Rabbi Schneider - Become Transformed Through Giving
Most of us have been in a church service where the worship music has been playing, oftentimes people are raising their hands and singing, they're worshiping God. And you have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. You literally felt the presence of God. And it was such a good feeling, such a beautiful feeling, such peace in the atmosphere. And many of us are hungry to experience that all the time. That feeling that we get in environments where many, many people have come together to worship the Lord and beautiful sanctified worship music is being sung and played, we just feel somehow a connection to eternity. And what we desire is that we would feel that good feeling all the time, right? But what we know is sometimes it's not less than you know, it's not more than 2 hours after that that we're we're on the road and we're dealing with the stress of life and all the responsibilities that we have in this world and relationship issues.
And we're no longer feeling that beautiful sense of God's presence that we felt in that worship service just a little bit earlier. How do we enter into a state where we can more permanently experience God's presence we feel in the worship service, but how can we feel it more all the time? Beloved, what we need to do to be able to feel God's presence in a more permanent way is be transformed. And one of the ways that we're transformed is when we rise up from the inside, in the spirit, to become givers, to overcome selfishness. All of us in the flesh and the natural. We are all, by nature, selfish. This is just the human condition. In fact, Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians that by nature, every human being that's ever been born is a child of wrath, meaning they're separated from God and they're living lives that are in contradiction to the to the manifestation of a spirit.
In other words, selfishness is a complete paradox to God's presence. Who's always giving right? God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. So if we're going to be able to experience Jesus as presence more and more, what we need to do is we need to become more like him. And the more like him we become, the more transformed into his image, the more we're going to sense a fellowship with him that will not only increase, but will be more permanent. We won't lose it so easily. Sure, there's going to be challenges in life where it's more difficult to feel his presence. But by and large, as we become more like Jesus by transcending the flesh through the Spirit, we more and more enter into the fellowship of God's presence.
Jesus actually taught this in John 14 when he said, If you love me, you'll keep my word and my Father and I will come to you and make our home with you. And he said, And you'll be loved by my Father. It's not that we earn God's love, but it's that we feel God's love, because there's not a big barrier in the way of that. I want to encourage you today, beloved, to stretch yourself in becoming less selfish and more giving. This applies to everything. It applies to our relationships. You know, great athletes are oftentimes very, very selfish people.
Some would say they have to be in order to accomplish what they need to accomplish. But you know what? When it comes to the kingdom of God, we have to transcend selfishness, because if we don't, we're going to be trapped. We're going to be trapped in a little small world. And at the end, our lives are going to crumble. If this ministry discovering the Jewish Jesus, if my teaching is helping you and blessing you and nourishing you, I want to lovingly and politely challenge you to resist your flesh of not giving and overcoming your flesh by giving financially to the Lord through this ministry.
This is a biblical principle. In fact, all through the Bible, God taught the principle of worshiping Him with our tithes and our offerings, especially through ministries that are feeding us. Paul actually said, If you receive spiritual things from my ministry, then you should respond by sowing financially into the ministry. So this is solid, beloved. This is foundational biblical truth. I already feel today that many of you hear what I'm saying. So I want to thank you in advance for your loving financial support, to Discovering the Jewish Jesus so that we can continue to spread the gospel around the world. And in giving, beloved, you'll be blessed because you'll be offering up your life as a sacrifice to God. And your gift to Him, to this ministry is actually a testament of your love to Him.