What is Your Offering?

            People often give gifts to make others feel better or when they are trying to make a bad situation better. Husbands treat their wives to dinner or flowers when they have said something to upset her. Children may bring a bouquet of dandelions to mom after spilling milk at breakfast, hoping to get back in her good graces.

            Yes, most of us have taken an appeasement offering to someone, sometime. In most cases, not much thought goes into these offerings, and maybe it was accepted or maybe it wasn’t.

            With God, it is a totally different story. God only wants our hearts. In the first chapter of Genesis, we read about Cain and Abel (Adam and Eve’s first boys) who took their offerings to the Lord. Now, remember the land was cursed after the sin of Adam and Eve. Abel’s offering (the best that he had to give) was accepted, but Cain’s crops from the land were not.

            We cannot buy God’s favor with money, volunteering or good deeds; in fact, we cannot buy God’s favor at all. Only the heartfelt, selfless offerings we give to the kingdom work will be tallied in God’s record book of life.