they may have considered themselves just fine – but the poor are those God started with because they are those who know they need outside help.
When we have enough, we can’t hunger for food. It’s the same with God – if we consider ourselves spiritually rich and self-reliant, we won’t bother with reliance on God.
This is why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor, or poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
In the Christmas story, all of humanity sees its poverty, its spiritual poverty, compared to this divine baby. We realize we are unable to get back to relationship with God, and yet he comes to us anyway. We realize we can’t buy our way out of this debt to God (called sin), so someone else bailed us out and paid it off.
In the Christmas story, God helps us see our own poverty – spiritual and material.
In so doing, we realize the world’s standards are empty – we are all poor compared to God’s standards, and all need him equally. This can motivate us to extend to others, who we now recognize as spiritually poor themselves, the same generosity God has shown to us.
Challenge: Give to the spiritually and materially poor in your life! Toy drive, food bank, direct to a friend. Tell them why – because God has been generous and loving to you.
Reminder: We are reading the Bible in sync as one community – so check out today’s reading here.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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As we become a church, a community of people learning to follow Jesus in sync even while apart, we are working to be commited to five key things. This week, we’re looking to be commited to generosity in our resources. We want to be known for this as a community.
One of the first church leaders, Paul, wrote this to Timothy, who he was mentoring to lead churches after him:
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. - 1 Timothy 6:17-19 ESV
We asked yesterday if you knew anyone who worshipped money, and how you could tell. That’s exactly what Paul is warning about here. He doesn’t want the church to be a community where people set their hopes on material things. If we do, we will quickly find they are not eternally safe. Stocks fall, companies bankrupt, mortgages default, technology goes obsolete, and goods rot and rust away.
A right attitude about money and posessions doesn't start with rules, principles or anything on this earth, rather it starts with God himself. If you put your faith and trust in him first, you will see money and material differently as a result. We’ll look at four shifts in our thinking:
It All Comes from God
God is not trying to take money away from us. We are being invited to share in God’s work and to commit our resources to this work. This invitation is always a privilege. It comes from our need for God, not God’s need for us
The book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell says something that Chrsitians have known all along. He looks at highly successful people in our world, and searches for the origins of their success. Not once does he find a self-made person who engineered 100% of their own success. Each had unique opportunities handed to them, that allowed them to excel. This is how Christians have always known our lives to work!
This is a shift: We are now managing the money, time and talents that have been entrusted to us by God, in order to make sure that God’s work is done. When applied to personal finances, to how we use our time and our natural skills and abilities, this is an absolutely radical concept. It goes to the very core of who we are and how we see ourselves.
We Need to Give
The conventional wisdom concerning money is that we have to learn how to hang on to it, not how to give it away.
We need to give in order to be free: The seductive power of money is undeniable. But it is disarmingly subtle. In ensnares us without our even being aware of it. It wraps chains around our hearts, our minds, our imagination without our even noticing….
There is only one way. The power of money can only be broken by learning to give it away. The basic question is simply, Will I control my money, or will my money control me ?
When we begin to give, the chains begin to break. This can be very uncomfortable, frequently it is painful. Yet once the chains are broken we experience the sheer exhilaration of freedom. Only then do we realize how tightly the chains were wrapped around our heart. Only then can we really understand what Jesus meant when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” We were created to give, not to hoard…Jesus wants us to be free.
We need to give in order to find fulfillment:
Enough always seems to be just a little bit more than I have right now. A study was done by an economist called George Barna and it shows that most people seriously believe that they need approximately $8-10,000 more a year to live the way they would like to and no matter how much their income increases they still believe they need 8k-10k more. They never find it.
People who give of their time and resources in service of others will tell you time and time again how incredibly fulfilling it is…that happiness doesn’t come from wealth, financial or otherwise, but rather because they are happy with what God has given, they are able to be contented and happy in all things, and that is a kind of wealth in itself that overflows into all parts of life.
Question: Have you ever found freedom or fulfillment in giving? Why?
This series looks at becoming “like family” with others learning to follow Jesus. We're exploring how the church is not a building, institution or event, but a community of people. It's important that explore what church means as we prepare to launch a new church in Ajax in 2014.
