Giving to God

With Father’s Day approaching, sons and daughters will be thinking, ‘what can I give to Dad that will show my love and give him pleasure?’ Jesus taught his followers to relate to God as their Heavenly Father. What might we want to give to such a Heavenly Father and why?

A rich young man once asked Jesus, ‘What good thing must I do to get eternal life?’. He wanted God’s favour and blessing and apparently thought he could get this by doing something for God or maybe giving something to Him. It is easy to fall into a similar mindset as though, before we can strike up a meaningful relationship with God, we must get on the right side of him by doing this or giving that.

Whatever we may ‘give’ to God, he isn’t in need of anything seeing as he made all things and, in the final analysis, all things belong to him. Neither can we ‘do’ certain good things in order to make ourselves acceptable to him; how would we know when we’d done enough and what about the bad things we’ve already done?

Of course, we are indeed able to give and do things that bring pleasure to God, but such things are not currency that can put God into our debt. The Bible reminds us, ‘Who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?’ It’s stating the obvious really - all we have comes from God anyway.

A dad gives his son pocket money. He’s delighted to receive a willingly given Father’s Day present, being fully aware that the youngster had no means of his own aside from what his dad gave him in the first place. Similarly, God wants to bless us so that we have the means of blessing him.

The Good News of the Christian message is that Jesus offers to put us in right relationship with his Heavenly Father by forgiving the bad things we’ve done. Then he gives us the means to give and do the good things that please God. He is blessed and we are too. This is father-child relationship at its best.