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Daily Bible Studywith SEEDS OF THE KINGDOM

Updated: Saturday, 22 November 2008, 12:06 (GMT)

22 July 2008 | 2 Corinthians 9:1-5

really do not need to write you about this help for God's people. I know you want to help. I have been bragging about this to the people in Macedonia, telling them that you in Southern Greece have been ready to give since last year. And your desire to give has made most of them ready to give also. But I am sending the brothers to you so that our bragging about you in this will not be empty words. I want you to be ready, as I said you would be. If any of the people from Macedonia come with me and find that you are not ready, we will be ashamed that we were so sure of you. (And you will be ashamed, too!) So I thought I should ask these brothers to go to you before we do. They will finish getting in order the generous gift you promised so it will be ready when we come. And it will be a generous gift - not one that you did not want to give.

Notes

Last week during the Kidz Klub I help run, two children came up to me in floods of tears. It took me a while to grasp what had caused such a massive fracas, but between the occasional punch they kept trying to throw at each other, I gleaned this... One of the children had been playing with a skipping rope, the other child, had run over and tried to take the skipping rope off the first child. Words had been exchanged, a small scuffle had broken out and the two children each held out their hands to show the result of the fight. The first child was sporting large rope burns to their palms & held the rope. The second child had his item embedded into his hands & held the handles. I asked what had made them fight over a silly thing like a skipping rope - simultaneously they screamed "BUT IT'S MINE"

I struggled to fully comprehend the heartbreak over The Skipping Rope War, but it did make me think about those three little words that were given as rational for it. "But It's Mine". Personally, I can take or leave a skipping rope, but I have been known to adhere to the same principle that these two seven year olds were exercising that day. When it comes to things like money or time or the last tea bag in the tea caddy, I have been known to utter those same three words with just as much indignation - "But it's mine".

In the verses we read today, the Corinthians agreed to give to the work of the early church. We aren't told how much they have pledged but we are told that it is significant enough to inspire others to follow suit. The crunch, Paul realises, is when it's time to hand over the gift. What if the Corinthians decide, at the last minute, they aren't going to give as much as they intended. What if they decide they aren't going to give anything at all. After all, that gift, well, it's theirs. In fact, what we have isn't ours at all. Just like the skipping rope didn't, in fact, belong to either child. The things we have belong to God and He gives them to us as gifts. In giving some of what we have away, we are giving back to God what He has already given us. Paul's worry over the Corinthians is that they will lose this perspective they had previously grasped - "But it's God's" they had said - isn't it easy to forget that and convince ourselves differently of who our things belong to?

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gifts you give to me. Help me to keep the right perspective about each of them, not they are mine but that they are yours. Help me to seek your will in how to use each one of them, to build your kingdom and glorify you.

Written by Nancy Howell

Today's Writer

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