Quotes about Receiving

Unworthy" does not mean "undeserving", for we are all undeserving! It means "incapable of receiving.

When you give, you will be blessed. When you give, it will be given back to you.

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

God wants us to flourish, and paradoxically we flourish best by obeying rather than rebelling, by giving more than receiving, by serving rather than being served. Six times in the Gospels Jesus iterated the deeper truth that we succeed not by acquiring more and more but by "losing" life through service to God and others.

Our only option, then, is honesty that leads to repentance. As the Bible shows, God's grace can cover any sin, including murder, infidelity, or betrayal. Yet by definition grace must be received, and hypocrisy disguises our need to receive grace. When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

Our need to give is every bit as desperate as the poor's need to receive.

That stance of openness to receive is what I call the "catch" to grace. It must be received, and the Christian term for that act is repentance, the doorway to grace.

How does a person receive rain? Not by prying it loose from the sky but just by watching it fall, by standing in the downpour, by thanking Him for opening up the floodgates and sending what He knows we need and can't get for ourselves, yet what He so faithfully, regularly, and graciously gives.

The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives fresh water, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

Our example in this is the ultimate Servant Jesus, who came to serve but graciously accepted the service of others—people like His hosts Mary and Martha, the use of the colt He rode into Jerusalem, and others.

Ben Franklin quipped, Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall receive it. Negative expectations are a quick route to dead-end thinking.

In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.