Offerings. 2 Corinthians 9:7.

God created so many offerings for Israel. He gave them options. You could sacrifice an unblemished young bull. Lay your sins on it, kill it, pour out the blood, burn the meat and fat as an offering. It was an elaborate ceremony. But people were willing to do it to receive forgiveness. 

But what if you were poor? What if you were a beekeeper or something and had no cows, and could not afford one? Then God would accept a lamb. Too poor for a lamb? For you, God created the option of sacrificing two doves. But what if you can’t even afford doves? There was even a grain offering—no meat, no blood, none of the symbolism, but God was looking at the worshiper’s HEART.

“FOR THE LORD LOVES A CHEERFUL GIVER.” 2 Corinthians 9:7.

God is not concerned with the size of your gift, but with your heart. Come to Him with a pure heart, not with lots of money. And what is a pure heart?

Honesty. Openness. Facing everything. Hiding nothing. Telling Him your emotions, whether good or bad. Telling Him your thoughts, feelings, worries, fears, joys, everything. Honestly, I think God wants your whole heart—everything inside you—more than anything else. Give it all to Him.

More than your money, your possessions, or anything else, God wants you. Your heart, your dreams, your passions, your feelings, your hopes, your regrets, your hurts, your bad haircuts … everything. 

My wife sang a solo so often:

Give them all, give them all, give them all to Jesus,

Shattered dreams, wounded hearts, broken toys.

Give them all, give them all, give them all to Jesus,

And He will turn your heartache into joy.

Give it ALL to Jesus.

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P.S. “Give Them All to Jesus,” by Bob Benson and Phil Johnson.

God Loves a Cheerful Giver. 2 Corinthians 9:6-7.

I planted some rye seed yesterday. I only had one bag—forty pounds. But I wish I had several more. Because the money I spend now will be more than repaid by the money I save on hay later. You see, whatever you plant grows, and grows far larger than the size of a single seed.

The same is true when you give to the Kingdom of God. Everything you give to God’s work is like a seed you are planting in heaven. The repayment—the harvest—will far exceed the cost of the seed.

Are you storing up treasures in heaven? Planting seeds for eternity?

Paul writes, “Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously…. God loves a cheerful giver” 2 Corinthians 9:6-7.

Be generous with your giving to God’s work. I know none of us are rich, but we can all give something. Even children can give something–and childhood is the best time to make giving a habit. Store up treasures in heaven—and create good habits for your future. Remember, God loves a cheerful giver.

Dear Lord, show me how to give to your kingdom. Remind me to be generous. Help me to give cheerfully. Help me to sow generously, not sparingly, so I can see an amazing harvest both here on earth and also in heaven. Make me a cheerful giver.

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DON’T JUDGE ME! 2 Corinthians 7:9-11 (Law and grace).

A thought flowing in the Christian stream says that questioning another’s behavior or self-discipline or spiritual habits is judgmental, and worse, indicates you have abandoned grace: if you rebuke me, you are living under the law, and putting me under the law. It is the cry, “Don’t judge me!,” and is often followed by “If you ask hard questions, people will leave the church.”

Aren’t we underestimating churchgoers? Do employees collapse in tears when supervisors question their work? Are students too brittle to receive anything but perfect scores? Should mentors be “rebuked” for correcting young recruits? No.

The teachers and coaches who pushed us the hardest are often the ones we never forget. They demanded performance on a level we never imagined—and they changed our lives forever.

Yet we argue pastors should not ask hard questions? When did we become so weak? Are we that soft? Of course not. Not only are we strong enough to answer hard questions—some us are desperate to be pushed, to be challenged.

Moreover, no less authority than the Bible’s greatest teacher of grace, the Apostle Paul, considered it his duty to rebuke believers.

He did not worry he was being “judgmental,” nor did he believe his passion for grace required him never to speak a critical word. Referring to his criticism in an earlier letter, he writes:

“Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved [by my letter], but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed…. For godly grief produces a repentance not to be regretted and leading to salvation…. For consider how much diligence this very thing—this grieving as God wills—has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice!” 2 Corinthians 7:9-11.

