Giving Advantage
Growing up with my parents both being in ministry and God calling me into full time ministry at a young age, I have lots of funny, incredible, hard, and joyful stories about ministering to people. One of my earliest memories of serving others was around Christmas. Our church was doing an inner city gift-giving ministry to families here in Memphis. I was about 7 or 8 and I had seen earlier that year these “Laser guns” at Walmart. You know the ones that came out in the 80’s and you pull the tigger one time and they make Sci-Fi sounds for like 10 minutes straight? As I type this, I am realizing that my parents might have manipulated the story I am about to tell you so that those Sci-Fi sounds never entered our home. It was just days before Christmas and we had all these presents in the back of the van headed to give them to a family in government housing. However, when we got there there was an extra young boy about 5 years old that we hadn’t known about. We did not have a present for him. I remember how distraught I felt standing in that doorway wondering what we would do. Then my mom pulled me aside to have what seemed at the beginning like a very weird conversation. She said “Ryan, you know that laser gun you wanted? Well, it is wrapped up in the back of the van. I think we need to give it to this little boy.” Now, you’ve got to understand that the 7 year-old me was just informed, that in my very near vicinity, was the very toy I had wanted so badly...and in the same breath was introduced to the possibility of watching it go to someone else. It was wrapped, while none of the other presents were, so I stood at the back of our minivan tailgate and unwrapped it. I pulled the trigger a couple of times and then watched it leave me for forever. I came around eventually and now love the fact that that experience has instilled in me so much. But in that moment . . . I climbed into the van and thought about how I had been taken advantage of. If we had come in someone else’s car, that wouldn’t have happened. If my mom had just forgotten that it was in the van . . .
We all hate that feeling of being taken advantage of, but I want to pose something to you that the Lord has been putting on my heart. This next statement could be interpreted as political in our current news cycle, but that isn’t my intent. I am a 37 year old white man that has never really had any debt outside of cars, and a home mortgage. I have never legitimately worried about having food or shelter. I have always been taught the Truth of Jesus and thus have always had hope. I married my High School sweetheart and God has blessed us with 3 awesome kids. We have almost always had a solid group of Jesus-loving friends around us. Jesus has blessed us. I don’t define it as “white privilege”, “living right”, or great family upbringing. Even though all those things are true. I see this as a responsibility that God has given me.
As a church, we are reading through the Bible together and yesterday we were in Luke 12. Lot of things are going on here but the chapter starts out like this:
1In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, . . .
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Have you ever been in a place where it felt like everyone around you was pressing in on you to take advantage of you? There have been many times where I have been around some homeless/impoverished friends here in Memphis and while we begin to give things away to help and encourage, others have showed up to get a handout. It seems wrong. It seems like a different spirit. It seems ungrateful. But I am a man of advantage - and not just in socioeconomic terms. I am a child of the King of Kings. We are a Royal Priesthood. The Body of Christ. I am also a sinner who is wrong sometimes, doing things in the wrong spirit with and ungrateful attitude. These two truths coexist, and my responsibility has nothing to do with the attitude or motives of anyone else.
This is how deceptive the enemy is. We desire to serve others and minister under the banner of Jesus’s love, yet when we feel wronged or offended, we stop doing the things we should be doing in order to show pity on ourselves. So we retreat in offense and make up terms to justify our own selfish feelings. We say “I don’t want to be taken advantage of” or “I only want to help those who have a REAL needs” or “They are just going to take that money and do more bad things with it".
Please stop for a moment and truly allow the Lord to touch your spirit with these next few statements.
OUR God-given advantage is meant to be given, not held.
We can’t save anyone; we can ONLY show them the love The Father gives.
Unconditional love is what God gives, so we can’t rightly place conditions on the love that He calls us to show.
How about this... In a world that is full of need, full of hate, full of wounds and offenses... How about we be the peculiar people who give our advantages that God has given us and we do it without condition? What if we give and give EXPECTING be taken advantage of? Jesus gave everything and you and I will take advantage of that for all eternity.