“More Blessed To Give"

"More Blessed To Give"

     Genuine service to God and people involves Christ-enabled devotion, effort, concentration, determination, and self sacrificial action.  However, the sensibility of one who ministers involves the sense of receiving while giving.

    "In the meanwhile, His disciples prayed Him, saying, Master, eat. But He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought Him ought to eat?  Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work" (John 4:31-34).

   Recall that this episode with the disciples occurred as a weary Lord Jesus sought rest upon a well, only to find opportunity to minister the Truth of God to a Samaritan woman (John 4:1-30).   He led the woman to faith during the encounter, and many others of her people believed when they also came to hear Him.  The Lord Himself was invigorated by the spiritual meal of which He partook in communicating with the woman, revealing again that genuine labors for God proceed from God.  Thereby we feel ourselves to be as blessed or more blessed than those to whom we minister.  "Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in His ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee" (Psalm 128:1-2).

    That which we do for God and others begins with Him, and is empowered by Him.  "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might" (Ephesians 6:10).  Again, we will feel the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical challenges that accompany the diligence we devote to ministry, in whatever form.  The joy and peace of Christ in His love, however, fills us with the sense of receiving grace in the very midst of bestowing it.  Our Heavenly Father privileges us to serve for His glory and the blessing of others.  He also empowers us and thereby causes us to realize that the best reception of blessedness occurs as we confer it to others.  The Lord Jesus taught and exemplified such blessed truth long ago, and He now dwells within us by His Spirit to constitute His joy as our joy…

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."

(Acts 20:35)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."

 (Hebrews 13:3).