658 The Key to Increase - Proverbs 11:24-25

Do you pursue increase? What is increase? And is all increase good? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thank you for joining us today again on the Follower of One Podcast. I'm grateful that you're here. Today I want to read another passage from Proverbs 11, we spoke about this in the previous episode.

Today I want to read verses 24 and 25. "One gives freely yet grows all the richer, another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched. And one who waters will himself be watered." Proverbs 11:24-25 from the English Standard Version. The word increase actually comes from the New American Standard and a couple of other translations.

What the ESV calls growing all the richer, other translations refer to that as increase. It's not necessarily riches, but I think it's more. And it's this desire that most of us have to grow and to gain more. There are some people who talk about how, when we give, we get things back, the Bible states this in many places. But do we give to get?

Giving to get in our motives are always in question. In fact, in 1st Corinthians 13:3, Paul says that if we give away everything, but we don't love other people, we gain nothing. So our motives are involved here. When we give freely, we grow all the richer, but if we withhold what we should give, we only suffer want.

I believe this is a reminder to us that giving is an act of trust in God. God's basically set up the world to operate differently than the way our brains work. Part of that is from our own fall. We broke the world. The world works the way God wants it to work, but we broke it because of our sin.

Whoever brings a blessing will be enriched. We gain when we bring a blessing, when we bring something to give away. When we have grace to give, when we share things over and above what might be asked or expected of us, we experience God rewarding us and helping us to grow and to increase. Does that mean that we can give away all of our money and be fine? I'm not sure. I don't know enough about it, but I do know that I want to ask God what he would have me give.

And I want to be quick to give when God calls me to give I've mentioned before that this is my year for the word trust. And I'm learning how to trust God. And he gives me these ideas to give a little more and to do more than I've done in the past and to trust him and theres this period of time where it looks like my trust will be for nothing. And I want to hang on and I want to follow Jesus in that

In our workplaces today, I want to challenge you to give a little more. Go the extra mile, be a blessing to the people around you. Our job is to bring Christ and our relationship with him to bear in every relationship we experience during the day. Our job is to be his ministers, to serve other people so that they might know him and might follow him.

As we serve him, often we will get called to give things away. We will be called to share more than might be expected of us. " Whoever brings a blessing will be enriched. And one who waters will himself be watered." Don't set a deadline for God either. We can't say well, if God doesn't give me X by a certain date, and then he must not be rewarding me. I want to pursue God until eternity, because I want to experience those rewards in eternity anyway.

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for considering how you might give something away today, so that Jesus could become visible to the people that you work with. Let's be people who are quick to give, and watch God work his part of this bargain throughout the course of our lives. If you want to join a community of people who are actively pursuing this kind of life, a life where we give more than we get, and we trust God for the difference, go to over to https://followerofone.org and check it out.

Join our online community. We'd love to connect with you. We work to encourage one another, to share our faith and to make a difference every day. Thanks very much.