Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Mother Teresa
Who owns Who?
We all probably know someone who’s got a lot of possessions in their life, but the irony is they think they own their possessions but their possessions can end up owning them. This is exactly what King Solomon was writing about in saying “There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt” (Eccl 5:13). Possessions are not evil in themselves but the pursuit of possessions and the love of money can be a root of all sorts of evil (1st Tim 6:10).
Open Hands, Receiving Hands
The fact is when we open our hands to give to those who have less than we do, our hands are open to receive back from God. Clinched fists cannot receive anything. They are closed to God’s blessings but only when one freely gives can God freely bless. We don’t give to get but we give to bless. If you rarely give, you rarely receive a blessing from giving. The Apostle Paul summarizes it by writing, “I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
What do you Own?
The Corinthian church frequently boasted about their gifts of the Spirit (for which they did nothing to receive them) and they were trying to show how they were superior to other believer’s, so Paul scolds them by asking them, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it” (1st Cor 4:7), so we too must ask ourselves, what do we have that we didn’t receive from God? Naturally, the answer is zero! Even our salvation was a gift (Eph 2:8-9), so there is nothing to brag about…except in the cross of Christ and in our good God.
Conclusion
Mother Teresa was one of the most benevolent human beings ever to walk the face of the earth and her godly wisdom led her to say that “God gives us things to share; God doesn’t give us things to hold.” God didn’t withhold His One and Only Unique Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16) so why should we withhold what we have when we see the needs of others being unmet?
