RED LETTER DAYS
(Acts 20:35c)
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
1) Certainly, I’m not the only one who has misrepresented these words by claiming that “giving is ‘better’ than receiving.”
2) I actually learned about this disparity between the truth and my misconceptions in both acts of “giving and receiving.”
3) In fact, I still wish I could see the look of surprise on my own face that night I heard myself say out loud for the first to someone else “thank you.”
4) God knew before I did that I’d never get that lesson from reading or writing a book.
5) Instead, I was pressured by my own burden of necessity to deploy principles not my own and that didn’t make any sense to me to find my identity and value in good works ordained from the very beginning, not the least of which is the simple fact that “giving and receiving from the Lord are both requirements for righteous living.”
6) Unlike me, God does not put one principle over another…but in this case He definitely places more fulfillment in one than the other.
7) This is just one of several reasons why I very much believe Paul the apostle remembered these words from his days as Saul of Tarsus, the rich, young ruler with a life-size axe to grind.
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