House of Lloyd

“RevolutionaryLove.TV- The Sequel.” Last year Revolution Church did a series called Revolutionary Love. It was great and I am glad that we are revisiting the series.

Week 1: The message today was about Sacrificial Giving. Boy did I need to hear this. David and I had discussed and prayed about what gift we should give to the church for the Christmas offering. After making a decision we felt good about we were dealt a financial blow in the amount of $6000 in attorney fees for Madilyn’s bmom. We had $1700 left in our adoption escrow account, and our attorney sent this to the other attorney prior to Thanksgiving. Once we returned home from our Thanksgiving Break we had a message from the attorney wanting to know when the remaining $4300 would be paid. She wanted her money now. We bit the bullet and sent the rest of the money not really knowing how our fiances would play out for the rest of the year.

After hearing the message on sacrificial giving we decided that the amount of money we had decided to give the church was STILL the amount we need to give. Well we like most people do not just have this kind of money sitting around (especially after spending so much on the adoption). We will be giving sacrificially… meaning we are going to cut out other stuff to make this gift to the church happen. We are going to sacrifice and give to God what we know we need to give. We know God will take our gift and do a great work with it, and we will be blessed by giving.

At the end of the service the offering plates were passed and we each drew a card that contained needs of a local women’s shelter. We drew diapers, toothbrushes and aspirin. I told Caleb that since he had drawn the card out of the offering plate that he should use his own money to help meet the need. He is such a stand up kid. He gets $20 a month, pays $2.00 in tithes leaving him $18 for the month. He decided that he would give $10.00 to help purchase items for the women’s shelter. He could have been selfish and offered less but he gave 1/2 of his monthly allowance to this cause.

Caleb and I went shopping and purchased 2 bags of diapers, 20 adult toothbrushes, 8 children’s toothbrushes and 8 bottles of aspirin. At the checkout the cashier smiled a toothless smile and said, “you must have some headache.” I told her our church was collecting items for the women’s shelter.” She looked like she was about to cry and said, “Thank you, they helped me when no one else would.” WOW…..