The Plumbline

The one who plants few seeds will have a small harvest. But the one who plants a lot will have a big harvest. Each one of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. You should not give if it makes you unhappy or if you feel forced to give. God loves those who are happy to give. And God can give you more blessings than you need, and you will always have plenty of everything. You will have enough to give to every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:6-8) How many 'seeds' have you been given? Does each seed only bear one other seed? Not hardly! Seeds have a way of multiplying when they are planted. God doesn't expect us to keep the seed of faith we have been given, but he asks us to 'plant it' deep within the hearts of those around us. Why? It will grow and be able to produce more seeds of faith that can be passed on to others! There are many types of 'seeds' God gives us, faith being only one of those seeds. The seed faith that gives from a heart of ...

May my spoken words and unspoken thoughts be pleasing even to you, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14) John Maxwell reminds us, "People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude." What does your attitude say today? Does it reveal your tiredness or frustration? Does it shine forth with encouragement and hope? We actually 'choose' our attitude, but we would like to blame our attitude on others or circumstances. If it is bad, we blame it on the bad stuff happening in our lives. If it is jubilant, we attribute it to the good stuff going on around us. Spoken words reveal much, but our unspoken thoughts often come across in our attitude. Don't believe me? When was the last time you looked at your posture when you are in the depths of thought about something that is giving you a bit of trouble? How is your posture when you are well-rested versus weary from a lack of the proper rest? Your posture might just reveal a bit of that 'inner thought' att...

Have you ever had a bumper crop? One of those "I cannot find enough pots to store it all" kind of harvests? Probably about the last thing you want to hear at that moment is that there is more to come! You are having a hard enough time just finding ways to use all you have already been blessed to receive and now there is more to come? That's how it is with God's generosity, love, and grace - it just keeps on coming until it overflows from our lives into the lives of others! There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit! ( Romans 5:3-4 ...

Give freely, and you will profit. Help others, and you will gain more for yourself. (Proverbs 11:25 ERV) My pastor asked this question this weekend about giving and serving - do we give and serve without caring who gets the credit? It is quite telling to actually take inventory of each action behind our service to see if we are secretly desiring some credit or acknowledgement for what it is we have done. If we are honest, we might not always serve without the intent of getting the "credit we are due".  As my pastor aptly said, the generosity of Jesus is what actually provides our ability to relate to God - for without that generosity, we'd still have sin between us and the throne of God. There is nothing accomplished within the church that doesn't stem from the first act of generosity. The simplest example of generosity is revealed in how we care for one another. How do we care for each other? One of the ways we can reveal our sincerity in caring is through th...

Stingy:  Reluctant to give or spend; not truthfully generous; meanly or ungenerously small or scanty.  There are all kinds of "givers" in this world - some give with a genuine heart; others give with strings attached; still others put on the show of giving, but their heart is definitely not in it.  Scripture tells us God loves a cheerful giver - one who has learned to give without strings attached and from a genuine desire to meet the needs of another or to share the blessings of one's own life so another may be blessed.  As Solomon lays out these principles for living which are designed to give us a good foundation for our lives, he spends a little more time reminding us about the attitude of heart we are to exhibit.  He seems to focus a great deal on this idea of "genuineness" or "truthfulness".  Maybe this is because the degree of truthfulness we have in our daily dealings with others is comparable to how well we are being truthful in our relations...

God delivers generous love, he makes good on his word.  (Psalm 57:3) I latched onto something this morning as I was reading from the Psalms - David's absolutely trust in God's love and his faithfulness to turn to God when he was in a place of trial.  David is attributed the "compliment" in Scripture of being a man after God's own heart.  I daresay that there is no higher "compliment" or "attribute of acclaim" that carries such an importance as that. David sums up his trust for God in this statement above - God delivers...he makes good.  These two key understandings on David's part are what hold him together in tough times.  He has come to experience the generosity of a God that gives out of a heart without "strings attached".  David is aware that God has a "readiness" to his giving and that he also has a "liberality" in that giving. He is ready to give - even before the words are spoken acknowledging the nee...