Let The River Flow!

I’ll never forget the time Sharon and I were on staff at a camp all summer as the program directors and getting challenged to give at the end of our ministry there.   One of the board of directors stood up and spoke to us from Malachi 3:10 and challenged us not to rob God with our tithes and offerings.  I was thinking to myself...tithes and offerings, I haven’t even seen any form of pay yet!  The fact was that we were basically working for peanuts and I needed every last cent to put towards going to Seminary that Fall.  Anyways, the whole presentation really didn’t sit well with me, but God would do an overhaul on my attitude over the next 12 hours.  I’ll get back to that story later.
Every act of giving has not only a horizontal dimension to it, but a vertical one as well!  Our failure to give goes against the flow of how we’ve been designed as a child of God.  Recognize that you are the riverbed through which the goodness and blessing of God flows.  There are great catalysts to giving and we will unpack the truths that are found when we are faithful to the opportunities that are presented to us.  There is always a time to give no matter what that gift looks like.  There are times when our gifts seem all out of proportion to the need, but then God shows up and we are mesmerized!  On the other hand, do you ever think that you can give God too much?   You will be surprised what you find out about that too!  We will explore everything from fearless giving to how the math of giving works in the heavenly realm.
It’s time to get our feet WET!
Ready to sink or swim or how about STAND Joshua 3:9-11, 14-16
 Our giving causes God to lead the way.  God calls us to take the initiative!
The river was at flood stage for the Israelites, it was turbulent and there was no other way into the Promised Land.  Only if they were ready to get their feet, was God going to show up!  God doesn’t make it easy for them but He is ready for them to put His Word to their test.  All those great promises that Joshua proclaimed at the beginning of his takeover... Joshua 1:9  God wanted the people to first learn their complete inability to overcome this obstacle.
 So, we know what happens to the Jordan River,  the same type of incredible phenomenon that took place at the Red Sea.  However, this time it was different.  The instructions were different.  It wasn’t Moses using his ‘shepherd’s staff’ to part the way.  This time God literally wanted the priests to lead the way with the Ark of The Covenant which symbolized the presence of the Lord.
Has their even been a time where you felt the demands of serving in some kind of ministry but didn’t have any of the resources to pull it off?   Time and time again, God calls us to be faithful enough to initiate it as we let Him do it through us and then watch God work!
When you want to do a missions trip, when you get a clear calling to do a short term missions trip, when God has called you to help someone…and you don’t have the time or resources…it is His strength, He already owns all the resources.
There is also one other very significant storyline here in Joshua 3 and that is that the priests and Levites led the way with the Ark of the Covenant.  The Ark symbolizes the presence of the Lord and in every act of giving, it is the presence of the Lord that leads us to step out in faith.  It is as we soak in His presence that we discover the things that He has prepared in advance for us to do!  Ephesians 2:10
Joshua 3:5 Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.”
Giving in the GAP
 Yes the challenge may seem insurmountable but we must never forget that our giving, our ‘standing in the gap’ will always unlock God’s unlimited resources.  God never disappoints the man or woman, the young person or child who says, ‘Here am I Lord, send me’!
We are the ones who He is waiting for to take the first step to perform His wonders.
A small town leader  Judges 7  When less is more!
The fewer our resources, the greater ability for God to act!
Is it possible that our gift is more than God wants to work with?  The answer is YES.  Gideon recruited 32 000 men for the army of the Lord and God tells him, ‘way too much for me to work with’.  If we can get to the place where we can explain it all in human terms; how it all boils down and how it is all processed we lose our way.  Are our gifts merely just the result of our own ingenuity and goodness of heart?  It has to go beyond that!  Where do our gifts point us?  Do they give us the appearance that we are helping God out or do our gifts point us to God’s infinite generosity?  It is all a matter of our perspective.
In Gideon’s case, God had to use a series of tests to move him and his men to a place of complete dependence on God.  ‘If He doesn’t show up, we are hooped!’  He had to bring them down to 300 men with unwavering confidence in the God beyond their human abilities and comprehension.  God wants us to give with pure hearts and be so ready for Him to take everything we got and multiply it for His good purpose.  We are the ones who open the door and God does the rest.
 Each of these 300 men took a lamp, an empty jar and a trumpet with them all that’s all they had. They lit their lamps, smashed their jars and blew their trumpets late one night and God caused such a great confusion that all the enemy soldiers turned on each other, running for their very lives.
Sometimes our wealth and the greatness of our gift can get in the way of what God wants to accomplish on our behalf.  We can be guilty of putting our hope in the budget, the financial giving of the top givers so we lose sight of how wonderful all giving is. 

 How are you opening the door to God’s instrumental giving through you?

