New International Version (NIV)
9 There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the Lord’s people. 2 For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action. 3 But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow, but that you may be ready, as I said you would be. 4 For if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we—not to say anything about you—would be ashamed of having been so confident. 5 So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers
to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous
gift you had promised. Then it will be ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given.
Paul continues in his encouragement and praise of the church at Corinth. Yet his is also a realist and sends people ahead to help them be ready.
I am convicted that I lack an eagerness to help and concerned at how hollow my faith can prove in so many areas. I also lack a generosity that I once had.
God I ask you to soften my heart. All that has been taken from me in the past two years has made me less and less willing to give of what I have left. And yet even as I type this may attitude should be that what I have is yours...I'm not there yet.
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