Cultivating a Life of Giving and Forgiveness

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Put Jesus first in your life.

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Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George. Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.

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And I’m going to give you gifts to carry out that function. And I don’t want you to be thinking more highly of yourself than you ought because of your gift. I want you to think with sober judgment, it says. Think soberly. Praise God for what I have done for you. But if I’m going to give you a gift, don’t be bragging about your gift. I’m the one who gave it to you. Well, what do we have today? Well, we’ve got people so proud of their gifts, you can’t even stand it. In fact, they come down and say, if you don’t have that gift, you’re not even saved. Now, how ridiculous is that? If you don’t have this particular gift or this particular gift, you’re not saved. Are you saved by gifts? I thought you were saved by a person. But you see, we sit there like a dog. You point to the dog, there’s your food over there. And the dog comes and sniffs your finger. God pointing you to something and we’re up sniffing fingers. Getting all hung up on what God says, don’t get hung up on. Please do not get hung up on it. But he said to think in sober judgment according to the measure of faith God has given you. Do you realize that God has given every man on the measure of faith to be a believer? Some people will say, some theologies say that the elect, you know, they’re the ones who are given the gift of faith, but the non-elect weren’t. Because no one has the faith to come to Christ. That’s nonsense. It says in the scripture very, very clearly that we’ve all been given the same measure of faith. That God has given us. God has given all of us a measure of faith. Whether we use it or not is a different thing, isn’t it? Whether you develop your faith is a different thing. Am I right? But all of us have been given the measure of faith to believe and to grow and to mature. Some have taken greater advantage of that. um and some have not why that’s the case i don’t know i really don’t know why when i came to the to christ when i was never a reader i didn’t like to read i read because i had to and i read because i had to read a book in order to get a grade in order to graduate but i didn’t like it but when i came to christ i couldn’t get out of this bible i read it constantly constantly to this day it’s the most fascinating book in the world nobody sit around and say well i’m just intellectually smart because i didn’t get that good a grade didn’t get bad grades but i certainly didn’t get the kind of grades i could have had i opened a book that would have helped figured that one out it helped if i owned one but god gave an intensity to study this word And to learn what truth is and be set free. So there is a case in which some of us have used the faith that God has given us and developed that through the years. And some who have just kind of ignored it. So again, if you’ve been in one of those situations of being ignoring it through the years, then today’s the day to start not ignoring it. And to get into the word and let God grow you. Because you’re never too late. It’s never too late to grow in the Lord, is it? So he’s saying that we should think of ourselves as sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. And just as each of us has one body with many members. He’s going to give this analyzation now of our body. That all of these members do not have the same function. So Christ, in Christ, we who are many form one body. This is a body. We talk about our church, but guys, really, we don’t have a church, do we? It’s Christ’s church, isn’t it? And Christ’s church is not made up of people who attend. It’s made up of born-again believers. And then born-again believers are told, don’t forsake the assembling of yourself together. If you want to screw up a marriage, just get away from church. Get away from fellowshipping with other believers. And go back into the world, just see what it does for you. Some of you have tried. Doesn’t work. That’s going out into the world and trying to gain their wisdom instead of saying, no, I’m going to let God renew my mind on truth. Because that truth will set you free. You see, again, as an example in marriage, you have, you guys have never had an argument, have you? Remember one at least, or maybe one. Okay, and what always goes on with that? You’ve never had one. You probably haven’t. What goes on with that? Well, I’m thinking this way. Well, that’s a man’s thing. Well, I’m thinking this way. Well, that’s a woman’s thing. And so we’ve even bought that story. Well, that’s the way women think. Yeah, that’s the way we think. Well, how are you going to get along? Unless you start thinking like a woman, I hope you never do. You’d be an ugly woman. And you start thinking like, that ain’t going to happen. So how are you going to get along when you’re thinking man things and you’re thinking woman things? I’ll tell you how you’re going to get along. Let’s forget about thinking like a woman and thinking like a man. Let’s start asking Jesus what he