You can WALK IN GRACE and still receive rebuke. You are strong enough—don’t collapse, or beat yourself up, just embrace grace and move forward with the Master.

“A wise man listens to rebuke and gains understanding” Proverbs 15:32.

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WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN TIME RUNS OUT? 2 Peter 3:8.

Season 5 of THE CROWN documents the day in 1992 when a thousand-year-old castle caught fire. That’s right, Windsor Palace was built 1,000 years ago by Norman the Conqueror—300 years before Chaucer, 500 years before Shakespeare! The blaze roared through the building for 15 hours, destroying priceless pieces of art and furniture. Five years later, at a cost of 37 million pounds, the damaged areas were reopened.

Can you imagine a thousand-year-old building? As Americans, it’s hard to imagine a thousand-year-old ANYTHING. Mature redwood trees are about the only things on the continent that have been around for a thousand years. A thousand years is what, fourteen lifetimes? When my grandfather died at 87, he had lived during 41% of the history of the United States—that is, he had been alive during nearly half of the time we had been a nation. The United States is SO YOUNG! By contrast, Britain will celebrate a millennium in forty years—that is an incomprehensible span of time.

But God can comprehend it.

“To the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day” 2 Peter 3:8.

God is outside of time. We are like the man at the Thanksgiving Day parade. We can see the float ahead of us and the float behind us. But God can look down on the entire parade!

Peter’s point is: don’t assume Jesus is not coming back simply because He has not come back YET.

God is merciful. When He looks on people and decides to ‘give them one more day,’ maybe that day becomes a thousand years. Some will go on sinning, others will win souls, and suddenly there will be a trumpet blast and Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead.

“Behold NOW is the acceptable time. TODAY is the day of salvation” 2 Corinthians 6:2.

Come to Christ. Repent and find grace before time runs out. Because time WILL run out.

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Have you ever purchased tires? 2 Corinthians 6:14-16.

When you buy tires, the most essential detail is that the new tires match the old, remaining tires. What would happen if the tires on one side were a little bigger than the tires on the other side? Or what if they were made differently, one made hollow and filled with air, the other a hard ring of solid plastic (like the “donut” spares in some cars)?

You are different from the people around you. If you have surrendered to Christ, you are a whole new kind of person, as different from your old self as a caterpillar is from a butterfly.

Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone be in Christ, he is a NEW creature. Old things are passed away. All things have become new.”

Your life is new. You are a new creature.

Back to the tire analogy: do you match? Are your friends made of the same stuff? Your closest, best friends? Your business partners?

In the next chapter, 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, Paul goes on:

do not be unequally yoked, do not be bound together with unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with the devil, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

This passage is about marriage. Marriage between two believers trying to please Christ is hard. Can you imagine how being married to an unbeliever is so much harder? But Paul’s warning applies to other things too—be careful who you partner with in life, in business, on group projects (my favorite), who you hire as an attorney or agent, or whatever.

We should always be involved with the lost and love the lost. But be aware that if you share a yoke, like two mules pulling a wagon, that partner walking next to you needs to also share your faith. A butterfly and a caterpillar cannot work together.

You are a NEW creation. Choose best friends and partners and spouses who are also new creations in Christ.

Jesus, help us to love the lost, to know them, share with them, and point them to you. But for our deepest connections, our most critical, life-long partnerships, especially marriage, guide us to fellow believers who will share our faith and understand and encourage us in our desire to please you.

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PURPOSE. 2 Corinthians 5:15.

What motivates the people you know? Do they have goals? Plans? Dreams? What drives their lives?

The question is easiest to answer about small children: they want good food, enough sleep, and constant entertainment. Children are born selfish. Nothing wrong with that, really—we are all born selfish, but must not remain there.

Yet most do.

For most of us, SELF is the driving force in our lives.

