Pastor Joel Olsteen tells people not to be need-minded, but seed-minded. He exhorted his parishioners to give in order to get. If you want to see good things happen in your life, then you have to go out and do some good first. If you are feeling blue, cheer someone else up! If you are upset, find someone else to make you happy. If you feel lonely, go out and be friendly to someone else.
I tried that approach for a long time, yet it never seemed to work. I would meet and greet people. I acted as if I wanted to give them something, when in fact I was actually trying to get something from them. When someone did not receive any goodness from me, I got burned, churned, and turned up. More often than not, people acted as if they deserved whatever I was offering, whether a kind word, a kind deed, or a good thought. I ended up being madder, not happier. The more that I tried, the more tried and tired I became. The whole shuffle of give to get made me want to get away from it all.
Then I read a scripture that told me that I had everything that I needed in Christ:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: " (Ephesians 1: 3)
and
"For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
"And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power" (Colossians 2: 9-10)
The goal is never to work up the fruits of the Spirit, for they are borne by the Spirit within us
(Galatians 5: 22-23)
And we cannot bear this fruit ourselves, anyway:
"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. " (John 15: 5)
His key text is Isaiah 58, which a reader will take completely out of Context without reading it in light of the Finished Work of the Cross of Christ Jesus. Even Charles Swindoll wrote a little time on Isaiah58, one that had swept me up in years past, as I was so spiritually empty on the inside, that I did not know what to do.
and
"For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
"And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power" (Colossians 2: 9-10)
The goal is never to work up the fruits of the Spirit, for they are borne by the Spirit within us
(Galatians 5: 22-23)
And we cannot bear this fruit ourselves, anyway:
"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. " (John 15: 5)
His key text is Isaiah 58, which a reader will take completely out of Context without reading it in light of the Finished Work of the Cross of Christ Jesus. Even Charles Swindoll wrote a little time on Isaiah58, one that had swept me up in years past, as I was so spiritually empty on the inside, that I did not know what to do.
I say that every believer must be spirit-minded, spirit-led, and spirit-aware, more than anything else. We have nothing to give in the first place, we have no seed if we have not received the Word of God. If we have not Christ in us, then we have nothing but infinite debt. We have nothing to give, we are nothing. And nothing can come from nothing.
"Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit." (Matthew 12: 33)
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