Excel in Giving

Excel in Giving

Today's Scripture:

But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

2 Corinthians 8:7, NIV.

Today's Word:

Paul said in Second Corinthians, “I want you to excel in the gracious ministry of giving.” He could have said, “I want you to excel in business, excel in sports, excel in medicine.” That’s all good. But he said, “What I want you to really be great at, what I want you to excel in is giving."

I’ve made up my mind I’m going to live my life as a giver and not a taker. If you get around me, I better warn you, you’re going to get blessed. I’m going to study ways that I can be good to you. I’m going to encourage you. I’m going to buy your dinner. I’m going to be good to your children. I’m going to help make your dreams come to pass. See, when I come to the end of my life, I don’t want people to say, “Oh yeah, Joel had that big church, didn’t he? He wrote some nice books.” No, I want them to say, “Joel was a giver. Joel made me better. Joel brightened my day. Joel was good to me.”

Let that be your desire, too, to leave people better off than when you met them. Excel in the grace of giving and glorify God in all you do!

Prayer for Today:

Father, thank You for empowering me to do good to others. Show me ways that I can be a blessing to others and honor You in all that I do in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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God’s Word Is Right and True by Rick Warren “It is impossible for God to lie.” (Hebrews 6:18b NIV) You can trust the Bible because it’s doctrinally correct. You can trust the Bible because it’s theologically correct. You can trust the Bible because it’s accurate regarding morals and ethics. But you can also trust the Bible because it’s historically accurate. Why does that matter? The Bible tells us in Hebrews 6:18, “It is impossible for God to lie” (NIV). The only reason the universe works is because God is true all the time. If the Bible has one lie in it, it’s not a godly book. It’s not from God, because God can’t lie. Psalm 33:4 says, “The Word of the Lord is right and true” (NLT). That means the Bible is right and true about salvation and history. How do we know the Bible is historically accurate? The same way you judge any other history: The Bible comes from first-person accounts. A historian would look to see if the historical information is written down by someone who saw it, whether it’s secondhand or a fable, written hundreds of years later. The Bible is primarily eyewitness accounts. Moses was there when the Red Sea split. Joshua was there when the walls of Jericho fell. The disciples of Jesus sat in the upper room and saw the resurrected Jesus appear.   Biblical history was recorded with extreme care. When the Old Testament copyists — the scribes — would copy scrolls from one to another, they’d do so like a photocopy machine! They had a long list of rules they used to make sure it was copied exactly. They had a specified number of columns throughout the Old Testament that would always be the same. Even the lengths of those columns had to be the same. They knew how many of each letter was in each book. For example, they might have known there were 1,653 As in the book. If there were 1,654, they’d throw the scroll away and start over. Archeology proves the Bible is true. Archeologists have been able to dig up the places mentioned in the Bible. For example, they’ve found the Pool of Siloam where the blind man was healed and portions of Herod’s temple. The Hittite Empire is a great example of how archeology has shown us that the Bible is historically accurate. For generations, historians had no record of the Hittites’ existence anywhere else. Yet in the early 1900s, an archeologist discovered 10,000 clay tablets in the Hittite capital. Now everyone knows that the Hittites once existed. Talk It Over Why should it matter to you that the Bible is doctrinally, morally, and historically correct? What would you say to someone who says that God’s Word is not historically accurate?