It Is More Blessed to Give Than to Receive

I’m going to tell you why I’m so happy. Because the hand of God sustains me. Amen. There you have an answer, and I can say it. And because he has always led me in victory, he is leading me, and he will lead me. Another reason I feel joy, my brothers and sisters, is seeing each one of you. Every time I see each of your faces—and at least with those of you I have had the opportunity to speak with and whose life stories I have been able to get to know a little better, whose achievements and some of whose struggles I have been able to learn about—that brings me joy. Because the mere fact that I see you here tells me that there is a God at work in you. And although the winds and storms may often roar and try to make the waves rise in an attempt to sink our boat, we can nevertheless remain firm because the Lord is the one who goes with us at all times.

You know what? It also gives me joy that, although there are often people who go through life without keeping God in mind, God is so good and so merciful that, even so, God walks behind that person. And the person goes around doing whatever they please, and God is like, “Okay, you’re doing your own thing, but I’m right here.” You were about to fall into a hole, and suddenly God somehow kept you from falling into the hole. Maybe you twisted your ankle, but you didn’t fall into the hole.

And those who did fall into the hole, God helps them get back up, because the Bible says that even if a person were to fall seven times—the part about the hole was my addition—seven times, what? God will lift them up. And start counting: Which one am I on? Which of the seven times am I on? Don’t worry; seven is a symbolic number. That means God is there. God is there, ready to help you whenever it may be.

Another thing that brings me joy, my brothers and sisters, is seeing how God is working in us as a church. I see the dynamics of these Wednesday services: you arrive, and when I see your faces, I know that many of you arrive practically dragging yourselves in. Some of you may even arrive not wanting to be here because someone wanted to bring you, and I’m glad that person brought you. And I’m glad that, even though you’re here with your teeth clenched, you’re here, because something is going to rub off on you. And maybe I just said that and you’re sitting there like, “Yeah, right.” Trust me. Something is going to rub off on you.

But even while I’m joyful about that, that very same joy sometimes makes me say to myself, “Wow, Lord, you’re going to have to keep intervening here, because we—meaning the pastors and the leaders of this church—we cannot carry the entire load by ourselves. You’re going to have to keep doing something beyond our efforts.”

I see how this service is growing, and I give God the glory for that. Many of you know that this is something we have been praying for, because it shows me that the church is becoming aware of how important it is to set aside time to pray, to seek God, and to gather together. Some people say, “Oh, Omar, your service...” Look, I rebuke that. This is not my service. If you hear someone saying that, tell them on my behalf, “Mm-mm, that’s not how it is.” This is a service of the church dedicated to God. The mere fact that I’m here leading it is, you might say, a side note; but if this is anyone’s service, it is God’s service. And all of us are the main participants.

But what we can see most of all is that God is working among each and every one of us. I want to draw your attention to something. From my pastoral perspective, when I see everything God is doing and all the things that can bring me joy, at the same time I can see the many challenges that lie ahead of us. And during these four weeks, my brothers and sisters, in which we have had the opportunity to commit ourselves before God and to give, we are talking specifically about offerings. My desire has been for all of us to understand that this is not a church that is merely asking for money all the time. I don’t want you to misunderstand. Because that is not the primary purpose of Congregación León de Judá. The primary purpose of Congregación León de Judá is to see God glorified through everything we do and through every person who makes up the church.

But at the same time, we recognize that precisely because God has placed that kind of calling upon us as a church, the challenge before us is very great. Every time I walk out that back door and see all those pieces of steel, I say to myself, “Wow, this is interesting—the way God is leading us.”

I wanted to prepare an illustrative chart so that you could get an idea of how things might develop, depending on how we understand what God is doing among us. Some of you will understand this chart the first time I put it up, but I’m going to take my time explaining it.

Look at this chart. I’m talking about projections for Congregación León de Judá—a first example. I’m going to explain the colors: blue—the blue bar—represents the pastors or the principal leadership of the church. The red bar represents the people, and when I speak of the people, I mean the needs of the congregation: counseling needs, the need for children’s services, youth services, family services, educational needs, the spiritual need to live an abundant life as God intends, and the need to be part of a church that can provide that kind of nourishment for these people’s lives. There is the need for fellowship among people who feel alone, who have no family and need a group of people with whom they can connect. There are the needs of people who come with immigration situations, people who come with a desire to get an education, or to see how we can [no audio]

As the church grows, represented by that red color for the people, the needs grow. In fact, I would venture to say that the demands grow. Because then people begin to demand, “Well, if I come with this need, I demand that the church solve it for me.” So that is the red color.

What is the green color? The finances, the cherries, the avocado, the ripe plantains, the rice and beans and pork chops. That is the green color. Now, I wanted to show this, so to speak, as a progression of years, from 2011 and 2012 through 2014. I couldn’t fit another one, so I stopped at 2014. It’s not that I have little faith. I know I could take it up to 2020 or something, but I only went as far as 2014.

