“Because God owns all I have, I will give my all to generously oversee His blessings.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – April 5, 2024
Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O LORD. 1 Chronicles 29:11, NLT
My wife Rita and I, early in our marriage, attended a small group Bible study on money. It was truly life-changing for both of us. Since I am a spender and she is a saver, we began to learn how our differences were actually very good for our marriage! I needed her to keep us disciplined within a spending plan…aka, a budget, and I was the visionary always looking for wise ways to spend, invest, and give.
The first big idea we embraced together in our Bible study was…
God is the owner of all we have.
Instead of me trying to squeeze out another dollar for one of my ideas or Rita feeling like the bad guy for telling me no, we came up with a prayer for us to regularly ask our heavenly Father about his heart for our giving, saving, and spending…
Heavenly Father, how would you like for us to manage your resources? What is your heart for how you want us to invest in your kingdom? Our home, cars, bank account, and children are all yours. Show us your hilarious heart of generosity for how you have abundantly blessed us.
This shift in our mindset placed us on a path of regularly remembering that all we have is the Lord’s, and he has entrusted us with the responsibility to be a generous overseer. Our lifestyle began to incorporate generosity into our everyday interactions. So, for example:
When a child misbehaves, Lord, give me generous love to discipline your child and mine. When a car unexpectedly needs maintenance, Lord, how would you like for me to repair your car or maybe replace it? Or when we face a big looming financial decision, All–knowing God, we need your wisdom that you give generously to all who ask. Prayers seeking God’s heart for his resources grew us into more generous givers. But we still experienced tension in defining God’s part to provide and our part to be responsible in planning ahead and working hard and smart.
So, the tension in finding clarity from Christ in managing His resources is a good tension that leads us to pray, seek clarity, and trust Him with a life of generosity. Because the Lord owns all we have, we can lean into His generous heart to influence and direct our hearts.
C.S. Lewis creatively illustrates God’s ownership of all we have through the demon Screwtape on how to appeal to humans’ pride and confuse them:
The sense of ownership, in general, is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership, which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modem resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.
We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from “my boots” through “my dog,” “my servant,” “my wife,” “my father,” “my master” and “my country,” to “my God.” They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of “my boots,” the “my” of ownership.
Indeed, God owns all we have to give out of a heart of love. When the Lord’s generous love overflows in abundance in our lives, we are compelled to love, serve, and give generously for Christ’s sake. God owns everything and trusts us to manage His blessings. Be a generous manager of your Master’s resources, and one day, He will say, Well done, my beloved child, enter into the joy of your lord!
“His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord’” (Matthew 25:23).
Prayer
Heavenly Father, I praise you that everything in heaven and earth is yours, O Lord, through Christ’s love and in Jesus’ name, amen.
Application
What do you have that you need to recognize God as the owner? How would He like you to be generous with what He has given you?
Related Reading
Haggai 2:8; Psalm 50:10-12; Philippians 4:19; James 1:17
Worship Resource
Brooke Ligertwood with Martin Smith: Lead Me To The Cross
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