FBC Daily Devotional – June 14, 2021

Well, a good Monday to you. Can you believe that we are almost halfway through at the midway point of the month of June?

Which of course is the midway month of the year, and it is incredible how the time goes by.

I hope you have survived well the little heat wave that we've had this past several days.

But, you know, I'm not going to complain about it at all. We do too much complaining in the middle of the winter when it's so cold, and then when we get some heat,

I think we need to just enjoy it, be grateful for what we have. But anyway, well today we read a passage in Luke, and then also a couple of verses in the book of Proverbs.

Most of the time I focus on these longer passages, but today I want to just zero in on one of the verses that we read in Proverbs, Proverbs 11.

I want to zero in on verse 25. And it says this. It says,

There is one who scatters and yet increases more, and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty.

Now on the surface, you could read this verse and think in terms of your material or financial wealth or whatever you have, you know, in that regard.

And it's certainly applicable in that way, and that would be a primary way of applying this. That there is, there's one who is very generous with what he has, with his resources he gives to help other people financially, materially, and yet he keeps getting, he keeps receiving.

It's a very simple understanding of that, right? That the Lord entrusts to those who are generous so that they have more to give.

He gives them that gift of generosity, and so he provides for the capability of that generosity.

And then on the other hand, the other half of the verse says there's one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty.

So I think you're about, think you're about the person who is just really, really stingy and is, hmm,

I don't, I don't want to criticize the person who's always wanting to get a deal. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get a fair deal, but I'm thinking more of the person who wants to, wants to squeeze every dime out of a person that he can.

So let's say, for example, here's a lawn job, and you know, this person, you want somebody to do your lawn.

This guy comes and says, man, the size of your lawn, I'll do it for $45. You say, man, that's, that's a lot.

No, no, no, no. I'm not, you know, I can't do this. You got another person who comes and says, I'll do it for $45. He says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not gonna pay that much money. He says, okay, I'll do it for $40. And you say, you say, $25 and you got a deal.

He says, $25? $25? It's hardly worth my time. I, you know, $25?

You say, take it or leave it. And finally the guy says, well, you know, I need the money.

So, okay, I'll do it, you know, and he does the lawn and you give him 25 bucks, grudgingly.

Shame on you, man. Shame on you. You got two different, you got two different people telling you it's worth $45 to mow your lawn and you, and you, you get the guy down to $25 because he needs the money.

He's gonna just, he's gonna do it anyway. Do you think he likes you? Do you think he appreciates you?

No, no, no. I think this, now, I hesitate even sharing this because it'd make me sound like, whoa, whoa, tooting your own horn.

I don't mean it like that, but I had a kind of a similar situation like this happen a couple weeks ago where a young guy came by the house and I'd say he's probably 20, something like that, and he, he wanted to mow the lawn for me and he was obviously somewhat handicapped, you know, like mentally disabled or something, and I'm thinking, oh boy,

I wonder what my lawn's gonna look like after he's done it. And, and he says, I'll do your lawn for you for $25. And now

I have a, I have a fairly good sized lawn and sometimes when I can't do it myself, somebody else do it and they have a couple of zero turns and, you know, they,

I pay them 35 bucks and they're probably giving, they're probably giving me a deal and doing me a favor. So this guy, he's gonna use my push, he's gonna use my push more.

He says, I'll do it for you for $25. I said, no, you're not gonna do it for $25. He said, yeah, $25, $25.

I said, no, no, no, no. It's, it's, that's not enough to do this lawn. Oh, no,

I'll do it for $25. I'll do it for $25. So, okay, you can mow my lawn. So he, he mowed the lawn.

I did the trimming, he mowed the lawn, and when it came time to pay him, I didn't pay him 25 bucks. I, I think

I gave him 35 and sent him on his way. Now, why did I do that? Why did

I do that? Honestly, at the time, I did it because I thought the guy could use,

I thought the guy could use some help and, and that's, that's, that's all there is to it. But I'm thinking about a pattern of life here, not a one -off thing, a pattern of life where always trying to squeeze somebody out of everything you can get them.

So on one level, that's how this verse could be interpreted, but there's another way to apply this verse.

There is one who scatters and yet increases more. One who gives of himself. He gives of himself.

One who brings blessing to others. He just pours himself into the lives of other people and, and he does so not as a means of being enriched himself, not as a way to be blessed or to get a blessing, but he does so that, that he might enrich the lives of other people.

And on the other hand, there are those who, like the stingy person with his money, he's stingy with his time and his resources or his energies and his help, his ministry to others.

And he doesn't, you know what I mean? He doesn't do anybody else. He's just all about himself. And that one's life ends up in poverty.

Doesn't have many friends. Even those he has, they don't go out of their way to help him because after all, what's he done for them?

So the bottom line here is, let me encourage you to be, to be one who scatters, scatters generously and watch how the

Lord blesses you and, and gives you so much more in the blessing, in the giving.

So let's, let's pray and ask the Lord to give us that kind of a heart. Father, I do thank you today for this challenge because we all probably need it.

We all can tend to be selfish sometimes in one way or another. I pray that you would teach us to be generous, generous with our time, generous with our resources, generous with our energy.

We might be a blessing to others. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right.

Well, have a good rest of your Monday. Hope your week gets off to a great start and it'll be a pleasant one for you.