For the past 40 days, I've had a great opportunity to encourage a friend in writing every morning. This process will continue for 10 more days. Today, I woke up with the prescence of God and just felt compelled to share day 40. I pray that you are blessed by the reading of it just as much as I was blessed by the revelation
When you life is a gift, it is your appointed time to give God the glory. No matter what stage you may find yourself to be in, keep your hands open and up. Enter every opportunity without conceptions, restrictions or personal agendas. Don’t tell people you are going to help them and simultaneously think in your mind how you are going to benefit from the situation. That is internal negativity that is designed to destroy your purpose. If you have personal needs, you may find yourself tempted to do otherwise. Yet, your job is to be the gift and receiving will be done when God sends divine gifts your way. Throughout the bible, God required the sacred part of your gift—your first fruits. This offering needed to be untouched and pure. This is even more of a confirmation of what God requires.
Proverbs 18:16
A man's gift makes room for him And brings him before great men.
The word gift means mattan in the Hebrew which is derived from the word mathan meaning to give, put, set, applied, appointed, execute.
The word great means gadol in the Hebrew which means great, bigger, exceedingly, great men, mighty and great, nobles.
God is saying are you looking to get or are you looking to give? If you are stuck or life just seems to be dealing you a bad hand, it’s time to evaluate your giving process. Put giving into your daily practice. This bible verse is quoted all the time. I’ve heard it and said it when I was at a point of evaluating my gifts. I used to think that the atmosphere should automatically change because Gina arrived and my gifts were ready to be used. Yet, God wasn’t looking for my haughtiness or my capabilities. Pastor Saed often says, God is looking for your availability and He will do the rest. Since God gave me the gifts in the first place, He doesn’t need me. He needs my heart that is not tainted with vanity. He needs my right motive. He needs my renewed mind that is not conformed to the world’s way of thinking. He needs me in the right place at the right time so that I can be used to give Him the glory. He needs to use me to bless someone else. He may have gifted me, yet my gifts are not for me.
This may be common sense or duplication of thoughts for many. Yet the world is frustrated right now. We may get confused and want to use our gifts for ourselves. It’s impossible to do so for a long period of time. We will dry ourselves out and drain ourselves to the point of no return. We will then blame it on our circumstances, when it is really us. We’ll wonder why our gifts are not making room. We’ll wonder why we are not making the right connections in our business or workplace. Yet, with the wrong motives, we enter every situation like a stingy man arriving to a birthday party for someone else and refuse to give gift to the person that is being honored. We want this selfishness to expand and will knock over anyone that is in our way. We want to rise to the top. Yet, we are heavy because we have not released our gifts properly. I’m looking at the man in the mirror for my self-check. How about you?
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