As I’ve thought and prayed about what to say to you tonight as we begin, I’ve chosen a short passage from Philippians.  It seems most appropriate because it is Paul’s letter to the church with which he has had a long and deep relationship.  Some have even described it as the church he loved the most.  It was certainly one of the most diverse – an accomplished businesswoman, a redeemed fortune teller and a jailer all in the same congregation.  It reminds me so much of us here tonight as we all come from so many different backgrounds and traditions.  We all have such varied interests and passions and we have been brought here by a host of different expectations, needs and relationships.  We are not too much unlike the Philippian church ourselves.

Paul begins with a prayer for them and that is how I want to begin tonight.  This is my prayer for you over the time we are going to be together.  I’ve been praying it for weeks but I want you to know tonight what it is I’ll be praying between now and Sunday afternoon.  He says in Philippians 1:9-10.

This is my prayer for you.
That your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

Some books have great first lines.  Scott Pecks opening to The Road Less Travelled is a classic – “Life is Difficult”.  All of us who had to read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens remember the first sentence: “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  Out of Africa begins simply with, “I had a farm in Africa”.  I like the opening line from Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life:  “It’s not about you”.  And that’s what I want us to focus on for the next few days.  It’s not about us. In the end, everything we do here is about the glory and praise to God.

How does giving begin?  It begins in love, doesn’t it?  Love for something other than accumulating.  Love for a ministry that has reached us or someone close to us or is reaching someone we’ll never meet.  It begins with love of people (philanthropy) and a love for God’s work in this world.  We would not be here tonight if we were not beginning in love.  But love is not enough by Paul’s standard for us.  Something gets added to love that makes it even better than love all by itself.  It is the only beginning but it is only the beginning.

Love grows, increases, abounds through knowledge.  Love without knowledge is only sentimentality and too easily swayed.  Love without knowledge is all good intentions and well meaning emotion but without substance.  It does not grow.  Love does not grow by adding more love.  It grows by adding knowledge.  The substance and perseverance and quality of love grows through knowledge. We often think of knowledge as displacing love but Paul is teaching us that the more you genuinely learn the more love there is.  So, instead of becoming cold, clinical and expert we become more compassionate, more loving and more full of grace toward others.   That’s important to us as we start our time together because we want to do that over the next few days.  We all are coming here wanting love to grow and it will literally “overflow” according to Paul as we add knowledge to it.  I cannot imagine your walking out of here on Sunday without more knowledge.  Knowledge by itself leads to pride.  Love by itself leads to ill-informed sentimentality but love and knowledge together lead to insight – what Scripture calls understanding.

What Paul wants for us is not just information and expertise but deep insight – the ability to see into the core of issues and people and the patterns of what God is doing in our time.  Mixing love and knowledge together creates understanding – and we all know how important that quality is as we sort through all the opportunities for giving that flood us.

Paul was never satisfied with only love or knowledge or even understanding nor should we be.  He knows that deep, loving and knowledgeable understanding leads us to discernment or what Scripture often calls wisdom.  It’s the ability to test the differences and to know what is right and then to do it in a way that does not offend – wisdom that is pure (unaffected by wealth or position) and blameless (not arrogant or demeaning or causing others to stumble).  It is looking at all the options for good and knowing what is excellent and then having the ability to choose it – to take action on it.

And then we are back where we started, aren’t we.  It’s not about us.  It’s not about our love or our knowledge or our insight or understanding or even our wisdom.  The end of it all is the glory going to God.  That’s how I hope we’ll end our time together.  On Sunday morning we’ll be grateful for the growth, the relationships, the new knowledge and insights and all the exposure to so many resources and opportunities.  But the end of it all will not be about us but about Him and His love for all of creation.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases Romans 8:19 in this way:  “The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own.”  That is what I am on tiptoe about this week-end – to see the wonderful sight of you coming into your own as a giver and a steward of all the blessings of God in your life.

This is my prayer for you.