Money vs. Love

I was reading in Desiring God (John Piper) about love-based giving. It occurred to me that there are two commodities in "the church" at large. One is money - that stuff that goes off to God knows where and is intended to do tons of good for complete strangers we won't meet until we're in Heaven. Often I've heard it said "Well, you should give cheerfully, but even if you don't want to, you should anyway 'cause we could really use the money." While this comes off sounding very "honest and to the point," it carries with it a VERY wrong message about God's view of giving. It, overall, makes it sound like giving from the heart is supposed to be hard or something.

But I realized something tonight: if the LOVE (the other commodity in "the church") in one's heart is genuine and overflowing for those the money will help, then it's NOT hard at all to give it! Why? Because it's a love-based gift, not a duty-based gift. Where does that LOVE come from? You can't make yourself Love a perfect stranger deep down in your heart of hearts - only God can put that Love within you. So I say, stop trying to Love everyone around you, and just see how God puts HIS Love in your heart instead... It's a long process, and really it begins with recognising His Love for you, but the final outgrowth of that Love is one that causes you to see others in a whole different light than you did before. It might even cause you to hand a $20.00 bill to the struggling couple in the row ahead of you in church one day so they can pay off their electric bill, or otherwise just have a fun little date for once without worrying about how to pay for it. It might cause them to realize that Jesus Lives inside those who Love and serve Him, and it just MIGHT cause you to realize the same thing :D

Heh. I LOVE "Christian Hedonism" as it's popularly called ;)