Giving Back

“Hey kids, come look at this.” My mom held out a check for $100. “God provided for our grocery shopping this week.” I grew up seeing God provide regularly for my family. We were a big family growing up on a small farm. Every farmer knows that he has no control over how his crops fare. He is dependent on the Lord, completely. And quite frankly, our farm income was never enough. But it honestly never concerned me, growing up, because I was taught, and saw daily, that God would provide.

I began to realize as I grew older that God used His people as the principle means of providing for each other, whether that was my grandparents giving us money one month or my parents giving my grandparents money the next, or a church unexpectedly giving us their old 12-passenger van when we had twins and outgrew our station wagon. Another thing I realized after becoming an adult was that God’s family takes care of each other socially, emotionally, and spiritually, too. We can’t make it on our own – we are created to need each other.

A beautiful verse about the New Testament era church is Acts 4:34: “There was not a needy person among them.” Of all the people in the world, those who are part of the body of Christ should be the ones who never have need of anything.

We have so many needs as human beings. Sometimes those are financial, such as in the case of the college graduate who doesn’t have a job yet and is struggling to meet his payments. Other times, those are social, like the young couple who haven’t had a night out in weeks because they don’t have anyone willing to watch their six-month-old baby, or the lonely single or widowed woman who doesn’t have a companion at home. Then there are emotional needs, like those of the teenagers who need older friends to love and listen to them, people who have already experienced that hard time in life. And people have real spiritual needs, like the man who is held in bondage with the sin of pornography and needs to be taught and held accountable as he deals with it.

Why are these needs being unmet? Why is anyone in the church struggling alone in any of these areas, or others? What is our excuse for not taking care of each other?

First, I would offer that we just don’t know each other well enough to know what needs we have. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus said. Real love is sacrificial, like God’s love for us. It gives up one’s own time to spend with others in the body of Christ. It is willing to be both vulnerable with its own heart and bold to ask hard questions about how others are doing. For instance, it takes asking questions like “How are things going spiritually for you?” instead of a more simple “How are you doing?” This takes sacrifice, for some more than for others, but that doesn’t make it any less important for those who are less naturally social than others.

Then, the culture of the United States has trained our already self-centered hearts to focus even more on our own individual needs and the needs of our families exclusively. Paul wrote, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Our lives are busy, so we have got to be intentional about looking out for each other. A single person should never be alone at home on a Friday night, lonely and discouraged, while a couple with kids are tired and frazzled and wishing for time alone together on the same night. That is inexcusable. The couple should reach out to the single person by asking them to spend quality time with their precious kids (not to mention the quality of the relationship built with between the adults in the situation) and the single person should be giving their time and heart to the family by offering to love the kids and the parents for the evening. Serving has got to stop being a duty and needs to become the desire and joy of our hearts, to the point where the first thing we think of is “How can I serve?” not “What can I do to relax?” Furthermore, often we don’t even plan or think ahead, and being intentional means asking on Tuesday or Wednesday what we can do on the weekend instead of letting time slip by until it’s Sunday morning and we’ve wasted our Friday night and Saturday on ourselves without a purpose at all.

And finally, we are just stingy as a people. God commanded the children of Israel in the law to give, remembering how God had always taken care of them in the past. The problem is that we are faithless. If we truly believed God’s promises connected with giving, such as Luke 6:38: “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you” (envision a basket full of grain), we would give more and more all the time. If we give our last $20 to a woman in the church who has no money for groceries, we’re not going to be left without a way to pay our other bills. If we give up our weekend for the family who is moving and needs our time to help them, God will take care of the study time we have given up for our test on Monday morning. We may “suffer” a little poverty in money, time, and energy when we give to others (like getting a B on the test because we didn’t study as much as we might have, or not being able to get our usual Starbucks), but there is nothing wrong with that. God is able and eager to pay back in His way and time everything we give up for Him and His people.

I grew up being provided for by God’s family. As an adult, I’ve been privileged to be part of churches whom God has used to provide for me in many different facets. Am I giving back? Are you giving to God? Are our eyes open? Are we active and alert, every day looking out for the needs of the people around us? As the church of Jesus Christ, we have got to be this way. Otherwise, we are just like the world. We should never, without exception, be aware of the needs of others and ignore them or let them slide to the side because we forget about them in our business. When we act like this, John asks, “How does God’s love abide in [us]?”

“Freely you have received, freely give.” Let’s not deceive ourselves into believing that because we smiled and exchanged “how are you’s” with our brothers and sisters on Sunday and prayed for each others’ great uncle on Wednesday that we are really giving. Our God gave Himself completely to meet our greatest need of salvation and eternal life. What are we giving to meet the needs of others around us?