When I was a little girl, my Dad would give me and my brothers some money to buy Christmas presents for my mom and him. It was never much but just enough to find something we could wrap and present to them.

I remember the year I picked out two coffee mugs for them. It was probably 1972, and my Mom had a Mug Tree on our gold counter top in the kitchen with the orange beads hanging as curtains above the sink! The mugs weren’t expensive; they weren’t the height of mug fashion either! But, they weren’t tacky, and they were purchased with thoughtfulness, and I used everything my Dad gave me to buy them for him and my mom.

Wouldn’t it have been awful if on Christmas morning, my Dad opened my gift and exclaimed, “Mugs?! Is that all you could get?! And, at least you could have bought us nicer mugs to hang on the mug tree in our mod beady kitchen!”

I would have been crushed, wouldn’t I?  And, would that make any sense at all?  How unreasonable and cruel it would be for a father to grant only a certain amount of cash to purchase his gift and then scold the child for not having enough cash to purchase a gift that would please him?

My Dad gave to me in proportion to what he expected to receive from me.

God gives us what He expects to receive.

What does that mean?

God gives us what we need to please Him. 

For example, The Lord said, “I will give them a heart to know I am the LORD” (Jer. 24:7).

God wants us to know Him; therefore He gives us the heart to know Him.  He gives according to what He expects.

The degree of blessing he gives us is the degree of gratitude he expects in return. The amount of talent he bestows upon you is equal to the quantity of expended talent he expects from you.

You cannot give back to God what He does not first give you. The reason you can love Him is because He first loved you. God gives you exactly what He expects from you.

Have you ever thought about this? Where does this message meet you? Leave a comment here.