What about measuring our generosity? We like to think of ourselves as generous.That is such a nice, positive word, isn't it? People who are generous are praised by others, and we want people to like us too, right?
But wait, what evidence is there in your life that you are a generous person?
What scale do you measure yourself against? Can we say you are more than 50% generous? Dare I call myself 110% generous?
At the moment I am not prepared to turn this into an in-depth Bible study, but I would hold that God is the most extremely generous being that exists. In His Word, the Bible, He has spelled out ways in which we ought to be generous too. He does set standards for our generosity, you know.
* God made the universe, and this beautiful earth to be our home.
* He gave each of us life before we knew to ask or hope for it!
* He saw that we all had a propensity for sin, so He gave His only begotten Son to purchase us out of sin and adopt us into His Great Big Wonderful Family!
* He forgives us all our sins, and walks with us to the degree we let Him.
* He gives gifts like music, family, friends, marriage, babies!
Hey, how generous are you and I in comparison to THAT standard?
But then, God doesn't really ask us to do all He does. Instead, He has given us simple steps to become more like Him;
1. Don't worship any other gods besides Him (actually, that's a mere thank you salute, right?)
2. Forgive others when they wrong us.
3. Take care of others' needs before our own.
4. Provide for widows and orphans and the strangers in our gates.
I'm sure we can find more in the Bible, but those four can keep us plenty busy being generous the rest of our lives! In fact, if we are measuring our generosity we thinking on a puny scale, aren't we?
If we are going to be generous givers like our God, we need to go over-the-top in our worship, our forgiving, our care for others, and provisions for the needy around us.
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