God Economy

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Hahaha… I am happy! More to JOYFUL! A little sad because Sunday time in church and with other brothers and sisters is so limited and now I have to come back to my assignments BUT it is still AWESOMMEEE!

TODAY I get to bless a couple of people! Finally get a chance to bless PenangBro a little with taufufa after all that he has done for me and also, I was kinda “compelled” (by God of course!) to bless this new sister whom I pray will join us in our exciting journey and that she will catch the fire and be on fire with us too! Woohoo! xD

Man, now I feel like jumping all around with joyyyyyyy! XD

I’m still learning about God economy and to actually practice it. It’s not easy you know. Even lately a devotional talked about it is better to give than receive and ever since Friday I was rather bothered about offering. It is the first time I encounter having to give offering in cell group, it is the first time I hear of having so many pledges in the same span of time. It seemed like almost everywhere money is talked about and somehow I feel as if I am going to get broke in church.

In the traditional mentality of Chinese in general money is really, really important to the point where everyone MUST save as much as we can including buying the cheapest thing and eating the cheapest food despite having sufficient funds to sustain ourselves for ten thousand more years (I know I am exaggerating but you get the idea). Money is held on so hard that even in churches where this mentality is being practiced, lots of things are limited and lots of things cannot be enjoyed.

So, coming from this kind of background, I find it hard to spend just a little more on things which are not necessarily “needed” what more to say to spend on others. When talking about buying birthday gifts for others, my mum would always say, “Other people’s birthday just buy RM5 things enough already. Student mah, don’t have so much money, no need to buy anything expensive.” It is true in a sense but what if we have the money? What if the friend is a really close friend and we want to express our love to them? How can we express our love to them by just buying a cheap gift?

People always say that the intention, the heart is the most important thing BUT the gift reflects the heart, you see. You want to express your love to your girlfriend, you will fork out more money, sacrifice an amount to show that you really love them. If you are seriously broke and have totally no income and you try as much as you can to come up with a card for them, it means a lot. But if you are rich and you just buy a small box of chocolates, it doesn’t really show it. Do you get what I am trying to tell you here?

Somehow this reminds me on the part of the bible that talks about faith and works. It is in the book of James. Let’s not digress. I will talk about this on another day. Well, offering. In the same way we express our love for our friends by forking out a little more money to get a decent gift that they like for them, we express our love and gratitude to God with the amount of offering we give. Other than giving just to get blessings, the most important reason of offering is to show our love and gratitude of what He has done, the tons of blessings we receive in lots of areas and consequences that we face in life which God has carried us through. Those money we give as offering is nothing compared to what God has given us so far.

Besides, God’s economy works unlike how the world economy goes. We are blessed by God, so we thank Him by giving a part of our income and then God bless us even more. Weird right? But it is true, that way God does things. So we can never short change God.

So this is one of the things I learnt these few days. Blessed times. Now, back to assignments! Or I should take a real short nap first ;P