TRANSFORMING GRATITUDE: JOYFUL GENEROSITY

We are rapidly approaching Thanksgiving, and we hope the emptiness in your heart is being filled with a transforming gratitude. We continue our series, Transforming Gratitude in the prayer and hope that you will find a powerful grace alive in your soul.  Before we get to Thanksgiving Day, we will have our Thanksgiving Lunch at St. Johns on Sunday, November 23 and the Joash Offering. It will be a day of celebration of God’s goodness and grace!  Yet, as we move toward this offering, we have to ask,  “Why give?”  There is no real compelling reason to give, EXCEPT out of our gratitude for what Christ has done for us (this is a big exception!).  In God’s law, giving 10% of income was required for all believers.   In the New Testament, Jesus commends giving 10% but he does not command it.  Jesus wants us to look deeper into our hearts. He does not want us laboring under the letter of the law, but he wants us to be lifted into the joy and freedom of grace!  In our sermon Joyful Generosity, we turn to 2 Corinthians 8:1-9.  As the Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthians about fulfilling their commitment to a special offering, he highlights his experience of the Macedonian believers.  Even though they were poor, they exceeded his every expectation, and they did it joyfully!  How is this possible?  It was the power of grace in their hearts and lives!  It led them to a fullness that overcame every obstacle and empowered them with an undeniable joy!   God wants us to find this joy in our hearts as we give to him!  We pray that you will find the fullness of joy that will empower you to see the grace God has given you to be lifted from darkness and distress into the light and peace of his presence. 

2 Corinthians 8:1-9: ​¹ And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. ² In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. ³ For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, ⁴ they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people. ⁵ And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us. ⁶ So we urged Titus, just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. ⁷ But since you excel in everything —in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving. ⁸ I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. ⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.