Reflections on God and Money: Giving & Funding (30)

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you… But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Only, they [they Apostles in Jerusalem] asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap… And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him…

Luke 6: 27-35, Galatians 2:10, Galatians 6:7-10, James 1:27 & 1 John 3:16-24

To pick up from yesterday, if Abraham did tithe more than once, did he return to Melchizedek? When Jacob fulfilled his promise to tithe, was Melchizedek still in Salem? The Bible is silent and I can only speculate but I suspect that their tithes were subsumed into generous lifestyles. Today, if Christians live as Jesus’ disciples, then issues about giving and funding become redundant.

In October 1830, a few weeks after marrying, George Müller gave up his regular minister’s salary because it came from pew rents and he thought it wrong for people to pay for seats in church. Instead, and for the rest of his life, he relied on voluntary donations and did not tell anyone except God of his needs. Even more remarkable, he later founded and ran orphanages in Bristol without asking people for money or allowing his staff to make public the facts and figures about their needs. I close this series on giving and funding with this passage from Müller’s journal, written six months after he gave up his salary.

‘Confidence in the Lord, to whom alone I look for the supply of my temporal wants, keeps me, at least whilst faith is in exercise, when a case of distress comes before me, or when the Lord's work calls for my pecuniary aid, from anxious reckoning like this. Will my salary last out? Shall I have enough myself the next month? In this my freedom, I am, by the grace of God, generally at least, able to say to myself something like this. My Lord is not limited; He can again supply; He knows that this present case has been sent to me; and thus, this way of living, so far from leading to anxiety, as it regards possible future want, is rather the means of keeping from it…’

I expect George Müller’s testimony represents a significant challenge to most if not all of us.

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Sunday, 26 May 2013

Giving & Funding (30)