{"id":1449,"date":"2018-01-08T15:20:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T00:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/?page_id=1449"},"modified":"2026-07-21T17:35:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:35:37","slug":"scripture-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/?page_id=1449","title":{"rendered":"Devotion\/Scripture of the week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generosity Triggers God’s Blessing <\/strong><\/p>\n

God wants you to use your skills to have money to share \u2014 with people who can\u2019t work or who are poor for whatever reason. Ephesians 4:28 says, \u201cThe one who steals must no longer steal; but rather\u00a0he must labor,\u00a0producing with his own hands what is good,\u00a0so that he will have\u00a0something\u00a0to share with the one who has need.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

At some point, you have to decide that enough is enough. How do you know when enough is enough? Somebody asked Howard Hughes, \u201cHow much do you need?\u201d and he said, \u201cJust a little bit more.\u201d That\u2019s called materialism. Materialism is when you haven\u2019t learned to live within your income. You always have to have a little bit more. Isn\u2019t it interesting how some people are barely surviving on an income they once dreamed of having? God says at some point you have to say, \u201cI\u2019ve got enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is that when you should stop working? No. You keep working, but you\u2019re now making it to give away and share with other people.<\/p>\n

When \u201cThe Purpose Driven Life<\/em>\u201d became the bestselling book in the world for three years. That brought in tens of millions of dollars. Rick Warren could have retired and bought an island in the Pacific and had people serving him drinks with little umbrellas in them. \u00a0He could have spent the rest of my life working on my tan. But is that the purpose of life? No, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

So what did he do? He kept working. Why? \u00a0He wasn\u2019t working to make money for myself. In fact, he said, \u201cLord, what do you want me to do with all this money? It\u2019s your money, not mine. God said, \u201cGo read your book.<\/em>\u201d So he did, and he only had to go to the first line of the book to get what He meant: \u201cIt\u2019s not about you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you write a book and the first line is, \u201cIt\u2019s not about you<\/em>,\u201d and it makes tens of millions of dollars, you\u2019ve got to figure, it\u2019s not for you! So he spent the next four years having a lot of fun giving all that money away all around the world. Why did he do it? Because God gave him the skills to have money so he could share it with others.<\/p>\n

Give freely and spontaneously; don\u2019t have a stingy heart. The way you handle the money that comes in because of His abilities in and through you, triggers a response from God.<\/p>\n

How many of you would like God\u2019s blessing in everything you do? Of course we all would. The trigger that causes God\u2019s blessing is generosity. Why? Because God is generous, and He wants you to learn to be like Him. You\u2019re never going to be like Jesus Christ unless you learn generosity and stop being stingy.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s given you the ability to honor Him, to serve others, to make a living, to be an example, to have money to pass on to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Generosity Triggers God’s Blessing God wants you to use your skills to have money to share \u2014 with people who can\u2019t work or who are poor for whatever reason. Ephesians 4:28 says, \u201cThe one who steals must no longer steal; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[],"class_list":["post-1449","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":200,"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5373,"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1449\/revisions\/5373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fbcvaldez.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwf_page_folders&post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}