GOOD STEWARDS--Give to the Deserving!    DFO1028  29/7/81
--Nothing Succeeds Like Success!--God's Merit Plan!

         1. THE LORD IS A PRETTY TOUGH TASKMASTER SOMETIMES, as in the case of the man who buried his one talent & lost it, & those that made more talents & had more to end with! He said, "To them that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." (Mt.25:29)
         2. God goes very strongly on the merit system as to who deserves it & who doesn't, not necessarily according to the need. God doesn't give necessarily to everybody in need. He only gives it if they deserve it, & sometimes He gives it because they deserve it even if they don't really need it as much as the other person.
         3. He works largely on rewards, on a merit system as to whether people can be trusted with it or not. If they're faithful in a few things, He gives them many things. But if they're not even faithful in a few things, He's not going to give them any more! He's apt to take away the few things they've got if they're not faithful with them.
         4. SO IN JUDGING HOW TO HELP MISSIONARIES & PEOPLE--all may really need it, we can't say nobody needs it--but you can't always go by who needs it the most, believe it or not! God goes by who deserves it the most, even if they may have more than the other fellow who has less! God rewards hard work & merit & the deserving, but He doesn't reward the lazy who bury what little talent they've got.
         5. Everybody gets in trouble once in awhile, but some of these people that can never seem to make it, I don't have any interest at all in helping them financially, not at all, I don't care how poor they are. They're usually poor because they made themselves poor & they deserve to be poor!
         6. God will always bless hard work, diligence, faithfulness, good investment & He'll reward it with more & more! The faithful in the few things or in little will be faithful also in much & many things. But if you're unfaithful in a few things, you'll even lose what you've got, & God's not going to give you any more!
         7. I believe in helping successful missionaries, fruitful soul-winners, prosperous witnessers, because God blesses those who really get results & who work at it & obey & trust & therefore get it. The guy who makes it & is successful & fruitful & really wins souls & disciples & is really getting results, if you give him more, he'll get more results!
         8. SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE THE IDEA THAT LIVING BY FAITH MEANS LOAFING AROUND & DOING NOTHING! Well, they've got an entirely wrong idea of living by faith. They seem to think that living by faith means living by nothing or living for nothing or with nothing.
         9. Living by faith means putting faith into action, putting feet to your prayers & doing everything you can possibly do, as though everything depended on doing, & praying like everything depended on prayer. That's the way God looks at it. But the people who sit around & expect God to drop it into their laps while they're doing nothing are never going to get anything!
         10. We were very poor when I was young, & I was very poor when I was a young married man with children of my own, but we always had enough & we worked hard & diligently in the Lord's service. We preached the Gospel, we witnessed, litnessed, sang, played, held meetings, wrote prayer letters, did everything we could.
         11. Let me tell you, I've proved through years of experience, if we do our best, God will do His best to help us! But if we refuse to even help ourselves, God's certainly not going to help us! If we're not interested enough in trying to help ourselves, He's certainly not going to help us! I believe in that adage very firmly: God helps those who help themselves! And I add to that: And those who cannot help themselves!
         12. (MARIA: THE RELATED QUESTION THAT WE'VE HAD SEVERAL TIMES IS, "WE WANT TO HELP THE FLOOD OR EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS & give our trailers to them. It's the Year of the child, all these poor little children all over the World, we need to all get together & help them.")
         13. We certainly ought to give to God's Own above all! We certainly ought to be helping the Family of God & not the family of the Devil! There are plenty of the Devil's people who are plenty rich who can help them without us wasting what little the Lord has blessed us with on people for whom that wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket to the monumental needs of the millions! Let the world help its own!
         14. I'D GIVE FOOD TO THE HUNGRY, IF IT'S GOING TO GIVE ME A CHANCE TO FILL THEIR HEARTS as well as their stomachs. but I don't believe in wasting my time just doing nothing but clothing them & feeding them, much less house'm, if that's going to become my primary purpose & objective & take most of my time. We're to preach the Gospel to the poor, we're to feed them spiritually most of all.
         15. If gifts of food or clothing get you into refugee camps or prisons or orphanages or whatever in order to preach the Gospel, use it as a tool to get in there, & use it compassionately, sincerely, honestly, because you do want to help them, but most of all to give them the help that will help them the most, because once they have the Lord, you know the Lord's going to take care of them.
         16. Our major concern is saving their souls, & then God will save their bodies! We can't take care of them all their lives forever! All we can do is give them the Key to success, the Key to plenty, the Solution to poverty, & it's faith in God, the love of Christ, salvation! Because once they're God's children, He'll take care of them, that I know!
         17. (MARIA: DON'T YOU THINK WHEN OUR FAMILY HAS EXCESS THAT THEY SHOULD KEEP IT WITHIN THE FAMILY GENERALLY?) Of course! The Bible is as clear as can be on that! It says to take care of your own widows first. If there are widows, meaning poor people, & they have others who can help them, they've got relatives, they're others' widows, Paul makes it very clear, let them take care of them, he says, not us! (1Tim.5:3,4)
         18. We're to take care of our own, let the other Christians take care of their own & let their churches take care of them, & they usually do. They've got a lot more money than we have, billions! Billions that they waste on property & church buildings & other foolishness, when they ought to be taking care of the poor & the hungry & the needy, even their own poor!
         19. If they don't take care of them, we can't help that, that's not our responsibility. We're to take care of our own, our Family, that's who God will hold us responsible for. We're to take care of our own kids, not necessarily our neighbour's kids, although the occasion may be when the poor kids need it. But children are usually very receptive to the Gospel. There are very few kids who refuse or reject Jesus if you ask them to receive the Lord. People like that are worthy of helping.
         20. IN ANY CASE, YOU JUST HAVE TO GO BY THE LEADING OF THE LORD. There's no particular rule that fits everything, but those are the general criteria. In other words I don't believe in helping those who won't help themselves, & I don't believe in helping the World's poor whom the World should be taking care of when we have poor of our own to help.
         21. The Bible constantly talks about helping your brother or your sister or your own or your own widows, not those of the World, the wicked. Let them take care of their own, while we take care of ours. And let me tell you, we'll take care of ours who deserve it the most, & not those who don't deserve it because they're unwilling to try to take care of themselves or work at it!
         22. I'M WILLING TO GIVE ALMOST ANYBODY A FIRST CHANCE, try'm, help'm a little bit to help'm get started to see what they'll do with it, like the Lord gave the one poor man at least one talent. But even after us helping them to get started, if they still can't make it & they fail & they don't work at it & they don't take the little we've given them & invest it wisely & use it wisely & manage to make it grow, then I figure there's no use helping them any further, because they'll never make it, & they just don't know how to work or witness or trust or obey or whatever.
         23. "For unto every one that hath shall be given, & he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath!" Let's take care of our own & particularly those who deserve it, in Jesus' name, amen?

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