“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing — grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.” Joel 2:12-14
“When Yahweh next speaks, it is not in warnings of judgment but in tones of grace. Destruction is not inevitable if the people show repentance. God Himself and His character are now the center of attention, not the people and their wrongs…The reason for the command to repent follows in a litany of descriptors of God. Repentance is to be based on who God is, not on anything of the one who repents…God is not only a judge but someone who wishes to temper His judgment, if the correct response is forthcoming.
It is theologically vital to note the hesitancy, however, “Who knows?” While God has shown His graciousness in the past and one expects Him to be consistent in His actions and show graciousness again, one must not become either complacent or presumptuous. God is by no means obligated to show compassion and forgiveness. Each time it must be seen from the perspective of human sinners as an unexpected grace, one that is by no means deserved. God’s pity is here expounds by describing an actual blessing, a gift of grace…”
David W. Baker in Joel, Obadiah, Malachi (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006) 80-82.
God desires our obedience and, whenever we stray from that course, our repentance. His grace and compassion must not be assumed but must be understood as a gift. There are three implications we must not miss from this.
Firstly, when speaking about generosity, we must remind ourselves that far more money, God wants our hearts loving Him and loving our neighbor. So if our hearts are not right with God or with our neighbor, we must be reconciled before doing any giving (see Matthew 5:24).
Secondly, we must realize that all we possess is a gift of grace, and it’s nothing we earned or deserved, regardless of what the world says. God graciously supplies us with everything we have, so we can, in turn give good gifts to Him, have our basic needs met, and bless others.
Thirdly, we must not allow ourselves to become “complacent or presumptuous” in our walk with God. He’s not looking for perfect human conduits to enjoy and share His blessings, but rather obedient and repentant ones. We must not take His grace for granted.
My family enjoys an old board game one of my students alerted me to called, The Generosity Game. We love playing it together. One fun twist is that every time you land on a spot that gives you an opportunity to give, you have to draw a card to see if your heart attitude is right. If it is, you can make the gift, if not, you cannot. The object of the game is store up as much as possible in heaven, and that’s only possible when our hearts are right.
Let us avoid complacency and presumptuousness by rending our hearts with obedience and repentance. Then, and only then, can we practice generosity which comes into view as merely using all God’s abundant gifts as He has instructed us in the first place.