An Offertory Devotional video for Sabbath, September 17, 2022, in your @adventistchurch: vimeo.com/741858207. Putting God first can be difficult. What can we learn from this video that will help us put God first in our lives today?
Also available in #Spanish and #Portuguese.
Put #GodFirst
#StewardshipMinistries
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For more information on the Stewardship Ministries of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, you can head over to stewardship.adventist.org/ ______________________________________________
We worship with our resources because we follow the example of our God, who is a Blind Giver. When God gives, He rarely focuses on the nature of the recipients or even the outcome. He gives out of love. Faithful to this attribute, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). In contrast, we are inclined to give exclusively to what we see and whose outcome we can control. As a result, some have withdrawn from participation in tithe and regular offerings, not seeing the direct effect of their contributions. Others have resolved to support only local projects rather than a worldwide mission, far from their eyes. This is not the “blind giver” attitude.
We have a glimpse of what can happen when God’s people reproduce the “blind giver” attitude. Have you heard about The Hope of the Amazon, a floating church? It is not known by most of us, and even fewer have visited this boat church. However, this project has materialized through the “blind giving” mindset. In 2016, God’s children from all over the world pulled funds together to support the Thirteenth Sabbath projects, and one implemented project was the floating church, The Hope of the Amazon, in Brazil. The result is inspiring. In the first 12 full months of operation of the boat church, 286 people were baptized, and three churches were planted in 2017. And this is the testimony of Pastor Reno, who served on The Hope of the Amazon: “The boat church is God’s way of saving people who have been forgotten by political, economic, and health systems.”
God, our Example, is involved in a global mission toward those we see and cannot see, toward those we know and do not know. This week, as we worship with our tithe and regular offerings, called Promise, we have another opportunity to demonstrate the same global mindset as our God.