Don't Give Only When It's Convenient

In our times, in many Christian circles, giving has become something mechanical, something one uses to manipulate God, almost as though forcing Him to bless us and provide for our selfish and materialistic purposes.

A beautiful and profound doctrine about generosity toward God and others has become something crude and harsh. It has been distorted and disfigured, when in reality it is something sublime and artful. In many churches today, giving is spoken of almost as if it were a matter of twisting God’s arm.

I do not know whether the saying “turn the saint upside down” is used in your country. Superstitious people take statues of the saints and literally turn them upside down to “force them” to perform the miracle they want. That is the spirit that sometimes drives much of today’s preaching and teaching about prosperity.

Sometimes we believe that if I do something very specific, then God will have to give me something in return. It seems to me that there is something almost superstitious and even akin to witchcraft in that. It is the same magical mentality that expects to obtain a result if the precise magic word is spoken, or if the required ritual is used to make the spirits respond to our manipulations. In the Christian world, we do it with good intentions, and we frequently hear this kind of false teaching about prosperity from other preachers.

But we must be very careful, because when spiritual things become mechanical and do not come from the heart, do not come from an ethic for life, do not come from a biblical and spiritual conviction; when they do not spring from a way of life, from a process of growing awareness through which we have gradually passed, which has spread throughout every part of our being and fills us evenly—mind, body, soul, spirit, everything—then it is like simply taking a hard stone and throwing it into God’s soil. What God wants, however, is for our entire being to be permeated by a belief, a faith, a deeply spiritual attitude, and then for us to give organically as a product of that attitude, so that God may be glorified.

We must adopt a constant ethic of giving, not only when we want God to do something in our favor. Rather, we should give because that has become our very nature. May God have transformed me into a cheerful giver, not someone who gives only when there is a need, or when it is convenient, or when he wants to get something out of God. Giving and sharing should be something that flows naturally from us.

It is like when the woman with the issue of blood came and touched Jesus from behind, brushing the edge of His garment. What happened? The Bible says that grace—virtue—went out from Him. Why? Because the Lord was a natural healer. Supernatural and natural. That is, healing flowed spontaneously, effortlessly, naturally from Him. And when this woman touched Him, because the Lord embodied healing, virtue went out from Him and healed her. Jesus did not even have to make an effort to heal or make a conscious decision about it. There was a spontaneous outflow of virtue because Jesus embodied grace and healing; His spirit consisted of them. The Lord applied to Himself the words of the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He has sent me to heal the sick, the blind,” and so forth. We too must be like that: spontaneous agents of life, healing, and grace.

We should be such that when people draw close to us, grace flows from us because we have absorbed the Father’s nature of being a natural giver. We must learn to give in season and out of season. Many times we will give when it is inconvenient or when we cannot get anything out of it, but simply to glorify our Father by being like Him. And that is the secret. When you learn to give in the realm of discomfort, simply because, you will be blessed in an extraordinary way. Your family and your community will be blessed. Everything around you will flourish because the nature of God will emanate unceasingly from you like a fountain of grace and blessing flowing toward others.