The greatest face of God’s goodness is the love of people. When we walk in love, we demonstrate what it means to be the body of Christ. We are His hands and feet as we go and stop for the one He calls us at a time and touch them with His love. We are His ears as we take to listen, as being heard and listened to is nearest to being loved!  We are His eyes that with what we see we are graced to express His love and compassion towards those in need!

“Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your Father as his beloved sons and daughters. ² And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God, like an aroma of adoration—a sweet healing fragrance.”  (Ephesians 5:1-2 TPT)

Do you know that one of the glorious sufferings we face everyday is when we see one person who is challenged in his life and we cannot do anything because we seem to be without the capacity to do it?  But God Who is rich in mercy and abounding in love desires to express Himself through us that He opened our eyes to see the one in front of us.  “He woos us to be present in the present.”  Where we are is where He wants us to be,  for with Him, nothing just happens.  But because of our fast paced life, we have the propensity to bypass those in need who are within our reach.  We seem to have an allergy of being inconvenienced.  Oh well, no one can escape from this truth.  We are all guilty of this at one point or another but there is always a place to start and there is always one thing to learn and act one everyday.

In truth, He gave us the authority and resources to make a difference.  In reality, we do not have any excuse at all 🙂  We just need to see things from His perspective that HE IS THE SOURCE OF ALL!  In and of ourselves, no matter how rich one could be, without His love as the power-source of all, the effect of a kind gesture can only do much.  Anointing is the key.  It is when everything we say and do is intimately intertwined with Himself, only then our influence is the greatest.  We need to tap into His thoughts and ways and yield to His leading to be His hands and feet, His ears, eyes and voice.  That is what changes lives.

Believing on the spoken word of God is equated to having the fear of the Lord.  It is when our intellect is challenged and stretched because what we see is contrary to what we hear Him speak.

When we see our wallets with a little in it and we see someone in need and there is a strong prompting in us to give that cannot be ignored, what do we do?  Oh yes, it happened to me.  I was believing for my own financial breakthrough for my travel pocket money when I saw with compassion someone who was in a desperate situation.  My heart ached watching but I myself was equally in need.

I was asking the Lord for wisdom on what to do and when He unveiled my eyes to see and revealed Himself to me how He is willing and able to do it through, my mind was apprehended to tap into His thoughts and ways.  I was wooed to soar high above the snake line.  I was gently pushed by the wind of the Spirit to catch it as I spread my wings until my heart rested on the truth of His promise that “He is able to make all grace abound toward me, that I, always having all sufficiency in ALL things, may have an abundance for every good work.”  (2 Corinthians 9:8 NKJV)  The result is, YES, I yielded, surrendered, submitted and gave.

The fear of the Lord is when we yield and surrender to His Word allowing it to be the final authority in our decisions despite the situation we are in.  It is the beginning of wisdom.  It is our reverence to the revealed Word of God acted upon in spite of it bypassing our thought process. It is trusting Him and His spoken Word with all our hearts leaning not on our own understanding.  And as we acknowledge Him in all of our ways, SURELY HE will direct our paths.

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10)

Our knowledge of Who He is is what gives us understanding.  Knowing that He loves a cheerful giver, it surely changes our hearts from being selfish into being selfless.  It graces us to be other-centered than self-centered.  It allows us to experience the SELFLESSNESS of Jesus and what He did at the cross, when He suffered, died and resurrected, FOR THE JOY THAT WAS SET BEFORE HIM, having us reconciled back into the loving arms of our Father.  Oh how much He went through for you and me that is beyond comprehension!  That is the power of love unquenched.

He loves a cheerful giver. Do you know why? Because when we give, we become like Him, as He originally created us to be according to His image and likeness. He gave withholding NOTHING! He gave His ONLY Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to us because it is the ONLY way that we may be saved and restored back into Himself and relationship is what He is after for.

If you are a parent, isn’t it your delight to see your children doing the same things you do or looking the very way you look?  Oh how it gives you JOY to hear others talk about your children imitating you.  In the very same way, I can just imagine how our Heavenly Father rejoices over us with singing, looking at His revealed sons and daughters taking our rightful place, subduing the earth with His love, not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit.

Never despise the little things that we can do. Such “little” gesture with a big heart of love will go further and farther than we can think, dare, dream or imagine.  When we are rooted and grounded in the Love of God, we flourish.  We spread out our wings to fly, to soar, to break forth, to breakthrough, to breakout, to bud and bloom and bear fruit that those around us will taste and see what a Good Good Father we have, what a beautiful Savior we have, and what a faithful, abiding, comforting and empowering Holy Spirit we have.

One of the great results of our giving is when the receiver acknowledges and offers thanksgiving to God. That melts His heart ❤️.   The seeds of love that we have sowed into the lives of those around us SURELY will become the beginning of their NEW LIFE in Christ.  They are the “whosoever” whom God called to have in intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, Who came that they may have life and have it MORE ABUNDANTLY.

Intimacy with Jesus Christ makes us imitators of Himself.  Christians are called to be Christ-like.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”  (1 John 3:1)

Our Daddy God is limitless.  With our natural thinking, I may have lacked because I gave away what I was needing, but what I released into His hands, He caused it to multiply.  Truly “God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” (Galatians 6:7)  We will always harvest with much more than what we planted.

Yes, because He watches His word to come to pass in our lives, He gloriously made a way to provide for my travel with ten times more than I planted.  All glory to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, thank You, for lavishing us with Your great love that You called us Your beloved sons and daughters.  Thank You, Jesus, that You made The Way as You are The Way where there seems to be no way for us to become Daddy’s God’s children without Your finished work at the cross.  Thank You, Holy Spirit, for revealing to us the truth of Who our Father is and Who we are in Him, His beloveds.  Amen!

 

Photo Credits:  Erik Quianzon