Hello beautiful brides, I am Adina in South Africa and today I want to share what I’ve learned in Finding the Abundant Life Chapter 9 "Give"
Giving is totally opposite of what we want to do, our flesh wants to hold on to everything, especially when we face lack. But if we want to find the abundant life He wants to give us, we must kill our flesh and step out in faith and start believing the unseen.
When we are suddenly faced with lack, or utter ruin, it is so easy to look for other sources of income or go and sell something we own to try to get what we need. But when we are in this position we must decide, we must choose between our fate or our blessing. Are we going to keep on believing and walk into the unknown with Him holding us and carrying us, or will our flesh win, bringing temporary relief, just to end up in a much worse position than we were?
I love this one sentence in this chapter: “When you seem to have nothing left, you need to give in order to receive. If you fail to give, you will be left wanting.”
I also love this verse: “There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, and there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. The generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters will himself be watered”
In times when we face utter lack or ruin, we are being set up for a blessing, when we are backed against the Red Sea financially, with no way out, the Lord wants to step in and deliver us in a big way for all to see His glory, but we must enter through the narrow gate and do what is so opposite to what we want to do, and that is to give.
I also learned that once we grab a hold of the principle of giving and receiving, we must always ask Him where we should give and to open the opportunity to give. We must always give with the right heart and motivation, not just to receive something in return. Like when we focus on how amazing our testimony will be if WE do this or that, or if I give my marriage will be restored, or I am going to give to proof my love for somebody else.
"Give, and it will be given to you.
They will pour into your lap a good measure—
pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
For by your standard of measure
it will be measured to you in return."
Thank you for sharing dear Adina, in my own life I realized it brings me much more fulfilment to give thank to hold on to it, although there were many times that I held on to stuff or even my money because I was scared of the future, but now my future is in my Loving Heavenly Husband’s hands.