Episode 1. A Father's Generosity
Generosity is a quality that we admire – even love – in other people. But – here’s the thing. How often do you think about God’s generosity. Well? Is He generous … or not? Beginning of …
Generosity is a quality that we admire – even love – in other people. But – here’s the thing. How often do you think about God’s generosity. Well? Is He generous … or not?
Beginning of another week and yes the year is marching on. All the things we have to do to earn a living and just live a life, it’s so easy to be focused on the ‘doing’ that we forget about the ‘being’. We’re called to be human ‘beings’ not human ‘doings’ although judging from the way that many people live their lives you can be forgiven for getting the two mixed up.
One of the reasons I love getting up really early in the morning is that it’s so quiet and still. In the summer months I open the door to my study and sit and peck away at the computer preparing these programs. I love the stillness, I love just stopping and breathing in the fresh cool air of the morning and thanking God for being alive and the sweetness of the air in my lungs.
A new day. Fresh challenges. Things to do, of course, but being, knowing God, knowing how wonderful it is to be alive and have another day to know Him and serve Him and love Him. That’s an awesome thing. Being is the place where I draw most of my strength for doing.
As Paul the Apostle wrote almost 2,000 years ago, he said:
In Him we live and move and have our being.
And that’s why last week and again this week on the program we’re taking a look at the incredible Father heart of God. Just stopping amidst all the noise and the clamour of life just to be. Just to hear the strong gentle heart beat of God. To hear it for ourselves.
And one of the things that I hear when I hear the heart of God beating is the generosity of God. You know, I’m a dad and I can tell you this, God made dads, he hard wired us to want to bless our children. I can’t help myself. I want to see my kids blessed.
Not that I’m a perfect father every day because I’m not. It’s not that I don’t get cranky and grumpy sometimes, I do. But we dads, 99.9% of us want to bless our children. And you see it’s this nature of fatherhood that God’s tapping into when He reveals Himself to us as God the Father.
Jesus radically, heretically in the eyes of many, called God His Father and He used this word Abba which literally means ‘dad’. So to Jesus, ‘God’ equals ‘Dad’. Strong and loving and hard wired to bless His children.
I want to read to you this beautiful passage, it was Jesus explaining how Dad is wired, how God the Dad wants to bless us. Have a listen and as you pause let Jesus own words sink deep, deep into your heart. This comes from Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 to 11:
Ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will opened for you. For everyone who asks receives and everyone who searches finds and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened.
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give them a stone or if the child asks you for a fish, will give them a snake? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?
Don’t you love it? Jesus is directly reaching into our understanding of what it is to be a good parent. He’s directly reaching into our parental understanding of the fact that of course we love to give good things to our children. Of course we love to bless our kids.
I mean think about being a parent, its years of hard grind, the sleepless nights. A friend of mine in South Africa, Jonathan, his little baby is just a few weeks old and I don’t if you use technology but he’s one of my friends on Skype so that we can call each other over the internet to talk from time to time.
And one of the things that this Skype application lets you do is have little mood messages and Jonathan’s one of those people who regularly updates his mood messages and the week that I prepared this program his mood message said, “No-one told me the sixth week would be so rough. Fortunately it’s week seven now.” Anyone who’s had babies knows exactly what Jonathan is talking about.
And then, of course, the kids grow up, We have to teach them over and over and over again the same thing. “No, don’t do that. No, don’t rub your food in your hair. No, don’t do this.” Over and over. And then before long they’re teenagers and fortunately by then they know it all. And then they become adults by which time we parents are pretty well bankrupt from bringing them up and we’re old and we’re grey.
Bringing up children is an incredibly tough gig and yet all along what we really want to do is to bless them. When you think about it that way, this desire to bless our children, is pretty much counter intuitive isn’t it? But Jesus knows that it’s in us and so in teaching us what God’s like He appeals to our understanding of this hard-wired passion that we have to bless our children, to be generous towards our children:
Is there anyone among you if your child asks for bread you give them a stone or if your child asks for a fish you’ll give them a snake?
And then, then He steps this parental passion of blessing and generosity up a huge notch. From a weak and imperfect and fallible parent to a perfect God. He says:
So if you then who are evil, you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?
So what’s Jesus saying here? God’s just like us only a gazillion times better. God is generous. God has a passion to bless His children just the way we parents do only much, much better. And we discover Gods abundant generosity over and over and over again in Gods word. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3 says that He’s already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.
Ephesians chapter 1, verses 7 and 8, we discover that He’s lavished His grace on us with all wisdom and insight. There’s a picture there of this overflowing, lavishing in abundance, completely over the top, more than enough. Luke chapter 6, verse 38:
Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed out and shaken together, running over will be put into your lap for with the measure that you give will be the measure that you get back.
John chapter 10, verse 10. My favourite verse:
The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.
Here are just a few of those statements that God is a God of incredible generosity. To Abraham He said, “I will make you exceedingly fruitful.”
My friends, sometimes we look around and it’s hard to see the generosity of God. That’s because we’re racing around, so busy, too busy to notice it. But when we get still before God in the cool of the morning, completely alone with Him and just breathe in the sweet air that He’s given us and start to read His word for what it is. Start to see Him for who He is, what we discover is a God of great generosity.
God is generous towards His children and sometimes when the going gets tough our response is to pedal harder and harder and to become more and more exhausted. We worry, we fret, we carry on instead of placing our faith in God the Dad, our Father in heaven whose very nature is to be exceedingly generous towards us. Like any father to help us with the things we’re struggling with, to see us grow and develop and be blessed.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?
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