thinks. You see, we have an intermediary. We have someone in between the two of us that both Amy can go to and I can go to that we’re going to get wisdom. Every single time we’re going to get his wisdom, not woman wisdom and man’s wisdom. We bought that too often. But his wisdom. What does God want us to do in this situation? Not what I want to do as a man. Not what I want to do as a woman. What does God want us to do? You’ll have a successful marriage in that. But you keep thinking this man and woman stuff. That never ends. Unless you’re going to become a woman, like I say, or a man. That never ends. So we have to have this intermediary. We have to have this person that we can go to that’s our counselor. Isn’t that what they use a counselor for? You go to a counselor, my wife feels this way or my husband feels this way. The counselor will sit there and say, well, here’s how you ought to feel. Of course, he’s as messed up as you are. Now he says that just as each of us have one body with many members, and these members don’t all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body according to the grace that God has given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying… Now, guys, there’s an argument… or a discussion in regard to prophecy, whether prophecy and prophesying and those type of things are still in existence. But if you want a definition of prophecy, you might mark this in your Bible, 1 Corinthians 14, 3. 1 Corinthians 14, 3. As I see prophecy and prophesying, I see it relating to instruction to the body more than an individual. Now, you have some people that say, oh, I’m a prophet and God told me to tell you this. How many of you ever had that? Somebody come up to you and say, God told me to tell you this. Well, good. Tell him to tell me because I don’t need you to tell me what God wants to tell me. That’s just an ego trip. And a lot of people are on it. But when you have prophecy, here’s what it says about everyone who prophesies speaks to men. That’s a group, a body. Speaks to men for their strengthening, their encouragement and comfort. And someone who is truly prophesying, in other words, encouraging people, strengthening people, comforting people, edifies the church. Now, he says in the way they were using this gift edifies yourself. You’re sitting there making yourself happy. But you’re not edifying the body. You’re not doing a thing for the body. And so I believe that when you’re talking about a person who maybe has the gift of prophecy… if that gift is still in existence, but if it relates to what the Scripture says, that it’s a gift to be exercised to the body of Christ for their edification. In other words, to straighten them up. To strengthen, encourage, and comfort the body of Christ. Then that would be the gift of prophecy. It isn’t someone sitting there that the world’s going to come to an end in 2007. And then when 2007’s over, I might have missed that by a year or two. You have people made millions of dollars on writing books like that when the world’s coming to an end. Jehovah’s Witness, 144,000, when 144,000 got in, well, that was going to be it. Then their membership exceeded 144,000 and they’d change it. So there’s all kinds of prophets like that. Now, in the Old Testament, if you were a prophet and you made a mistake, you were burnt at the stake. You were killed. In other words, if your prophecy was ever not true, you were a goner. So that’s how they determined whether someone was going to declare himself to be a prophet or not. Now, if you were a long-term prophet, well, you’d probably get away with that like a weatherman. But if you’ll kind of think of what prophecy, talking basically to the church instead of us individually, as other things do. As an example, the gift of evangelism. That’s a gift. Although Billy Graham may be speaking to 100,000 people, he’s speaking to you. And the day that you came to Christ, he was speaking to you. So that’s a gift that although you can speak to masses, it’s a gift that basically I can’t save masses. Christ didn’t come to save the church. He came to save people and put them into the church. So he says, if your gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. In other words, don’t get off on a faith trip. Use it in proportion to what I give to you to say. If it’s serving, let him serve. There’s a great gift of servitude, guys, that many times we ignore. And you ought to be exercising it. We should be exercising these gifts in the body of Christ in one way or another. Many of you already do that. If it’s teaching, let him teach. If you have the gift of teaching, then teach in accordance to the faith that God’s given you. Encouraging. There’s a gift. People, how many know somebody that just encourages you all the time? You’re just one of those people, every time you talk to them, they got a word of encouragement for you. Learn from them. Learn from them. That’s what gifts are for. I never had, as an example, the gift of giving. My idea of healthy giving was a dollar on the offering plate. Every Sunday, though. But I was not saying that was a big gift. I had to learn that. And I learned that from people with the gift of giving. I learned that from people. I saw how they gave and how God just replenished.

