LARGER AND LARGER BY REVD MUYIWA OKUSEINDE

The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller" (Proverbs 11:24, The Message). 

Several years ago, I received the gift of a car. While I was certainly happy to have received the gift, I found that for some reasons, I was not really excited about the gift. I drove it twice during the first week of its arrival and for the next six months, the car was parked idly in my yard. Then a missionary came to visit whom I asked if the car could be useful. When he answered in the affirmative, I immediately put the car to work and the missionary drove it away. For a few years afterwards, every time I met my missionary friend, he would tell me how helpful the car had been to the mission work. 

The simple point was this: that car was on its way somewhere and God caused it to be brought to me, trusting that I wouldn't be so greedy as to hold it down. When the time came and the person who truly needed it appeared, I joyfully released it. Here's what I learned. It is not everything that comes your way that is actually meant for you. That it came to you does not mean it must stay with you. Indeed, I have found that in most cases, the things that God brings our way are really on their way to other destinations. 

Ultimately, your capacity to be blessed will be dependent on how readily you are willing to allow the things that come to you to move from you to their final destinations. See, your life is not designed to be a bus stop. You are ordained to be a channel, a vessel, an instrument through whom God could reach out to others. God sends those blessings to you in trust that you won't be so greedy as to chain down the blessings. 

So my dear friends, let the blessings flow to where God wants. Be of them that scatter so that you may truly increase. Quit the company of those who withhold more than is necessary so that you don't diminish. Don't always think of grabbing everything that passes by you only for your personal gains. Look for opportunities to invest in the lives of others. As the Bible teaches, this will not only bring you material blessings, it will also entrench your righteousness. At the end of the day, you will come to realize that being a blessing is far more important, fulfilling and rewarding than being blessed.