“Store up for yourselves, treasures in heaven.” Matthew 6:20
In this chapter, Batterson recounts stories of people who exhibited
incredible faith in God. One of them,
Stanley Tam, made an unheard of move and legally transferred 51% of his business
to God, his Senior Partner. He did this at a time when his annual revenues were
less than $200,000 – and he became a salaried employee of the company he had
started. That was in 1955, and since making that defining decision, he has
given away more than $120 million! Tam spoke at Pastor Batternson’s church a
few years ago, and shared godly wisdom: he discovered the key that unlocks the
joy of generosity, for what we keep we ultimately lose; what we give away we
ultimate get back. “I just send it ahead by giving it away…God cannot reward
Abraham yet because his seed is still multiplying.” We can’t know nor can we
calculate Tam’s reward in heaven. The same is true of us.
We often make the mistake of thinking that those who lived in biblical
history or history in general were somehow different from us. But that’s not so.
If God did it for them, He can do it for us. When we take God at His word, God
stands by His word, and if we do what they did in the Bible, God will do what
He did.
The greatest legacy we can leave is a life completely surrendered to
the lordship of Christ. Holding on to God ensures He will hold on to us, for as
David says in Psalm 84:11, “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk
uprightly.” These good things will pass from generation to generation and
become great things! God will answer our prayers in the lives of children’s
children we won’t meet until the great family reunion at the marriage supper of
the Lamb!
“Every prayer we pray, every gift we give, and every step of faith we
take is an inheritance left to the next generation. And our prayers live on,
long after we die, in their lives.” Pastor Batterson’s words here are
confirmation and very precious for me; flesh and blood did not reveal that
truth to him! Amen.
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