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And some people are tight as drums. You know, really being tight is disgusting. But there are people like that. They hang on to money like it’s theirs. It all belongs to God, doesn’t it? We just hang on, just hang on, hang on. Oh, I can’t give that. We can go to McDonald’s, can’t you? Guys, we can give anything we want to. We just don’t want to. We got the money. We just don’t want to. I’d rather spend it at McDonald’s. We got it there. See a good-looking dress someplace. I guarantee you, I’m going to get that one. I’m not, but maybe you ladies will. I mean, I might be like Jim over here. Guys, that’s a great gift to exercise. If you know someone’s got it, hang around them, learn from them. And if you have it, start exercising it to people because we all need encouragement, don’t we? How many in here don’t need any encouragement? We all do, don’t we? And we want that encouragement. If it’s contributing to the needs of others, that’s the giving. Let him give generously. In other words, don’t give compulsively. And there again is, why do we teach people that tithing is not biblical? Because it’s not biblical. Tithing was biblical in the Old Testament. That’s how you supported the Levitical priesthood. was through the tithing of foodstuffs. You didn’t give money. You gave grain. So I said, I wish sometime these churches, they’re teaching tithing, a whole bunch of people just get a whole bunch of baskets of grain and just come and dump it on the altar on Sunday morning. Because that’s what it was. And with today, what do we do? Well, we tell people, if you’re not tithing, you’re robbing God. How many of you heard that? You don’t tithe, you’re robbing God. Well, where do you get that out of? Malachi. What are you doing over there? What are you doing over in Malachi? You don’t live there. Jesus ushered in a new covenant. And new is compared to what? The old. Why are you living under the old? When God gave you the beauty of the new. The beauty of the new, he says, give generously. Give joyfully. Be a hilarious giver. Give in accordance to what you do have. But give. Don’t miss the joy of giving. A lot of people are, I say, tight as a drum. Oh, I can’t do that. Yes, you can. If you can give, give. You will experience joy from giving. And God will not let you down. That I do know. So he says to give generously. If it’s leadership… Some people say, I don’t want any church leadership in it. Well, that’s funny. God does. Because he said, if you’ve got a gift of leadership, then let him govern diligently. That doesn’t mean to be a bad governor. That means to lead diligently and lead honestly. But you need leaders, don’t you? And if you’re going to have leaders, you’re going to have followers. Be a joyful follower if God hadn’t called you to be a leader. A lot of people, all they do is complain about leadership. Every church split in the country is over leadership. Oh, they don’t lead properly. Oh, they’re doing this. Oh, they’re doing that. Well, why don’t you? They don’t have the gift of leadership. Why don’t you go be a leader? I’d rather be a griping follower. If it’s mercy, let him do it cheerfully. Now, guys, there’s a gift that God has given to people, a special spiritual gift to be merciful. Was God merciful to you and me? Do people need mercy who have blown it? Absolutely, guys. You know, to me, the most tender words that I know is, I’ve forgiven you. Some of the tender words that I know. You can see things of people that somebody’s gone out and murdered somebody and you have people with a heart that says, I forgave them. I forgave them. That’s a merciful heart. We have such a condemning heart, don’t we? We’re very judgmental people, aren’t we? I see that in myself so many times. I’ll judge people. we were just in a restaurant this morning, and a girl was then there, and she just, she appears to be, or appeared to be a little manly. And I have to say, I’ve judged her. I said, she looks like you don’t want. Then she comes up today talking about her 15-year-old marriage, and I sat there saying, and you’re going to go preach? That’s tough, guys. But we do that. We judge people. And the issue is that God gave us this spiritual gift of being merciful to people, to have mercy on them, and to extend kindness to people when they need it. But we’re so quick to judge. And guys, we need to watch that, don’t we? In our own lives, we need to watch that. Don’t be quick to judge. And if there would be people in this world who have made mistakes, who hasn’t? Has anyone in here ever made a mistake? I know you didn’t. We’ve all made mistakes. How come? Because we have decisions to make through life and we make some dumb decisions, don’t we? And we’ve all made mistakes and we need mercy. We need mercy. If he didn’t give, what is the purpose of spiritual gifts? To minister to who? The body. So if the body didn’t need mercy, why would he give the gift of mercy? So we need merciful people in our congregations. We need those kind of people. People who are merciful. I’m not talking about people that never accept when something’s wrong. I mean, God, right