To Have And To Give

And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ. [Philemon 6]

This little verse from this little letter really stood out to me today.

The idea of the verse is greatly revealing. First, we have good things in Christ. The first thing that comes to my mind is everything that belongs to God and Christ in heaven: salvation, blessing, honor, glory, power, wisdom, strength, riches, and thanksgiving. These all belong to Christ because God gave them to Him and we are heirs together with Jesus! We are commissioned to understand this. But furthermore we are commissioned to experience it.

Secondly, we can see from Paul's sentence here that our understanding and experience of all the good things we have in Christ is the growth of our faith. In other words, our faith will grow as we understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.

Lastly, the faith we find that grows out of our understanding and experience of all the good things we have in Christ will manifest in generosity. To be clear, as we understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ - with our faith growing in correlation - our generosity will increase.

What was Jesus if He was not generous? Everything about Jesus' life on earth was about giving. He gave love, compassion, instruction, food, health, understanding, and, most of all, forgiveness.

For us, it all starts as we rightly understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ.

Father, help us to understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ. And, as we do, let our hearts comprehend that these good things are not for us to have and to hold, but for us to have and to give!