They Are Expecting What I Sent Last Year

The message came last week and it was warm and it was about dates.

Nothing in it mentioned money. Nothing ever does. That is not because anybody is being sly; it is because the amount has become a fact of the calendar over there, the way weather is a fact, and nobody discusses the weather in advance either.

They have already planned around it. Somebody has been told there will be something. A thing has been half promised on the strength of what came last year.

And this year it is not there.

Not gone. Less. And there is a particular arithmetic that happens in a man's head at this point, which goes: if I take it out of this, and delay that, and do not do the thing I said I would do here, I can get most of the way to the number.

You have done that arithmetic. Possibly more than once. It comes out with you eating the difference somewhere quiet where nobody sees it.

I want to say the thing that has probably not been said to you by anybody, in either country. What you send has become a measurement of your love, and it was never that, and the day it became that was a day nobody chose and nobody noticed.

Not grudgingly, or of necessity

There is a sentence about giving that most people quote for the last five words and it is the middle of it that matters tonight.

Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:7, King James Version)

Not of necessity. Read that again slowly.

Necessity means compulsion. It means a gift that arrives because it had to, because a figure was already fixed by something outside the giver, because there was no honest option to do otherwise.

And Paul puts that in the same breath as grudging, as the two things a gift is not supposed to be. Which means an amount fixed by expectation, by what came last time, by what somebody over there has already planned around, is being named right there in the verse as the thing this is not.

You are not required to give of necessity, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live permission for a man who has never once considered it. It is written into 2 Corinthians 9:7 that a fixed and unavoidable amount is exactly what a gift is not meant to be, and the written word puts the compulsion and the grudging side by side.

And notice the measure it does give: as he purposeth in his heart. Purposed, which is a decision made inside a man, in advance, freely.

You have a decision to make in your own heart rather than a figure to meet, and Scripture puts the purposing before the giving rather than after somebody else's expectation. The Spirit of God is the one who is present while a man decides an amount honestly, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 leaves that decision entirely with him.

What the silence will cost

Now the practical part, and it is not about the amount at all.

Whatever you send, send it with a sentence.

Because here is what happens otherwise, and I think you already know the shape of it. The amount arrives, or it arrives late, or it arrives smaller. And nobody says anything, because nobody there wants to seem grasping and nobody here wants to seem ashamed. So the silence does the explaining, and a silence explains badly.

What gets built in a silence is nearly always about the relationship. He has forgotten us. He has become somebody else over there. Something has changed about how he thinks of us. Those are the reasons people reach for, because human beings reach for relational explanations first and financial ones second.

You were never going to be understood by people who were handed no information, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the seconds before a man says a true thing about money to somebody who loves him. The written word has a man purpose in his own heart and act from it rather than manage an impression, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 keeps the deciding out in the open.

And there is a second cost, closer to home. A man who says nothing has to carry the whole of it alone through December, and then again through January, and then again while he eats the difference in some quiet way that nobody in either country ever sees.

That is not devotion. That is a man being crushed by a figure he never actually agreed to.

You have been carrying an amount nobody ever asked you to agree to, and Scripture never once measures a gift by what was given last year. The Spirit of God is the one who tells the difference between generosity and necessity in a man who has been living on the wrong side of that line, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 draws it plainly.

One sentence, sent early

So here is the whole of what I am asking, and it is not a decision about the amount.

Say one plain sentence about the amount to one person there, before the day.

Something like: it is going to be less this year and I wanted you to know before, rather than have you wondering. Or: I can send something and it will not be what it was, and nothing has changed about any of you.

Two elements only. It is less. Nothing has changed about them.

You are able to send a sentence ahead of the money, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a man's voice on a call he has been putting off since the message came. It is written into 2 Corinthians 9:7 that the purposing happens in the heart and not in the expectation, and the written word takes necessity out of the definition of a gift entirely.

I am not telling you what to send. Nobody at this distance knows your household, your obligations, or what is reasonable, and a stranger who hands a man a rule about supporting his own people has gone well past what he knows.

But I will say this. Whatever number you land on, a sentence in November makes it a gift again. A silence in December makes it a shortfall, and a shortfall needs explaining, and you will spend a year explaining it in your own head.

You are turning a shortfall back into a gift by saying one thing early, and the amount has never once been what determined which of the two it was. The Spirit of God carries a man through a conversation he has dreaded for weeks, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 puts the whole matter on what is purposed rather than on what is expected.