Selling what no one wants

Did you know that no one wants a drill?  You can walk into any local hardware store like Ace or into big box home improvement stores like Lowe’s or Home Depot and find that they have dozens of drills for sale.  From a few dollars to hundreds there are a vast variety of drills available for purchase.  For 102 years (the first electric drill was made in 1916) companies have been manufacturing and selling tools that no one really wants.  It is an international industry with production spanning the globe, and accounting for vast sums of wealth in R&D, fabrication, distribution, marketing, and support all for something that no one wants.

A portable hole would make a drill obsolete 

People do not want drills! What people want are holes.  If you can develop a means that can produce a hole quicker, better, smoother and cheaper than a drill you can become wildly wealthy and make the drill obsolete in an instant.  You may recall the “Portable Hole” which the Road Runner used to thwart the efforts of Willie Coyote.  What we really want is a hole.   What we use to gain our objective is a drill.  I stand firm in my conviction that no one really wants a drill; they want a hole and the drill is just a tool to gain the objective.

God doesn’t need or want our money. Offerings and sacrifices are not something on God’s got-to-have list, but throughout the scriptures the theme of sacrificial giving is a major part of God’s conversation with His people.  How important is it to God that our giving be generous and heart felt?  In Malachi 1, God addressed the giving of His people.  Their offerings were less than their best. They gave the least they thought they could get away with.  They asked for God’s blessing but their giving was marked by apathy.  To this kind of giving and worship God responds with,  “Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of hosts, “nor will I accept an offering from you.”  God said He would rather have the doors to the house of worship closed than for His people to come with offerings that are apathetic.

So, if God doesn’t need or want our money why does He consistently call for sacrificial giving?  No one wants a drill they want a hole.  God doesn’t want the money He wants us to learn lessons we can only learn by sacrificial giving.  There are lessons that a human being can never learn except through the experience of giving away their wealth.  I would contend that there are five lessons that we will never fully learn unless we begin to give sacrificially. 

•       Vision

•       Maturity

•       Fellowship

•       Spirituality

•       Pastoral Care

These areas of our lives as disciples will forever remain superficial and shallow as long as we fail to be faithful, generous, joyful givers.

However, learning to be generous is possible.  Like any other discipline of being a disciple it requires teaching, practice and most of all the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  But God will bless us as we bless others in His name. 

Churches benefit greatly from a yearly call to examine and reflect on their giving as a disciple.  If your church has not recently had a dedicated program to train the practice of generosity, contact me and let me share with you a powerful, simple and affordable tool that will help you along the way to being a more generous congregation.