Giving Really Is Better Than Receiving

​It is easy to become a greedy person, a greedy family, a greedy country, when you come to believe anything that you have is actually yours to begin with.

Jesus was teaching to a group of people one day. A man in the crowd interrupted Jesus and commanded him, "teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."

I’ll tell you, be careful interrupting Jesus; he is likely to come at you with some uncomfortable truth. And it will often come in the form of a story.

A story like this one:

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“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

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I love how Jesus started that story – “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.” Jesus is making it clear the harvest came from the ground and not from the man. So, whose harvest is it, then?

One of the big challenges of being a Christian is accepting that everything I have is a gift from God. And maybe the bigger part of that challenge is owning the responsibility that comes with the gift. The responsibility of transforming your life from a gift receiver to a gift giver.

I often say, I believe one of the bigger shocks many Christians will receive upon entering the gates of heaven, to include me, will be when God unveils a bit of accounting on us all. One side of the ledger will reveal all that God has give to one, and on the other side of the ledger will be the proportion of that which one gave to others.

God is a gift giver not to create collectors of gifts, but to model how to give all that we have been given to others.

There are many things that stand in our way of that model. Not the least of which is keeping up with the Joneses. I will give you and your children, God, once my standard of living looks like the standard of living my friends around me have.

There is entitlement. I have worked hard for this. Fought for it. I have earned the right to decide what I will keep and what I will give away. Nothing stands in the way of ‘others’ focused thinking more than ‘I’ focused thinking.

Then there is isolationism. The idea that I need to first have what I need to survive before I can ever begin thinking about what someone else might need to survive. (The sad truth of that one is we often mistake our need to survive with our desire to thrive, and often, thrive quite nicely).

But God said, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself.”

Each morning, I thank God for as many things as I can think of that he has given me. I use that language specifically. I don’t say thank you for what I have but thank you for what you alone have GIVEN me.

Thank you for giving me my sons.

Thank you for giving me the gift of writing and communicating.

Thank you for giving me a job that allows me to feel fulfilled
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Thank you for giving me this chance to share how grateful I am for all you have given me.

Were I to thank God for what I have, it would be easy for me to believe what I have is mine. But thanking God for what he has given me is my morning reminder that I am the generous recipient of many gifts. Every single thing I have has come to me by way of a gift.

And not because God wants me to be a grateful receiver (even as much as God loves gratitude), but because God is trying to groom a generous giver.

It’s said that it is better to give than receive. That is not a matter of principal, but it is actually the nature of the holy spirit that lives within us.