One day a verse was read and the words ‘freewill offering’ stood out to me like neon lights in the black of a night.
What is a freewill offering?
According to my research, it is what it says; a gift of money, time or resources that is given without being forced, without the receiver even knowing that it would be given.
So, if you stay late after work to help a customer, a student, a patient … you have given a freewill offering.
If you put cash in your ‘offering’ envelope, above and beyond your normal ‘tithe’ … you have given a freewill offering.
If you make your dinner, and double the recipe, and take it to the house of a neighbor … you have given a freewill offering.
But, the concept of there being a freewill offering also indicates that we are expected to give, without choice (free will), a certain amount first.
That means we are expected to give of our time, our money, our resources.
Expected giving …
That means that some part of our whole (our whole bank account, our whole waking hours, our whole life) is not, nor has ever been our own.
It is expected that we give to our governments (“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” Matthew 22:21), and for those of us who are followers of Christ, we give to His work, in both (not one or the other) our time and our physical resources.
And after all that ‘expected’ giving, then we give from our own free will.
To do so as a group would mean that, like the Israelites whose “hearts were stirred” to give to the tabernacle (Exodus 35), we might need to be told to stop giving.
“They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.” Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.” Exodus 36:3-7
Imagine if we lived in such a way that our freewill giving exceeded the needs!
itsawonderfilledlife 