It all started with giving

We have to adopt an ethic of constant giving, not just when we want God to do something for us. We should give because that has become our very nature. May God have made me a cheerful giver, not a person who gives only when there is a need, or when it suits him, or when he wants to get something from God. Giving and sharing should be something that comes naturally to us.

Over the years, the passage from Ecclesiastes 11: 1 and 2 has come to define much of my ministerial practice: “Cast your bread on the water; because after many days you will find it. Distribute to seven, and even to eight; because you do not know the evil that will come on earth ”. The Bible advises us to be diligent, and always invest visionary, looking ahead, not just thinking about the immediate.

There is always a call in the Bible not to be scarce and to "distribute to 7 and 8". I believe that the minister, the church, always has to be sowing in people, it always has to be sowing in projects and initiatives of all kinds. You always have to put yourself in areas of discomfort and give and sow grace in the community, and not worry, because when you least expect many of those seeds will come back in the form of blessing and profit, in the most wonderful and most blessed ways.

That must also be our personal conduct. Jesus exemplifies that principle, in a maximum way. The writer of Philippians, Chapter 2 says, "Let there therefore be in you the same mind that was in Christ Jesus." God calls us to adopt the same attitude and behavior that was in Christ Jesus, "who being equal to God, did not take being equal to God as something to cling to, but emptied himself, plundered himself , and assumed the form of a man and went to death, and not just any death, but death on the cross.

The Lord was generous. It was given for us. He became a man, and not only a man, but a poor man; and not just a poor man, but a persecuted man; and not only persecuted, but a murdered men; and not only murdered, but tortured. All for us, for giving us life, for obeying the Father's call to become a mediator and reconciler between God and men.

And how wonderful that the story does not stop there! Rather, it says “.... for which God raised him up, exalted him to the utmost, and gave him a name that is above every name, so that before the name of Jesus every knee that is in heaven may bend in the earth and under the earth. "

It all started by giving. It says, "For which reason God" ... Because He gave himself, because He gave generously, because He was bothered, because He stripped himself, because He did something crazy that no one can rationally understand — for that reason God lifted him up to the utmost. His exaltation was even greater than his debasement. His enrichment was far greater than his self-induced impoverishment. Lowering himself in obedience to the Father and out of love for others put him in a position to be exalted to the utmost.

This same dynamic is fulfilled in every human being who adopts the attitude and behavior of Jesus in his life. If you live as a person who gives and who always gives, you will also experience in your life that blessing from God that will lift you up little by little. It will raise your children, your economy; it will lift your mind, your emotions; it will raise your marriage, your church. It will lift your city.

That is incredible, it is a mystery. Ultimately, it is about the mystery of the cross. On the cross, the ugliest, most terrible, most cruel instrument that man has invented to torture a human being, the most gloomy thing that exists, from that sinister symbol, life sprang. As the Lord climbed on the cross and emptied himself and felt sin, He who never felt it in his being, being bled to death, and being unable to move, from that position of total impotence, says the Bible that he emptied the principalities and powers. The power of God was as never manifested in the impotence of that sacrifice. And that happens when we rob ourselves, when we crucify the selfishness that is the natural of the flesh.

Self preservation is the most powerful instinct in the individual. When one violates the most powerful biological instinct of all, which is the instinct to preserve himself and maintain his comfort, maintain his permanence, his survival, his prerogatives, when one rises against that carnal, earthly, diabolical principle of selfishness, one is then entering the zone of the divine, where God can perform miracles in our life.

By climbing the cross through an act of personal deprivation and preference of others, one is, at that moment, entering the same dynamic that Jesus Christ practiced, and a similar benefit will then be fulfilled in our life. Because just as He was also raised by self-emptying, so we will also be raised by dispossessing ourselves for the benefit of others. If we lose our life in imitation of Jesus Christ, we will earn it as he did.