Please remember that we are taking our "special offering" tomorrow for the Philippines mission trip in early May. We are seeking to raise $25,000 to complete the construction of a pastors' training center that we started 2 years ago. The majority of pastors trained by the Pastoral Training Course led by Paul Caampued and his leadership team are for pastors who have had little or no theological education. They are training pastors at the grassroot levels to shepherd the church and plant more churches.
In 2Corinthians 8, Paul is encouraging the Corinthian believers for their generosity in giving to the needy Christians in Jerusalem who were experiencing severe poverty because of a drought. Paul said this about the generosity of the Corinthians,
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— 2Corinthians 8:1-4Paul called their generosity an act of God's grace - it is a grace from God through the Corinthians to the church in Jerusalem. Paul goes on to encourage the Corinthians to finish what they started and to continue to excel in this act of grace.
But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you— see that you excel in this act of grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. 2Corinthians 8:7-9The Corinthians generosity was like that of our Lord Jesus, who "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." It was a gospel motivated generosity that is grounded on the generosity of God in Christ Jesus.
God has been so rich to CrossWay in many ways, in our material possessions, in our relationships, in our church facilities, in the many spiritual gifts that abound at CrossWay, in financial generosity, but mostly God has been gracious in giving us Jesus Christ, in grounding our church on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and graciously electing each of us unto salvation and uniting us as a body in Christ. In light of God's generosity, let us show our generosity to our Filipino brothers and sisters in Christ tomorrow through our financial generosity.
