There Is a Grace for Giving: Honour the Faithful, Heal the Sick

Sermon outline

God honours the quiet, faithful people in His house, heals His children when they come to Him, and gives His people a grace to give, so give yourself to the Lord first and excel in giving according to what you have.

1. The Lord wants to honour them

   The three women have been in the church for over twenty years. They are faithful, they don't complain and they simply come and love the presence of the Lord, often without anyone taking note of them. He has the church lift their hands as he thanks God for their faithfulness, prays for the desires of their hearts for their children and families, and prophesies goodness, peace and supernatural doors in their homes, and a 'suddenly' even where people have forgotten them.

   Illustration: He remembers that one of them used to cook food for him in the early days of the church.

   “People don't even take note of them. But I feel today that the Lord wants to honour them.”

2. Today is your healing day

   He invites everyone with an illness, or standing in proxy for someone, to the front, because God is Jehovah Rapha and healing is the children's bread. He does not ask what each person's ailment is: it is not head knowledge but the grace and wisdom of God flowing, and as he lays hands on them the power of God goes into them. He anoints with oil, sprinkles the blood of Jesus over them and declares that we believe the report of the Lord. When a sister is invited to walk and then run across the front, the church breaks into the song 'You are the God that healeth me', and he reminds them that God gets all the glory.

   Illustration: He asks the ushers to stand behind people and has those in the back row stand on the stairs so that nobody falls and gets hurt while he prays.

   “No, today is your healing day in the mighty name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

   • Exodus 15:26
   • Matthew 15:26
   • Isaiah 53:1
   • Zechariah 4:6
   • Luke 13:12

3. They gave themselves first to the Lord

   He shows pictures of the damaged roof that the church's own maintenance crew is repairing and explains that the generator, about ten years old, now needs urgent servicing by the company that supplied it, because a cheaper job would only bring more problems. He reads how the Macedonian churches gave out of severe trial and extreme poverty, because they first gave themselves to the Lord.

   Illustration: Photographs on the screen show the parts of the roof already repaired and the half still to be done.

   “When you give yourself first to the Lord it's very easy for you to be involved in the Lord's work.”

   • 2 Corinthians 8:1-5

4. There is a grace for giving

   Paul tells a church that excels in faith, speech and knowledge to excel in the grace of giving as well, and to excel means to be proficient and do exceptionally well. Christ became poor so that we might become rich. Verse 12 sets the measure: if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what a person has, not what they do not have.

   “There is a grace for giving.”

   • 2 Corinthians 8:7-12

5. Sow a pledge for the house of the Lord

   He invites everyone who wants to sow a pledge to stand, and goes first: as their pastor he has already planted his seed. The ushers hand out envelopes, and people can pay later in the week or when they are paid, because this is their heart. He reminds them it is not for him but for the renovations, and that God will make the seed abound to their account, thirty, sixty, a hundred or a thousandfold. He then prays over the givers, that Jesus, who receives the tithes and offerings in heaven, will open the windows of heaven over them.

   “You pick your number. I prefer the thousandfold.”

   • Mark 4:20
   • Philippians 4:17
   • Hebrews 7:8
   • Malachi 3:10