We call it other things, of course. Sometimes we use positive terms, recasting self-centeredness as being ‘goal-oriented’ or ‘ambitious’ or ‘motivated.’ Sometimes we use negative terms, recasting self-centeredness as ‘lazy,’ ‘unmotivated,’ or ‘parties too much.’

Even though motivated people appear completely different from the unmotivated, both can be entirely, 100% selfish. In an odd way, they may not be different at all, but the same: selfish.

Of course, some “selfish” goals are objectively better than others. Hard work is better than laziness. But as we mature in Christ, we must exchange our self-centered goals for Christ-centered goals.

“He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for the One who died for them and was raised” 2 Corinthians 5:15.

Do you live “for the One who died” for you?

If you were drowning in a raging river and someone rescued you but the rescuer then slipped back in and drowned, you would feel indebted to him forever. You would try to do things for his family, be a mentor to his orphaned children, pay for his kids’ college, buy the widow a car, etc.

In fact, Someone has died for you. And “we who live should no longer live for ourselves” but for Him. Talk to Jesus:

God, I give you my plans, big and small, my dreams for today and for the rest of my life. I give you my time, talents, and tasks. Help me to lay it all at Your feet. I surrender all. Please speak to me and show me YOUR plans for today and every day. I want to live for YOU, not for me.

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A Little Hard Work Never … 2 Corinthians 8:7-11.

When Billy Graham was a boy, the clock would chime at 2:30 a.m., waking the entire family for another day of hard work on the farm. Billy trotted off to the barn to milk twenty cows and shovel manure. After school he milked the cows a second time. The Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards spent 13 hours a day in his study, reading his Bible and other books, praying, and preparing sermons. These men are but two examples of the way that a life of hard work can bear tremendous fruit.

Does Jesus expect you to get up at 2:30? Probably not. Does He expect you to spend 13 hours a day in study and in prayer? I doubt it. 

But those of us who grew up in post-war America, a land of television, fast-food, and microwave ovens, often err on the side of a lazy, comfortable life.

Don’t we? Few of us push ourselves much. Are there people who drive themselves relentlessly, to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion? Yes. And there is harm in that. After all, Jesus said, “Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest … For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” Matthew 11:28-30.

If you drive yourself like a mule skinner, cracking the whip all day, never satisfied, no matter the effort, you may need to meditate hard on the words of Jesus in Matthew 11. Have you accepted His free gift of grace and the comfort it brings?

But for most of us, the greater temptation is an easy, unexamined slothfulness.

We do as little as possible, looking away from even paying work to lose ourselves in our screens. You will never bear much fruit for the Lord if you do so little.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul shows great respect for those who work diligently.

“Now as you excel in everything—faith, speech, knowledge, and in ALL DILIGENCE, and in your love for us, excel also in this grace.  I am NOT saying this as a command … But I am giving an opinion on this because it is profitable for you who, a year ago, began to do something … But now FINISH THE TASK” 2 Corinthians 8:7-11.

Paul then describes Titus as “being VERY DILIGENT” 2 Corinthians 8:17.

Then Paul describes another Christian brother—this preacher is unnamed, but some believe he may be Apollos or Silas—“We have often tested him in many circumstances and found him to be DILIGENT—and now EVEN MORE DILIGENT because of his great confidence in you” 2 Corinthians 8:22.

In the end, I must encourage hard work. A calling from God to HARD WORK while still a teenager changed the entire course of my life.

“He who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly, but he who sows generously will also reap generously” 2 Corinthians 9:6.

Are you working hard?

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JARS OF CLAY. 2 Corinthians 4:7.

Few buildings rival Solomon’s Temple. It included the Outer Courts, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Within the temple, God instructed the people to use candles for light—ten “golden lampstands” with seven candles on each one. That’s 70 lamps burning pure olive oil. These beautiful menorahs were huge, each made of 75 pounds of gold.

In the New Testament, God has chosen to place His Light not on a golden lampstand but in the hearts of His children. Why? So His light can be seen by the lost.

And when does the light within you shine the brightest? When you suffer—because when believers endure hardships, more light escapes. When a believer suffers, people pay attention. They watch how you respond. They see how you handle fear, grief, anger, and loneliness, and sometimes that causes them to say, ‘I need whatever he has.’

