For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord's people. – 2 Corinthians 8:3-4

Today's Scripture Reading (May 8, 2024):  2 Corinthians 8 & 9

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  And on the sixth day, he did something extraordinary.  He created man. I am purposefully using man here because I sometimes think we misunderstand Genesis. According to Genesis 1, man is not a gender; sometimes, we must recognize that. Genesis 1 says that God made man (literally "Adam") "male and female" (Genesis 1:27).  Man was something special in the eyes of God. They were his children, a creation he could pour himself into like we pour ourselves into our own children.

He loved his male and female creations. He had great expectations of where this relationship would lead. In God's plan, he would give man the Gifts of the Spirit. He would bless them, and in return, man would possess an apparent and pleasurable relationship with their creator. God wasn't looking for a pet. He delighted in and desired us, but he hoped we would also delight in and desire Him, not because we had to, but because that is what we wanted to do.

God delighted in Adam.  He desired a relationship with them and wanted his creation to delight and desire him, but it couldn't be a matter of force.  So, God did something that most people have wondered about ever since. He gave us the ability to choose.

We chose wrong. That act of choice, started by Adam and replicated by every person since Adam, except for Jesus Christ, broke the relationship. Increasingly, Adam's daughters and sons went their own way.  They forgot about the God who created them, delighted in them, and desired them.  But God never stopped delighting in and wanting us.

But God still had a plan.  He would choose a group of people, call them the children of God, and bless them, and in turn, they would delight in Him and desire Him and become conduits of the blessings of God to the rest of the world.  Because God blessed them, they would bless all his children, all races and countries. But Israel, God's chosen children, refused.  They seemed to have a heart that wandered; they acted as if they were better than the other races.  Even when they received God's blessing, they seldom passed it on.

However, God's plan wasn't finished yet. To his formula of Blessing and Gifting, he would add grace.  He would send his son to die on the cross for all of his children, and then they could choose to come to him. And he would bless them, and they would bless the world. They would be the physical body of God in the world, and he would call them the Christian Church.

It is incredible how many Christians seem to miss that point.  We are the conduits of God, the chosen way that God has for blessing the world. There is nothing accidental about the treasure you have, the talents that you have, or the time that you have. If you have accepted Jesus into your life, then the next step is to understand that you can trust God, surrender what you have to him, and that he will bless you as long as you are a conduit for him to the world. The Macedonian Church understood that. Paul writes, "For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints" (2 Corinthians 8:3-4).

Even though they didn't have much, even though Paul didn't seem to have any expectation that they would be able to give, they still pleaded for Paul to allow them to be what God had created them to be, to the best of their ability; Conduits of God 

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 10