Motivation Monday - "LIVE LIKE JESUS” Summer Series: Generosity
Generosity
5th in a Summer Series - LIVE “LIKE” Jesus
““From His abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.”
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I recently celebrated a birthday. My response was to say ‘thank you’ and immediately made mental note to return the honour by giving a gift to my gifters when their special moment came up.
In today’s economy, giving and receiving is a fair exchange of repaying a gift with a thank you and then giving in return, to receive a thank you.
I wonder, though, how it would feel to give a gift and not receive anything in return, even a thank you?
I wonder how it would feel to receive a gift and know there was nothing you could do to repay the kindness? John Bunyan said: “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
For some of us it is easier to give than to receive.
The fact is we just may not know what it is truly like to receive a gift of such great price that our ability to repay would render us helpless, either because we did not have the words or the resources to do so.
We actually forget what true generosity is because we have either received gifts that can be repaid, or we have given out of overflow and it has not cost us anything.
Jesus, on the other hand, had the art of generosity down pat:
“Ask for anything in my name.” (John 14:14) “You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty He could make you rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
The world gives in such a way that we are conditioned to want to repay generosity,
and feel shame when we can’t.
The world gives in such a way
that many gifts are given that don’t cost the giver anything.
I have been focused personally on how the generosity of Jesus is not limited to reciprocity or feeling shame about lacking the ability to pay back.
John 1:16 tells us: “From His abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.”
In other words, we receive grace upon grace, grace after grace after grace…and there is no end to the grace we receive which renders us unable to either repay it all or even receive it all.
This generous grace of God is like looking up in the sky to see the first star and then seeing another and another and another until you cannot count them.
This generous grace of God is like catching a snowflake on your tongue and before it melts,another comes, and another, and another.
This generous grace of God is like going to a buffet and filling up your plate, and before you are even finished with that portion, your plate is whisked away and you are given a clean plate to put more food on it.
There is just no end to the generosity of God. It is beyond your ability to repay it.
And that is why Jesus paid for this grace, through His gracious act of giving His life for yours. Through His generosity, even giving His very life, He made you rich enough to live in the middle of the waterfall of grace. He modeled the perfect definition of generosity. Going above and beyond. Giving without expecting to receive what can never be repaid. Giving from pain, suffering and sacrifice. Giving from a deep and generous abundant love.
Generosity begins at the end of that which you have a hard time letting go.
I have thought of myself as generous, but secretly I have given because I have it and can afford to give it away. I give what is easy for me to give. Perhaps it’s time, money, personal space or something else - but I am challenged to give generously what is hardest to give. I am challenged to give that which will cost me dearly. During and after the pandemic, I have found myself more prone to hanging on to things because I have allowed a scarcity mindset to prevail.
How about you?.
Ann Voskamp, in One Thousand Gifts, reminds us:
“I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless. A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.”
I pray you will learn to be generous like Jesus. Give what costs you. Give that which is hardest to let go of. And let the abundant generous grace of God wash over you like a waterfall. Rejoice in it. Dance in every generous drop of abundant generous grace.
I believe in you. God bless.
Cathie