“Now we have this treasure in jars of clay, so that the extraordinary power may be seen to be from God and not from men. We are pressured in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed. We always carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be revealed through us” 2 Corinthians 4:7.

We are not golden lamps. We are jars of clay. God put the LIGHT of eternal, infinite truth inside brittle people made of clay. “Cracked Pots,” one writer calls us. The more cracked the pot, the more light escapes. Clay is opaque, after all. No light escapes a solid clay pot. But the more broken the clay is, the more useful it becomes as a light source.

While searching online for a “terra cotta wall sconce” (a fancy way of saying a clay pot with a candle inside), I found the picture above. Clay is not see-through. But light can pass through holes in clay. Just as God’s light passes from you to others through the “holes” left in you by your suffering.

When you suffer, God will use you to light the way for everyone around you. God’s light shines brightest when it shines from inside a broken pot.

Dear God, give us courage and faith when we face trials, and remind us that we are the light of the world. We are available and willing—use us to help others find Christ.

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LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION. 2 Corinthians 3:1-3.

While teaching as an adjunct professor, I applied for a job as a full-time professor. I was required to provide letters of recommendation. I decided to ask two former students, both high achievers who loved my teaching, and had been admitted to the college’s graduate school after I wrote glowing letters on their behalf.

When it comes to teaching, a recommendation from a former student is arguably more meaningful than anything another teacher might say. After all, fellow teachers know me only as (I hope) a cheerful and helpful co-worker, whereas, my former students have actually seen me teach! To put it another way, my students are PROOF of my teaching—their lives are evidence of my work in the classroom. Their LIVES are letters of recommendation.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses these issues. He knows traveling teachers carry letters to prove their credentials. But he does not.

“Do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves ARE OUR LETTER, written on our hearts, recognized and read by everyone. It is clear that you ARE Christ’s letter, produced by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on stone tablets, but on tablets that are hearts of flesh” 2 Corinthians 3:1-3.

What better evidence is there of a preacher’s ministry than changed lives? Who cares if your church has rockin’ music, great lighting, and fog machines? So what if you run 5,000 on a Sunday? If your Broadway-production-values are siphoning members from small churches in the area, then all you’ve done is injure vital small churches. Where is the value in that?

We must reach the UNCHURCHED. The gospel should SAVE SOULS. Your preaching should CHANGE LIVES, heal families, restore marriages, set the addicted free, and teach the weak and corrupt to live lives of power, integrity, and courage.

The evidence of our ministry should be changed lives. We should make a difference, one person at a time. Whose life can you touch for God’s Kingdom? Whose life is a letter that recommends your ministry?

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STINK, STANK, STUNK. 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.

Previously I described a co-worker who always smelled amazing. We now have another employee whose presence is equally noticeable, but the aroma not nearly so pleasant. He gives off a bad smell that is just medicinal enough to force everyone to tolerate it. If I walk up the stairs, I think “Oh, Mister Jenkins must be here today,” because the entire floor smells like he just walked by. I may NEVER see him. But I can smell him and it is overwhelming. I suspect it is advanced but painless tooth decay, and rather than go to the dentist, he just swishes Listerine around all day long.

What scent do you give off?

Is it a fragrant aroma or something else? The Bible says believers bring a fragrance into the room.

Is your aroma one of grace and peace and joy? Or is it judgment and anger, sugared-over with some churchy medicine?

“Their mouth is full of CURSING and bitterness” Romans 3:14.

Is your mouth full of cursing? Is that the fragrance you want to give off? Or do you speak words of hope and encouragement, of gratitude and joy?

“Thanks be to God, who always … uses us to spread the AROMA of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing AROMA of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing” 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.

Dear God, use us to spread the fragrance of Your beauty, joy, peace, and grace. May we be so filled with your light and love that people are drawn to us so that they can then find YOU. Fill us with JOY and GRATITUDE over all that You do for us every day.

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