Stewardship
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—Chapter 7—
TO LEND OUT:
Things That You Lend Out to People Who Seek to Borrow From You
“Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” —Matthew 5:42.
The things you lend to God, do not expect repayment from man. But if you are lending to man, do not lend out what you cannot afford to write off, for some of the borrowers are fraudsters.
Impatient Generation
I mentioned above how we naturally like when things happen fast. The technological breakthroughs have made it worse so that we are comparable to the ‘spoilt child’—whatever it is we want, we must have it, and we must have it right now; right here! This has had a tremendous influence over the way we handle spiritual matters. If we invest, we want the profit right away; if we sow, we want to harvest pronto. Life is not like that!
The impatience has resulted in unintended but manifest manipulative relationship with God. If it is faith, we want it to avail our wishes instantly, forgetting that there are many sides to faith:
i) Instant Faith—this is the faith that avails what we want promptly;
ii) Patient Faith—this is the faith that waits for God’s timing;
iii) Faith that Loses—this is the faith that pays a price for a proof of commitment.
I may not go into details here but suffice it to say that instant faith is what majority of believers want to identify with. We reluctantly accept patient faith while faith that makes us lose something is extremely unpopular, yet it is the faith that tests our commitment.
It is important to remember that there is faith unto receiving and faith unto losing. Sometimes we may let go of something to prove that our faith is so important we can lose up to and including our physical life for its sake.
It is Biblical to lend in this life and be paid back in this life, but it is equally scriptural to lend on earth and get repaid in heaven (Mark 10:30). It is also true that the repayment can be both here (now) and there (later). God decides.
In our generation, we have complete Old and New Testaments’ records of the things God did in the past. We read about spectacular miracles that happened to people who believed in God but were faced with difficult situations or choices. We identify more with the earthly victories than we do with ‘earthly failures.’ Today, if we praise in jail, it is on condition that God will do to us what He did to Paul and Silas (Act. 16:25); when we refuse to bow for the Nebuchadnezzars of this world, we do it on condition that God would respond the way He did for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Dan. 3:13-17). But the question is: are there things that we can give without expecting something back? That brings me to what I want to emphasize in this chapter—and it is not ‘good news’ as far as the popular expectations would have it:
i) Not everything you give out is a seed you plant in order to harvest;
ii) We must be driven by: ‘it is the right thing to do’ and not ‘here is an opportunity for me to be rewarded;’
iii) There are things that will be repaid in heaven—eternal life itself is a reward enough for all the good things done here on earth. That God has promised more tells us how immeasurably gracious He is.
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