Imagine, if you will, that as we continue to grow as a church—the red color, with more people continuing to arrive—we as a church fail to develop the conviction that, in order for the church to function, it needs my energy and my material and financial resources. Because the church is not going to wait for a millionaire to arrive, convert, and become a member here; nor can the church wait for someone to win the lottery and then give the church a tithe of the lottery winnings. Since the church cannot wait for that, and will not do so either, we know that much of what we can do depends on how we commit ourselves before God to contribute to that work.

Now, imagine that by 2010 the membership grows—glory to God; that’s a good problem to have, right? But if the number of people increases, if the number of needs increases, if the number of issues, problems, dramas, and melodramas people bring increases, but the cherries, avocado, and pork chops do not increase—and if that doesn’t add up, there will not be more pastors and leaders who can care for that whole group of people—what is going to happen? If by 2013 the membership keeps growing but the cherries remain the same, and we cannot recruit more pastors to attend to that group’s needs, what is going to happen? If next year, glory to God, the membership continues to grow exponentially, but the avocado and pork chops do not keep coming in, and as a result we cannot recruit more pastors or leaders who can address those needs, what is going to happen? You tell me: What is going to happen? You tell me, young lady: What is going to happen?

That is exactly what is going to happen: we’re going to be left speechless. Because we’re going to be burned out, ladies and gentlemen. We’re not going to be able to keep up. This is what is going to happen to us. Thank you, Jonathan, for not letting me take this out. That is what is going to happen to us. The fish is going to swallow us.

But if, as the years go by—look at this other example—we are here in 2011. If next year the membership increases and the people become aware of the vision that much of what happens here will depend on how we work here and how we work over here, so that this group can be built up as it should be; if we then commit ourselves and this bar continues to rise so that this other one can rise and sustain the bar in the middle; and if, the following year, that level of commitment continues to grow stronger and we do not have to depend on financial campaigns, but instead people give because they love the work of the Lord, then that green bar can continue to grow. The pork chops, avocados, and rice and beans can continue coming in, and in that way we can continue supporting a pastoral staff and a solid, healthy, richly blessed leadership who can support the needs of this group, and so on. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?

It is only an illustration, my brothers and sisters, to let you know that what lies ahead is great. It is not merely about constructing a building. As I have said on many occasions, we are talking about lives that will be impacted by the love of God, and workers are needed who can support that work from various perspectives. And it is not, my brothers and sisters, that we are asking you to take off your ring and put it in the offering basket. We are not asking you to take out your car keys and house keys and put them in the offering basket. All we in the pastoral leadership are trying to communicate is that we all need to understand that whether many of these things can happen will depend on how we commit ourselves to the calling God has placed in our hearts and how we contribute to it—not only with our prayers, with the fasts we may undertake, and by simply coming to and attending church, but also through how we contribute to that work.

I tell you, my brothers and sisters, every time I talk about this, my knees start shaking, because I know that this is a very delicate and sensitive subject. Many people have been abused because of it. Many people have been turned upside down, so to speak, and squeezed for everything they have, and then left lying there. But that is not the intention of this church. The intention of this church is that we may all grow to the stature of the man or woman God wants us to be.

What we want to see is families coming through those doors when they are on the verge of kicking one another, but when they arrive here, suddenly, first of all, the grace of God takes hold of that family. There are counselors who can speak with that couple; there are counselors who can speak with that couple’s children in order to help them and restore the family dynamic. Someone arrives who wants to study, and all they have is a fifth-grade education from their home country, and suddenly they can come here and connect with various resources so that they can move forward in life. We want to be able to enter different sectors of our community in order to make a difference, in order to be light.

And not only that, but may God continue using the ministry of Congregación León de Judá to impact other ministries around us, my brothers and sisters. Congregación León de Judá is not only about us being shut within these four walls; Congregación León de Judá reaches beyond them. Because wherever you go, you take Congregación León de Judá with you. And you can make a difference wherever you go. Wherever Pastor Roberto goes, he takes the name of Congregación León de Judá with him as well.

But as we have been reading, my brothers and sisters, there is something that, when you love the work of God, it is as though it comes out—it comes out of... When someone has done something good for you, what do you do? You look for some way to return that favor, right? And if it was something very significant—I am not talking about someone saying to you, “Oh, look, I felt led by the Lord to give you these $20 so you can put gas in your car.” “Oh, amen. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, for doing it that way.”

But if someone does something extremely, tremendously significant for you, you will go out of your way to try to find a way to return that favor to that person. The same thing can be seen in our relationship with God.

When God does something very significant in our lives, and we do not have this attitude of wanting to grab God, turn him upside down, and take everything he has, only to leave him lying there afterward while we walk away with the benefit we obtained, God is not going to deal with us that way. It is very difficult to grab God, turn him upside down like that, and shake him. I think he will do it to you before you do it to him.

But if we know how to conduct ourselves in that relationship in which God does something for us and we, out of gratitude, out of love, because we are devoted to him, have to do something in response—in order to let God know, “God, look, I want to show you how much I love you by doing this.” And there is not just one way; we have many ways to show God that gesture of gratitude, but out of love for him we can—we can respond to him with everything we are, with everything we have.

