Values

‘Since you excel in so many ways—in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge, your enthusiasm, and your love from us—I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving’ 2 Cor.8:7

The four values mentioned most in the Bible are hope, faith, love, and give. According to research, hope is mentioned in the Bible 185 times. Faith is mentioned 246 times. Someone describes hope as ‘hearing music that other people cannot hear and faith is dancing to that music that you have heard’. So if you’ve heard the music [meaning you have hope] and yet you do not dance to it then you do not have faith. Believing and not doing anything about it is not having faith. When you begin to dance to the music [hope] that only you can hear then you have faith. By research the third value, which is love, is mentioned 733 times in the Bible. So if you have two portions of love everyday of the year, you will still have extra love to deal with. The final value give is mentioned 2,285 times in the Bible. Primarily because giving is usually an expression of faith, hope, and love. Over fifty percent of Jesus’ parables were about money. Jesus talked about money more than he talked about heaven. In fact when He wanted to talk about heaven and make it clear, He used money to illustrate it. A renowned psychiatrist, the founder of the Meninga clinic said “giving is an important criteria in mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill”.

‘Since you excel in so many ways—in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge, your enthusiasm, and your love from us—I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving’ 2 Cor.8:7. In other words, God is saying as you are excelling in your faith, love, hope, He wants you to also excel in the gracious act of giving. The cattle on a thousand hills belong to God. Scripture says that if God is hungry, He will not have to tell you. So if God asks you to give then you must understand that it is a rare privilege. No matter how generous you currently are, God wants you to take it a step further. And like a lot of the values in the scripture, it is important for us to hear this over and over again. Why does God want me to be generous? We will be discussing this at length in the next few days and trust God to take us into our next level of giving.

Prayer: Father, as it is Your desire for me, help me excel in this gracious act of giving. Take me and grow me Lord, in Jesus Name.