Teresa of Avila: Let us not grow weary in generous service for that’s how Jesus lived among us

“How little is all we can do for so generous a God, Who died for us, Who created us, Who gives us being, that we should not think ourselves happy to be able to acquit ourselves of part of the debt we owe Him for having served us, without asking Him for fresh mercies and favours? I am loath to use this expression, yet so it is, for He did nothing else during the whole time He lived in this world but serve us.”

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Interior Castle, translated by the Benedictines of Stanbrook: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, excerpt from the Third mansion, chapter 1, section 14.

“We may have little, but we do a lot when we use it in service to others.”

Gary Lauenstein in The Redemptorists of the Denver Province blogpost for 4 December 2013.

“The Bible gives a two-sided portrayal of wealth: It is good, but it can seduce us to sin. The solution, according to New Testament scholar Craig L. Blomberg, is to freely share it. In Christians in an Age of Wealth: A Biblical Theology of Stewardship (Zondervan), Blomberg who teaches at Denver Seminary, argues that sacrificial giving is an essential part of good stewardship.”

Craig L. Blomberg in Christianity Today: Interview. December 2013 69.

I just got my copy of Craig’s new book mentioned above and would commend it to everyone!

“When we faithfully remember and recite God’s acts of love and care we corporately re-live the experiences that have shaped our histories and identities. By remembering gratefully–whether special moments or overall trajectories–we see more clearly the ways in which we’ve been blessed. In this sense, gratitude is often a backward-looking practice–but it also shapes the future in that it allows us to build on the past in hope and confidence.”

Christine Pohl, Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) 43.

“Stewardship is not humanity’s way of raising money, but rather God’s way of raising people into the likeness of His Son.”

Doug Carter as cited on “The Stewardship Bookmark” developed by Chris McDaniel. Visit www.stewardshipbookmark.org to view it in PDF form and to order them for your congregation, small group or the constituents you serve.

On his site, McDaniel notes:

“Growing godly stewards is one of the most pressing issue facing the Church…The Stewardship Bookmark is designed to be a quick-reference tool that churches and ministries can give their constituents as a practical “takeaway”. Ideally, this new tool will compliment a stewardship series, class or workshop or can be given out in a regular mailing.”

I personally endorsed it and commend it to you!

Q. So you say the purpose of earning and saving is giving. To what or whom should we give?

A. First you should give to yourself–food, clothes, shelter–what moderate living requires. Second, you should give to your family and employees providing for their needs. Third, if there is still money left, you should give to the household of faith–other Christians. Fourth, you should give to all men in need.

Keith Drury’s paraphrased answers to contemporary questions from John Wesley’s sermons. Answer adapted from Sermon 50: The Use of Money.

“We are annoyed when people approach us with urgent demands that disregard our own needs and feelings. That’s why clerks in stores or agents who offer various kinds of services get cranky with customers and clients. After twenty or thirty people demand things of them and show no concern about the clerk’s or the agent’s human needs, the clerk or agent becomes a bit testy. Today we remind ourselves to give that clerk or agent a compliment and a bit of thanks. And we want to approach God with praise and gratitude, not just with a shopping list of requests.”

Gary Lauenstein in The Redemptorists of the Denver Province blogpost for 2 December 2013.

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18–20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, “as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). In another place he said, “The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). “The pleasures of life” and “the desires for other things”—these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are gifts of God. They are your basic meat and potatoes and coffee and gardening and reading and decorating and traveling and investing and TV-watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become deadly substitutes for God.”

John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Wheaton: Crossway) 18.

“That man is most blessed, who receives his daily bread with gratitude and thankfulness from the hand of God; and he who does so, experiences a pleasure that exceeds description.”

Kalakaua (1836-1891) was the last reigning king of the Kingdom of Hawaii, as recounted by Edward Parsons Day in Day’s Collacon of Prose Quotations (International Printing and Publishing Office: New York, 1884) 345.

“There is no use of money equal to that of beneficence; with the profuse, it is lost; and even with those who lay it out according to the prudence of the world, the objects acquired by it pall on the sense, and have scarce become our own till they lose their value with the power of pleasing; but here the enjoyment grows on reflection, and our money is most truly ours, when it ceases being in our possession.”

Henry Mackensie (1745-1832), Scottish writer, The Works of Henry Mackensie (London: J.F. Dove, 1826) 32.