I ask something of God, my brothers and sisters, and with this I will close. My desire is that, through everything we are doing as a church to create, to awaken awareness in every member of this church, we may come to understand that in giving there is a much greater blessing than in the mere act of receiving. And that is a mystery found here. That is part of God’s law.

When the book of Acts says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” it is there for a reason. Receiving is good, of course; all of us like to receive. We are blessed when we receive, but the blessing is much greater when we give. When you give from what God has given you—even if it is a word, even if it is a gesture of affection toward someone, even if it means making a financial commitment for a period of time and saying, “Look, Lord, for this many days I am going to bring you this.” In fact, let me tell you, I hope that after this fourth week we do not say or think, “Okay, the five weeks are over, so now I’m going to go back to giving one dollar as an offering. Starting next Wednesday, I’m going to go back to giving one dollar.”

You know what? I set a challenge for myself: from now on, if I can keep giving my twenty-dollar offering, I am going to keep giving my twenty-dollar offering. I am not going to say that I will dream of writing a check for one hundred thousand dollars; I do not think my faith has reached that level yet. And I thank God for the person who did dream of doing that, and I recently sat down with this person, and he explained to me the full context of how that change came about in his life, and I have to acknowledge that God was in the midst of it.

But God deals with different people at different levels. God deals with you however God wants to. God is working on me, my brothers and sisters—I am telling you, I am opening my heart to you as a pastor. God is challenging me at that level of my finances, challenging me to dare to believe in him, to believe that he is the provider of everything in my life. And I hope that each of us has learned the lesson of daring to believe him: that when we give to him joyfully and when we give to him with a sense of commitment, saying, “Lord, I am doing this for you. I am not doing it because the pastor is asking me to or because the church is asking me to. I am doing it because I love you, because I love your work, because I love this church, and because I have been blessed through this church, I want to bless it so that this church can continue blessing others wherever you lead us.”

If we give with that understanding, look, it will not be so hard to put something in the basket. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to call me: “Pastor Omar, I want to talk with you about this.” That is what we are here for. I believe we are going to reach the point where we will have more pastors, so that if I cannot keep up, there will be someone else who can talk with you. And I pray for the day when that happens. But for now, if you have any questions or doubts, call 617-541-4455, extension 13—or, if not, you know God’s number; call him.

Brothers and sisters, do you understand what I have been sharing with you? I truly hope—I hope in God—that none of you leaves here thinking, “Oh, all they are doing here is squeezing greenbacks out of everyone.” No. If you leave here with that thought, you have been listening with your right ear—or your left.

Listen to the voice of God, my brothers and sisters. God is challenging all of us. I am in the same boat as you. God knows that there are times when it is hard for me to loosen my purse strings too. And God is testing me in that. And I know that when I respond to that, I will see God’s blessing. I am not saying that I will see it financially, no, because God’s blessing can come back in many other forms.

Next Wednesday I am going to tell you a testimony. Well, not a testimony—a testimony/prayer request that I want to share with you. So I will leave you with that for now—to be continued once again.

Let us stand, my brothers and sisters, and let us pray. Beloved God, I thank you once again. Lord, I close these four weeks with joy in my heart. And I hope that my brothers and sisters are feeling the same joy from knowing that each one of us is part of a wonderful work that you are doing in our midst.

Yes, Lord, I declare it to be so: you want to use each and every one of us—even those who think they have nothing to give—to build up your work, Lord. Your Word says it very clearly: the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, and you are looking for workers to labor in the harvest. You are looking for workers to contribute to the advancement of the work in that harvest.

And so, Father, I beg you—this is my prayer, Lord, as the pastor of my brothers and sisters; this is my prayer before you, Lord—that these weeks we have had to reflect on this dimension of our being able to give, to contribute financially to your work, and to understand that dimension of faith, Lord, of being able to believe you—that when we give to you, you are able to address every one of our needs and provide for each one of them, Jesus.

I ask you, my God, that tonight something may be sealed in the hearts and minds, in the spirit of each of my brothers and sisters, and, Lord, that you move us into that dimension of a faith that surrenders itself completely to you, Lord—a faith without reservations, without conditions, without questioning things, but surrendering ourselves to you with the simplicity of a child and believing you, Lord, in everything you say, in all your promises.

Father, I ask that your blessing accompany us now to our homes. Be with us, Lord; protect us on the way home, and tonight, my God, allow us to have deep, peaceful, restorative rest. May the anxieties arising from the different situations we may be facing, my God, not rob us of the opportunity to regain our strength, Lord. And tomorrow, if you so allow, my God, may we rise with a new perspective on life, Lord, and be able to take hold of everything tomorrow may bring and do it in your name—not in our own strength, but in yours.

I declare your blessing over each of my brothers and sisters, Lord, over every one of them, so that when they walk out through those doors, they may feel your presence accompanying and strengthening them at all times. We bless your name, and thank you, thank you, a thousand thanks, Lord, for this night. We ask all of this of you and surrender everything to you, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen. And amen.

Brothers and sisters, greet one another.