is right and wrong is wrong. It doesn’t make any difference. how you look at it. The issue is if someone’s done something wrong, is to admit they’ve done it wrong, but I’m going to show mercy to them. It’s not that it’s okay, because it isn’t okay. There are things that people do that aren’t okay, but you show mercy to them. We had a lady in San Bernardino that her husband was on staff of Campus Crusade for Christ in the military arm of that ministry. that a man came and raped her, broke into her home and raped her. And she ended up, she and her husband both, ended up going into that jail and ministering to that man and telling him that they had forgiven him and wanted him to know that Christ loved him and led him to Christ. That kind of thing happens all the time. Forgiveness. Merciful. You’ve heard me tell the story, and the reason I tell it as often as I do is because it’s got the meaning to it as often as it has. The young girl that we talked to on radio that called years ago, and she had been revealed to me that she had been being molested by four of her uncles through her lifetime. And we talked and I explained to her that, number one, how sorry I was that she had to go through those experiences. And I quoted the passage of Scripture to her. Blessed be the Father of all grace, the one who comforts us in all of our problems so that we in turn can comfort others with the same comfort that we have received from him. And I said, do you realize, Kathy, that There’s no little girl on the face of this earth that is going to be in a position to reach out to other little girls who are going to go through the same stuff than you. That you’ve got everything that you need to reach out with a compassionate, merciful heart. And to tell them about this Jesus that you’ve come to know. She said, Mr. George, I want to do that more than anything in the world. She said, it’s a little embarrassing to me because we have family reunions and I always have to see my uncles there. And she said, it’s real embarrassing. And I said, Kathy, why don’t you do this? Next reunion you have, why don’t you pull your uncles apart one at a time and sit down with them and say, Uncle Bill, or whoever it might be, what you did was wrong. And what you did was a violation of everything that God stands for. But I want you to know that God loves you. And Jesus went to a cross to take away that sin. So that you could go free. And I have gone free in Christ Jesus. And I want you to know that I too forgive you. And I too love you in Jesus. And I want more than anything in the world for you to come to Christ. And to know this God of love. Oh she said I would like to do that. Said I don’t know whether I can say that as well as you do. And. I said, well, Kathy, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll send you some of our born-free books, and maybe you could just share the book with them. Give you some tracks to run on there. That was like on a Thursday. We mailed them the next day, but she called back on Monday, just excited. Mr. George, she said, I didn’t have a chance to get your books, but we had a family reunion over the weekend, and I did what you said. I led three of my uncles to Christ Jesus. Now that’s love, isn’t it? That’s the merciful gift of God that he gives to some people and all of us that are available to it that can say, I’m going to extend mercy to this person. Now there are times when there are people that have hurt you and in such ways that you say, I’m not real interested in getting involved with them again. I’m not interested in going back into business with them again. I’m not interested in being remarried with them again. But I am interested in doing what the Lord says and saying, as far as you’re concerned, be at peace with all people. And so, as far as I’m concerned, they’re forgiven. Because, guys, when you don’t forgive people, it’s a load on you, isn’t it? And every time you think about them, that thing just stirs up inside of you, so it’s more damage to you than it is to them. So he’s saying, learn, learn. This is what growth is, guys. This is what spiritual growth is about, is taking the faith that God has given you and using it, using it and practicing it until you grow to the point where you say, I can do that. I can forgive. Well, guys, we never got to our lesson. That’s on the screen. But now at least you know what we’re going to talk about next week. But that’s the introduction to what we want to talk about over these next few weeks is what we’ve started. And Bob continued on with the spirit of God living in us and what it means to have the Holy Spirit of God living in us. And we’re going to deal with how God’s got a plan and he wants to use you to carry it out. And we’ll be discussing that more next week.

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Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord. Find more information online at bobgeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs and Bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.

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Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.