Hi, my name is Dillon Lewis, the worship pastor at Bethel Austin, and I would like to welcome you to God Today. I want to talk to you guys about something that I don’t think we talk about very often in our Christian walk. We talk a lot about giving, right? But we don’t talk a lot about receiving. Something that I am really passionate about is being able to receive from the Father and being able to receive from the others.
A quick little story. Years and years ago, I was on a mission trip to Mexico. We showed up to a little villa, a little house. The woman who owned the house comes up to us. It was me and four other guys. And she goes, “I would love for you guys to take my bed. I have a king-sized bed and I have two rooms in this house, and I would love for you all to sleep there. Because I have no other furniture for you to sleep on.”
All of us were like, “No way. I am not taking your bed. There is no way I would do that.” One of the guys with me, looked at her and went, “Absolutely, I will take it.” We were like, “What are you doing?” He goes, puts his stuff in the room, and she ends up sleeping on the floor in the living room and we end up sleeping all on the floor, kind of in this little side room. We were pretty miserable sleeping for about a week. Every single morning, this woman would get up and she was so delighted. And the guy that was sleeping in the room with the king-sized bed, he would come out and he was refreshed and we were not from sleeping on the floor in this other room. She would get up and she was so thankful every single day that he would take her bed.
So, I started thinking about this. And I started thinking about how the Lord wants to bless us and how often in the Western world, we refuse His blessing constantly. Definitely in the United States, we do this weird thing where someone comes up to us and they will say, “Hey! I want you to have this.” Or, “I feel like you are supposed to have this.” Immediately, our response was, “No, no. It’s okay. No, thank you.” And then they will go, “No, no, I really want you to have this.” And you go, “No, I couldn’t, I couldn’t take it.” And then they will do the third thing. “No, please. You have to take this. Then we will finally go, “Okay.” It is like they have to coerce us into taking and receiving a blessing.
I was thinking about if the Lord comes up to you if Jesus stood in front of you right now, and you had something, a dream in your heart of something you were looking for, something you wanted to do in a ministry, something you wanted to do in your Christian walk, something you wanted just out of the overflow, some sort of blessing. And Jesus Himself walked up to you, and actually handed you the funds, the money for you to be able to walk into that destiny, into that dream, would you look at Him and say, “Yes! I will take it. Yes! I will go and get in the king-sized bed that you have offered to me.” Or would you say, “No, I am not worthy to receive what you’re offering to me”?
That rocks me thinking about that. It is so often that Jesus is so thrilled to give us a blessing. And we don’t step into it. We go, “I can’t take it.” I want to read one scripture to you. This is Acts 2:42, this is really, really powerful, from the early Church coming together. It says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
They gave all that had need. And you know when they gave all, Jesus talks about giving in the scriptures all the time, but when they gave all it means people actually needed to receive it. And it is a test to be able to receive the goodness of God, the blessings of God as much as it is to have nothing, it is actually another test to be able to have much. And we want to steward the “much of God” as much as possible.
I just want to bless you guys. Just to be able to receive what the Lord has, to receive when Jesus comes up and says, “I want you to have this, you are my favorite son and daughter. Take this. This is going to bless your life. And give, give freely from it.” I bless you, I bless everyone on here to be like the early church, to be able to give and to be able to receive. And when Jesus steps into your room and says, “Son, Daughter, I want to give you this,” you would be able to take it and say, “Thank you, Lord.” To be able to say, “Thanks, Dad. Thank you for believing in me, and I am going to give straight back into the Kingdom.” I bless you. You are going to be powerful. And Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the overflow of your kindness, and your goodness, and your unlimited provision. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.