Giving

Father God has been teaching me about giving; His giving to us and our giving to others.

A few days ago, my wife talked with our young grandson, we’ll just call him Tim. After their conversation, my wife tells me that Tim heard from his mom that PopPop (me) could use some help cleaning out my garden beds and he was willing to help. My wife told Tim that it was very nice of him to offer his help and maybe PopPop would reward you. Tim perked up and asked, “Do you really think he would reward me, grandma?”

Well, Tim had told me several days before that there was a new toy he wanted to buy and he was saving up his money, so I though he wanted to earn money to buy it. I asked my wife what she thought I should give him and she told me that it doesn’t matter that he was just wanting to help his PopPop; just give what I thought would be appropriate; he would accept any reward I give him.

Now I’m starting to wander, was Tim’s original thought, help his PopPop and not expect anything in return or did he want to earn money to buy his toy? I was fine either way but not knowing was bothering me. If he would have told me something like, “PopPop, you know that toy I told you about that I wanted to buy? Could I help you clean out your garden beds and you pay me for it?” This way we could negotiate a fair price for his work. If I knew he only needed just a little more money to buy his toy, I would probably agree on the higher price. But now, if I give him less then what he expected or maybe needed to buy his toy, he might not think well of his PopPop.

The next day, again I asked my wife what would be a good price to pay him and she just gave me that look and said it doesn’t matter, he will accept anything I give him. Seeing that this was going no where, I went outside to do the yard work I was planning to do that day. I kept thinking about this. There is nothing wrong about Tim earning money; it teaches him how to negotiate fairly and openly with others. If Tim was doing it as a gift, then he would not want anything in return.

This started me thinking about Father God giving His only begotten Son, Yeshua (Jesus), to us.

There has been something else that has been going on that has taught me more about this giving thing. I have been giving things to my sister; what I thought I was doing was giving out of love for her. She has been taking it as owing me back for it, an obligation. The more I did, the more obligated she felt to me. So, what I thought was a good thing actually turned out to be a bad thing.

Again, I thought about Father God’s giving to us.

Have you ever given to someone out of kindness of your heart; just because you wanted to? After the gift, they wanted to pay you something or do something for you in return. How did it make you feel? For me, it belittled that gift somehow. Had they simply just said thank you, I would have felt a lot better doing it.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Father God gives to us because He wants to, because He loves us. He does it not because He wants something from us in return. In fact I believe Father God is hurt by us feeling we owe Him. The Bible teaches us that God is love.

Now to the next thing; do you love others because God first loved you or because God first loved you, do you love others? Believe me, I have really struggled with finding a difference in these two questions, but the more I thought about it, there is a difference. Loving others the first way, I think, is like owing God for loving you. The second is seeing God as love and sending His love to others.

I have great difficulty in knowing how to give to others in the second way. I pray to Father God to show me how better to do this.