It was never yours to begin with…

All Things Come from God

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But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from you, and we have given you of your own.

1 Chronicles 29:14 (WEB)

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“Boy, that’s a lot of money. I could do something with that.”

I’ve said this to myself many times while cutting a check for my tithes & offerings.

Which is, of course, the wrong attitude to have.

Fortunately, I never acted on those impulses to cut out God from my giving and keep it for myself.

That would be robbery of the stupidest order.

But my heart still tries to lead me astray at times. And when it comes to writing out giving checks, I do sometimes think about what else I could buy with that money.

The better attitude is the one King David displays here:

Humble thanksgiving that God would bless His people so that they could give so much back.

Or, as one of my mentors put it:

“We are blessed to be a blessing.”

That could mean time or encouragement or any number of things. Whether it’s money or not, it’s always a blessing of our own resources, shared generously.

This passage was where King David was praying after he had assembled everything in order to build God’s temple.

Yeah, Solomon built the temple, but David gave him a big, BIG head start.

There’s a lot in there about doing everything you can to help out the next generation.

Perhaps the strangest reality of this verse is that everything we have, everything we can offer to God and more, comes from God.

So when temptation comes to keep the offering, I can simply remind myself:

“It was never yours to begin with. It’s always been God’s.”

— Ricky Ketchum

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