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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for collecting daily manna), make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Today's Passage : Subject :Sermon on the Mount - Giving in Secret Bible Verse :Matthew 6:1-4 (ESV) "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. " Message:
We all want recognition. But we have to choose: Do we want recognition from other people, or do we want recognition from God? Do we want a brief moment of higher status in the eyes of others people, or do we want to go to heaven? Christ says nothing difficult to understand, here: the message is clear and simple. Go ahead, read it again.
anonymous charity
The rub, as usual, comes not from any difficulty in understanding exactly what we should do, but in dealing with our instincts to the contrary. We want to be recognized as a “good person”. Everybody instinctively wants prestige, recognition, fame; life on earth is a rat race, and we at least want to climb a bit higher in the rat pile for our $1000 or whatever. It's a freebie; once we are giving the money anyway, why not be recognized for it?
The direct answer is simple: Jesus told us not to. And we know that he never speaks to hurt us; he seeks to teach us for our own good. Even when his teachings seem difficult, he knows much that we do not and seeks to share his knowledge with us. He is like a parent telling a small child not to stick his finger in a light socket; he sees clearly something we cannot. We do not obey him like slaves, but like students with absolute trust in their teacher's knowledge and motives.
And even the “why” is not hard to see. To gain salvation, we must be crucified with Christ and be born anew, living in Christ, which means, living both in and for the glory of God. We betray our salvation when we seek glory for ourselves. We celebrate our salvation and our love for Christ when we give to the sole glory of God.
Our giving is not forgotten, for Christ promises us that we will “lay up our treasure in heaven” in verses 19-21. When Christ tells us that we will get our reward from our Father in heaven, we are not anxious about receiving it. We have a deposit in the safest bank. Thieves cannot steal it and it cannot be corrupted or destroyed; it is absolutely assured.
There had been premonitions of Christian themes in Judaism, and we see the theme of hidden reward treated in the beautiful, but slightly more obscure, poetry of Sirach, above. (This is part of the Protestant Apocrypha, but canonical in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.) Concerning our reward, the poet tells us, basically, that we need not worry about it. God's plan is beyond our understanding, he tells us, but if we listen to God's teachings, we will be “beloved above the glory of men.”
Meditation : Prayer : And finally, grant me O Lord, I pray, the lamp of charity which never fails, that it may burn in me and shed its light on those around me, and that by its brightness I may share a vision of that holy City, where dwells the true and never-failing Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen |
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