Bible Discussion Thread

Would these verses intimate that in order to have God supply all our need, it might help if we were to give to Him just as this church supported Paul.

If we were to apply that, it means God is a transactional God, of which that will be very wrong considering Psalm 50 vs12

Psalms 50:11-12

[11]I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

[12]If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. When we give to God we do it as a way of thanking Him for what he has already done for our salvation, John 3vs 16 The love he bestowed upon the sinners granting us sonship John 1 vs 12

What can we give in exchange for that..

Psalms 50:14

[14]Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: As Christ is rhe head of the body(His church) Visible and functional in this world he knows and supplies our needs, and when we pray we pray accordingly being led by the Holy Spirit giving glory to the Father

Hi Karen. When reading Philippians 4:14-19, in the context there, as you rightly wrote, the Church was mindful of the apostle's physical needs, providing help to him probably more than a couple of times than indicated in these verses. That occasion gives us a Divine Truth: that when God's people are sensitive to His Spirit's Leading, deeply immersed in the Word & Prayer, then the outcome will always be a generosity far surpassing simply the act of giving or doing so to appease one's conscience. We see the first instance of this in Acts 4:32-25, where the fledgling Church, filled with God's Spirit, "were of one heart & soul" and they knew that their possessions were not their own (i.e. they realized that all things that they possessed belonged to and came from God for their use). With such a mind & spirit, they immediately looked out for one another, even selling houses & land so that the proceeds could benefit others among them in need.

Even though the full extent of that particular example of sacrificial love may be infrequent today, the Truth of that renewed heart & spirit in believers urged them to look out to others, when formerly it was always 'me first or what's mine is mine'. So when we give with a generous spirit, sensing the real needs within the Church (& of course, outside it), being led of God's Spirit, we can trust that God will always "supply all our needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus". Even as we read in James 4:3, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts", implying when our motives are wrong & not aligned with what is God's best for us, we shouldn't be surprised when we're left with prayers unanswered & floundering in our sparsity. And of course, "godliness WITH contentment is great gain" ( 1 Timothy 6:6): we should be content with what God has given us, even though we have very little & can't or could never 'keep up with the Jones' '.