You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14:14
“Now, there is this magnificence about the world of prayer, that in it we work out not our own bare and naked and scarce salvation only, but our everlasting inheritance, incorruptible and undefinable, with all its unsearchable riches. Heaven and earth, time and eternity, creation and providence, grace and glory, are all laid up in Christ; and then Christ and all His unsearchable riches are laid open to prayer; and then it is said to every one of us — Choose you all what you will have, and command Me for it!”
Alexander Whyte (1836-1921) Scottish preacher in Lord, Teach Us to Pray: Sermons on Prayer (Vancouver: Regent, 1998) 9.
Think for just a moment with me today about how generous our God is. We come to him with nothing. We come to work out, as Whyte so eloquently put it, “our own bare and naked and scarce salvation.” Then notice what happens when our scarcity meets God’s abundance. His riches are unsearchable and available to us.
Think now of movies where treasure-seeking characters discover a huge chest of valuables. Their first tendency is to stuff their pockets and to devise plans to hoard it for themselves. That’s our bare and naked and scarce sin nature showing its ugly head.
If we want our lives to exhibit Christian generosity, try working our your salvation along these lines: Realize you have nothing, that you come to Christ with nothing, and that in Him have discovered unsearchable riches. What will you do? Don’t hide them for yourself. Share the riches with everyone you meet. Point them to Christ where the riches are found.
That is generosity! Sometimes our giving is spiritual treasures and other times it takes on material form. Always it flows from the humble realization that everything we possess — everything — was graciously given to us by our generous God who offers us the riches of His kingdom!