53. You Owe Me

On Sunday morning at church, I got up and gave a word. Now I want to expand upon it.

In essence, this is what I said:

I want to share something in the vein of how Jesus told us, “Give, expecting nothing in return.” We often think of this in terms of money, but it’s so much more than that. It’s our time, it’s our love, and God has called us to pour ourselves out, keeping no record of the things we have done for other people.

Sometimes we give because we still think that somehow “being good” is helping to “buy our ticket.” But the real heart of it is, we are to give, including “give, expecting nothing in return,” because that is the heart of God.

The Word says, “Be imitators of God as dear children (Ephesians 5:1). When I read that, I think of a small boy and his father. Some little boys, they absolutely idolizes their daddy. They look up at him like he can do no wrong, and they say, “Dad, when I grow up, I just want to be like you.” And that’s the heart that God wants to nurture in us—and teach us to nurture in ourselves: “God, I want to be just like You.”

When we give, expecting nothing in return, the resource we are to draw from is the Lord Himself, because if we draw from ourselves, we will run dry very quickly. But if we draw from God, not only is it an endless supply, it is a powerful supply that changes things around us.

Yesterday I opened up Jonathan Heppner’s poetry book, where light meets darkness. The thing that really struck me this time were not Jonathan’s words but those of a poet he was quoting, the great Persian poet Hafiz. This is what the quote said: “Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.”

This is where I left off in my sharing on Sunday, but I realize in retrospect that it’s not easy to pass on this personal revelation without further explanation. To fill in the blanks: I was in a place of feeling drained from giving, and my own resources seemed well-near depleted. I needed to refresh my connection to a bigger source. The reason that the sun can keep on giving its warmth and energy is that it is, in a sense, self-existent: its power comes from within itself, and although one day it will burn out, for now it is a picture of God.

When I read those words about the sun, a great sense of the presence of God enveloped me, bringing tears and washing away fatigue and self-centredness. I saw once again that as long as we truly give “in Jesus’s name” and all that that really means (and we don’t know the half of it!), the power of God will rest upon us in ever-increasing measure. We may not “light the whole sky,” but we will bring the glory of God into our daily lives, impacting those around us in miraculous ways.

“Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you …and his glory shall be seen upon you.” (Isaiah 60:1-2)