Giving is a process more than an individual action, attitude, or activity. Giving begins with receiving, of course, else I would have nothing to give. Jesus says, “It is more blessed to give than receive” because receiving is a blessing. Giving is more blessed than receiving. Giving takes receiving up a notch and pushes through the process toward abundance. Receiving, giving, and receiving more produces abundance in other places and people beside myself.
Giving is a heavenly activity that God shared with man, the pattern Moses saw on the mountain, and the purpose and principle of how covenant operates. Men do not need to figure out a great plan for worship, sacrifice, offering, and its rewards; God never asks men to design worship or sacrifice but to release worship and sacrifice through the pattern, principles, and process He established when He covenanted with them.
“God so loved that He gave…” God sees giving as a process as well, and He understands that giving produces purpose. God made a decision, the basis of love, knowing that love would cost Him everything as a process of getting what He wanted; but when God receives the “increase,” the process of giving will produce something bigger and better than it would have been without sacrificial love. Jesus made everything better than it was in Eden!
We are never going back to Eden because Eden isn’t the measure of God’s purpose. Eden was the beginning of a process. Man received so man could learn to give so that through man God would get even more through the giving of man. The giving process has eternal written all over it. God is a Giver but His giving never diminishes Him. What God gives never diminishes God but certainly produces eternal abundance in place and people.
Today, I read a statement by some well-meaning person that all God wanted from Creation was us. The problem with that statement is that it is wrong. It is also akin to gnostic thinking that all things physical are evil and all things spiritual are good, or at least, Gnostics would agree with the initial statement. The basis for this statement was a diatribe against prosperity but God has never hated or despised His Creation! And, God intends to have all of it for the rest of eternity. Creation isn’t eternal. It had a beginning. But God created something that giving infuses with life.
Jesus redeemed All. He created All. He is restoring All. In other words, Jesus now has power and process to quarantine the universe of the Fall, and there will be an eternal condition in which everything is right where it belongs because of God’s giving.
The Process of Giving
God includes me in the process of giving. He is a Giver. He wants me to be a giver as well. He wants to empower me so I can receive and release. Every aspect of my life should receive and release life. Every revelation I receive from His Words should season my words, like an offering and sacrifice, with salt so that my words give more than they take.
God’s patterns for giving certainly include receiving, but they take receiving up a notch. The firstborn that opened the womb for children, lambs, calves, and livestock belonged to The Lord, redeemed by offering and sacrifice. Firstfruits of the fields were given to God. Several discussions and examples of this principle are available in history. God wants increase to start the process of giving with the end result of abundance. This superimposes the natural order with supernatural power investing life in the chaos and entropy of nature without giving. Giving expands and breaks the limitations of curse.
The process of giving set into place in Eden didn’t end when Adam and Eve blew their opportunity to fill the entire planet with the kingdom of God. The pattern continues with substitution, thus the firstborn was redeemed through substitution, and the giving became redemptive. Looking forward to the Cross, looking up to the Cross, and looking back to the Cross, God’s giving process fully succeeded in producing eternal life and abundance through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Receiving life sets us up to release life. Receiving revelation sets us up to release revelation. Receiving authority sets us up to release authority. Receiving power sets us up to release power. Receiving continues to set us up for releasing because God puts something into us in order to release something through us.
In turn, giving never diminishes us when giving is part of the process.
