Giver Blessing 2: A Broad Place
Beloved, I call your spirit to attention, and I invite the Giver portion to come explore another of God’s gifts to you.
We visit the fifth day of creation again which is your day, the day the birds and fish were created. There is a beautiful picture here of another of God’s gifts to you.
Birds were not meant to hop around a cage. Fish were not meant to do laps inside a small glass box. And Givers were not designed by God to be trapped, confined, boxed in or limited. Birds, fish and Givers were all meant to have a huge playing field.
Yet at the same time all were made to desire a place that is exclusively theirs, a place of safety, a place that emphatically reflects their design, a place customized to their needs and calling.
God who designed Givers knows that about you, so He gave you the great gift having both horizons and roots.
Consider the birds. They generally have a region they fit in. Whether a kind of bird graces multiple continents or occupies a much smaller region, they still are permitted by God to range widely. He does not limit birds to a precise region through any divine command. He gives them freedom to explore the world, allowing only the environment to limit them.
On the other hand, while birds can roam and forage anywhere they like, each one defines some small spot as theirs, building a nest that accommodates no visitors, not even from the same family of birds. Thus they have the best of both worlds: a place they can claim exclusively, while at the same time having no ethical limits to how far they can fly, how large an area they can explore or what territory they should live in. God does the same for Givers. He knows you will thrive on a vast playing field, so He gives it to you.
Consider the difference in God’s dealings with Abraham, the Giver, compared to Jacob his grandson. Jacob was given great latitude with time but not with location. His father sent him to Padan Aram, but God intruded into his life and told him emphatically to leave that region and never return.
God also told him where to go. He was to return to Bethel where God had first covenanted with him, and he was to settle down there, put down roots there and not leave. He went to Bethel (eventually) and worshipped God. Then Jacob left. From the time he left that specific spot in disobedience, he began to face constant tragic losses. God defined the one piece of land Jacob could thrive in during that season of his life.
By contrast, God was very general with Abraham when it came to land. God did call him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and did send him to the land of Canaan, but Abraham was not assigned a specific city there. Scripture records that he moved around the land at will, always with God’s blessing.
In fact, God once told him he needed to be more expansive. Abraham was to explore the entire extent of the land, rather than stay primarily at Hebron which he had selected as his home base.
This is the beauty of God’s partnership with Givers. Someone from a different tribe, Jacob, was given a specific territorial assignment and punished for leaving it. Abraham the Giver was given the large horizons of an entire nation, along with the freedom to define his personal spot at Hebron. This is a gift from God to you, Giver.
Now consider another Giver, Joseph of Arimathea. Here was a man who loved God deeply and was ready to invest sacrificially in establishing the kingship of Jesus Christ. He was a businessman whose wealth was derived from trading and importing metals.
God did not call him out of the import/export industry to serve in a specific capacity in the Kingdom. Rather God calmly gave him the whole business world as his playing field and waited to see where he would thrive.
It is so magnificent when a Giver is release to walk out his gifting on a large field. Joseph ended up investing deeply in Britain.
From there he exported substantial amounts of tin to the Mediterranean market. This was his big playing field.
While personally in Britain, he also birthed the Church in that region. He poured himself into it and imprinted it with his own redemptive gift. That church, far from seeing itself as a distant outpost of Christianity, promptly looked to the world as its playing field. They exported some of their best people to start the church in Rome where Paul later ministered.
This is part of the magnificence of God’s dealings with Givers. God gives precise instructions to people from some tribes. He makes other tribes quite content to serve him on a small playing field. But he gifts you, Giver, to put down deep roots in some specific place, while joyously expressing your gifts in a field without boundaries.
It is beautiful to see you embrace a large territory and draw from it your sustenance while bringing the King’s presence there too.
For that very reason, we welcome you into our midst, Giver. Even if our communities may be too small a playing field for your expansive nature, we will enjoy watching you fly as far as God made you to fly. You are welcome to express your gift largely without being confined by our community. We bless you in the name of our King, Jesus Christ.
Centrum B & B
Leiden, Netherlands
October 18, 2008
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