Fearless giving   1 Samuel 17

Let me paint the scene, a familiar one I know, but recognize the giving of a life.  David shows up and hears a giant blaspheming the God of the universe, His God and personally, he is incensed.  He focuses all his attention on the one who leads him from the heart and presents himself to Saul.  He comes to a leader who is wrapped up in human strength and so what does he try to do?  He tries to clothe David in human strength and armour.  However, the human defences only served to hinder this shepherd boy.  Fear will always keep you from seeing an Infinite God full of resources, full of blessing, full of life itself.
 Fear will do that to you, it makes you weak, it makes you cower, it makes you curl up and it makes you look small.  Our failure to look at life’s challenges through the light of God’s promises will always result in our weakness. 
We must remember that the weapons that we fight with are not the weapons of this world! 
2 Corinthians 10:4 
 Destitute giving -  when the brook dries up!
The last meal of a widow  1 Kings 17 
We find Elijah here, a victim of his own prophecy.  He predicted a famine and a desperate famine it was.   He goes to a foreign land and finds a poverty-stricken widow.  She is literally starving to death.  Elijah does the unthinkable, he asks her for her meal.   In her completely vulnerable state, she tells him this is it...their last meal and she and her son would die.  Elijah’s need in light of what her resources seemed completely nonsensical.  Who asks a dying widow for her last meal???  Apparently a man who knows that God always shows up when we trust Him with our resources!
He gives her an incredible promise v14 He knew the widow was the one that through whom God would pour out so much blessing.  When we give we empty a part of ourselves and in doing so we make room from the provision of God in us and through us!
So she goes ahead and first prepares a meal for Elijah like she was instructed. There are no more excuses, no more complaining.  When was the last time you let yourself off the hook for giving?  The fact is that none of us have been ever tested to that level of generosity and yet it is this act of faith that she must follow through on before her own flour jar and jug of oil would be refilled miraculously.
Ephesians 3:10 God does exceedingly above and beyond
 A boy and his fish and chips  Mark 6:41-44  Another example for us about standing in the gap!
 Math in the heavenly realm...
It was late in the day and we are told that were 5000 men so add their wives and children and about 20000 were out that day to listen the most popular rabbi on the circuit, Jesus
V37  8 months of a man’s wages.... ‘He said this to test them for He Himself knew what He would do’
John 6:6 NKJV  This is what God does. He wants to put staggering needs before us to see what we are made of!  Are we made up of our own human ingenuity or do we really believe that God is able to pull off the miraculous.
 Jesus asks His disciples the question, where are we going to buy bread for the people to eat?  It is the same question He asks us today.  How are you going to get the message out, the gospel out so that everyone can hear the good news?
 What do the disciples do?  They respond how we often think.  They start focusing on calculating their human resources and making the decision to ‘send them away’.  We don’t have the money, the resources, the man power.   We can ask the same question, ‘how can we minister to 23 million people with AIDS in sub-saharan Africa?  However as I shared last week, there continues to an incredible swell of support to buy a tractor and 10K was sent this past week to buy the tractor in time for the harvest season at Pastor James’ church.  The money for the irrigation system is coming in fast and furious as well!
 A radical event took place as Jesus asked the disciples to collect all the food that was available. 
 They came back and only one mother actually knew the service was going to go long that day so she packed her son a lunch!  It was a lunch he could share with a few friends as it was five loaves of bread and two fish.  Imagine her surprise when her son came home to tell her what happened to his lunch that day!!  Our giving allows God to multiply it and make it go further than you ever dreamed of!
You can give more than you think without your money!  Acts 3:4-7
The real gift they gave was the healing power and presence of Jesus’ Name.  Notice that they looked the man right in the eyes.  How often do we turn and look away when we see a desperate need or quickly change the channel.
The fact is that Peter and John didn’t have the money to respond to his immediate need.  
However,  they had something far greater to give and that was a miraculous healing and did something for him that was completely life changing.
We must never underestimate the power in prayer and how we can pray for those in need even when we think that isn’t enough because it may be more than enough.  We walk in God’s power and we give God’s power into each and every situation
He wants more than you think!
The story of the widow at the Temple illustrates that Jesus wants us to give our all...nothing less, nothing more in Luke 21   We see this again in the giving of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with costly perfume in  Mark 14 / John 12  It is not the amount of the gift that Jesus is counting, but the cost and sacrifice involved and He knows and sees it all.
Building a place to meet with God  Exodus 36:3-7
When God says enough!
Is it possible that our gift to God is too much?  Could we ever give God a gift that He looks at and tells us, “I’m sorry you are going to have to take that back for a refund!” 
Let’s check out the work on the tabernacle in the OT under Moses
 Exodus 36  Check out the words of the skilled craftsmen in v5  ‘the people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the LORD commanded to be done.  Then Moses sends the word out through the camp , stop already!!,
 ‘no man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.  And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they had was more than enough to do all the work’

The Takeaway
Our decision to give generously opens the floodgates of heaven.
 So to finish my story that I started with about the day that ‘giving’ completely turned around for me was that God reminded me to trust Him in giving back to the camp that I worked for above and beyond my tithe.  At this point, I knew that God was going to show up because there was no way that we had money to pay for tuition and rent, but God was faithful.  When we arrived in London, we put our resumes out and within a day, God provided Sharon with a full time job and four days later, I had a part time job and we were able to go through school debt free!
 I am not going to tell you that if you give God $10-, you can expect to receive 10 times that in the mail like some do, but I will tell you that when you are faithful with your firstfruits and your giving to God, He will supply all of your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!  Philippians 4:19
So where do you need to give generously?  What is your decision?  What will become your sacrifice?  Where will you see the floodgates of heaven open up?