Day Four of “Getting Ready for Christmas” (Read Isaiah 9:1-7, my sermon text for this week).
We know we need to be givers, but we also know it’s difficult to give. How do you make a giving decision? Once you’ve decided to give, where do you give your money?
Like most everything else, I believe a giving decision should be made after looking at the Scripture and spending time in prayer.
God makes plain in Scripture that we should be givers. God loves cheerful givers.
I suggest that you spend time listening to God–listen in prayer and seek to find where and how God wants you to give.
I hope you’ve decided to give to please God and to bless people.
Can I suggest some places where you might give extra money this Christmas?
1. Local charities. St. Tammany and the Northshore has a number of wonderful charities where you can entrust your money. If you would like a list, I will be glad to help you with suggestions. First Baptist Church supports many of these ministries and we feel they help make a difference in our community.
Be sure that you give to charities that handle money correctly and well.
2. Benevolence needs. Each year our Christmas Eve offering is used for benevolence needs. Giving to this offering becomes a blessing to people with needs all year long.
3. Foreign missions. The International Mission Board supports almost 5000 missionaries and their 4000 children in dozens of countries around the world. You can give to meet this need by giving for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. This offering supplies one-half of the budget of the International Mission Board. Through this offering, you will help people around the world hear the life-giving Gospel message.
This is written, like most of Lagniappe columns, from the perspective of FBC Covington. Wherever you live, I hope you will be a giver. This is a natural time to make a difference in ministries and people’s live.
May God bless your Christmas and your giving for the needs of our community and the world.
4 Responses
But we shouldn’t limit our giving to just this time of year.
No, we should be consistent givers. At this time of the year people are looking to give extra money. I always try to give suggestions of how they may use their money in the best way possible.
How to make a giving decision is an important subject. From the perspective that all we have is from God, it is a matter of stewardship. Like the story of my phone number, we enter the world with a hand, four fingers; we clench our four fingers into a fist of five with our opposing thumb and yet we take nothing; all that we need in the Lord has been provided in His Rest (7), we are equipped as members one of another to face evil. Evil is not flesh and blood, but it inhabits flesh and blood. It seeks allies through deception and pride. It takes a Body equipped from God’s Rest to overcome evil with Good, shining His Light into the darkness.
We saw this week Nelson Mandela celebrated, living a life to achieve the values we saw our forefathers write (Jefferson) in our Declaration of Independence from England, 1776. ( We should not forget the bravery of Frederik Willem de Klerk, known as F. W. De Klerk, was the seventh and last State President of apartheid-era South Africa, serving from September 1989 to May 1994.) We saw the Thomas Peter Lantos award, Democrat Congressman from Hungary died in office, who was the only survivor of the Holocaust to enter U. S. Congress standing up for that Light, as brought to us in 1776:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security….
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends…
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” 56 Men signed the document.
Ben Franklin said something like: We either will be victorious and stand together or all hang together.
Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, Old Hickory, is credited for the formation of the Democrat Party. He was a man who championed individual liberty and the Union. He denounced a closed undemocratic aristocracy. He was an Indian fighter who adopted or took in Indian children. Yet he enforced the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the year after he took office (1829-1837). This act opened up 25 million acres to white settelers. The “Five Civilized Tribes” (were deported with their slaves; many were Christians, as they were assimilating under the Washington/Knox Plan into our society; force move resulted in perhaps more than 25% dying, Trail of Tears) to the Oklahoma Territory (Indian Territory 1834 – 1907). He himself owned slaves. He expanded the spoils system or political patronage system we despair over today locally and nationally, “dance with the one that brung you.”
Today we should remember December 7th 1941. We overcame evil with Good. We did not turn the other cheek, we did not seek revenge, just sought a halt to hostility, protecting what we had built, maintained and protected. What is true in the Macro is True in the Micro.
I labored to share this to illustrate what God inspires in His Ideals we generationally grow to understand and often forget the context of the message along the way. I have always appreciated your diligence to discover and share the context of “The Message,” its profoundness and Genius at the time written. Much advice is given from the position of a secure/insulated blanket or lofty perch. We are not here by accident and our sense of security in the flesh is vanity. Yet we are Commanded to be: members One of another in Christ.
May the Holy Spirit lead the giver, your advice today be taken to know the stewardship of the offering, and the Scripture intended for giving to the poor used for a building fund and budget be realized in its Scriptural context. AMEN
Blessings
Thank you.