[exploring love; an exposition on increase]

it has been my observation that those people who feel they are not giving enough to help the world are the ones who are already giving much. maybe they see ways to improve upon their giving, maybe they don't. but the ones who give the most feel they are not giving as much as they can.

it seems, to them, that the more they give away, the more they actually have.

having been in the pentecostal/charismatic circle a while, i have heard all the teachings on "give to God's work and watch Him give you back 30, 60 and 100-fold."

many preachers, evangelists and ministers use these Scriptural promises for personal gain or to further their ministries, but they are lacking one key ingredient when they serve up their offering requests.

they stop after saying the more you give to God, the more He gives back to you. many of them say "give out of your need" and it should be translated, "give out of your greed."

it has been estimated that the global christian church rakes in 11 trillion dollars annually (that's individual christians). if the people only gave what they were required (ten percent), that's 1.1 trillion dollars. (1.1 TRILLION!) that's definitely enough money to make a difference. so where does that money go? it goes into homes, food, cars, toys, education, etc.

the average christian spends 700% more on entertainment than they do on anything religious. the average christian spends 70x's more money on dogfood than on world-evangelization. and thirty times more on sodas than on international aid.

where does the money that does come in go? 86% of all money given in the past decade has gone into church building funds. 90% of that was in churches that didn't particularly need a new building. 65% of what was left over went towards local programs (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because people here need the Gospel message just like the people in other countries). i was talking to a friend of mine a few days ago and they were telling me about a road in their city that has six or eight multi-hundred million dollar facilities on a short stretch of it! what are we doing?

we horde our cash and save it until it can buy us massive buildings and facilities and then parade and preen like peacocks while millions of people starve to death. we whoop and holler about how we are blessed and do little to help the millions of people dying without hope. we say how good our God is yet we betray His goodness by showing off our congregational greed.

it's time for us to get off of our blessed assurance [props to bro. dwight] and go do what we say we believe. we've talked about it; we reminisce about it. we can't change our past. what's done is done and there's no use trying to smooth things over and trying to cover it up. it's time to stop pretending and time to start being.

a different friend of mine [yes, i have more than one...] recently gave me something to read from the classic story the velveteen rabbit. skin horse is telling rabbit what it takes to be real:

it doesn't happen all at once like being wound up, but bit by bit. it doesn't happen all at once. you become. it takes a long time. that's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or who have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. but these things don't matter at all because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.

my friend, who is one of my heroes is at a religious learning institute [think mainline bible college], went on to pen,

"christians today need stop being so fearful about spending time with the 'wrong' kind of people, get in the world, and really start reaching the lost. people don't care to see how perfect we are; they need to see how perfect God is. they don't think that christians don't sin; they need to know about God's amazing forgiveness. the lost don't need to hear that they need to change their lives; they need to know how God will change their lives. they don't need to hear us talk about the truth, they need to see us trusting and living out the truth."

amen.

let's increase our giving, but not to the building fund. let's increase our time with the people. let's increase our exposure to the needs of others. let's increase our exposure to God and decrease our exposure to ourselves.

[live the revolution!]

for the world-wide renown of His sovereign glory...