Sowing Reaping and the Riches of Christ

Sowing Reaping and the Riches of Christ Remember this- a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a kind crop. You must each determine in your heart how much to give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure. "For God loves a person who gives cheerfully". And God will generously contribute all you need. Then you will all the time have everything you need and abundance left over to share with others. As the Scriptures say, "They share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever." (2 Corinthians 9:6 Nlt)

In this tube Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth and spirited to them to be generous, cheerful, prayerful givers. He pointed out the benefits and results of kind giving. Not only did this apply to the church at Corinth but also to us today. This is called, "seed faith giving", based on the principle and the promise from God that we reap what we sow. Giving back to God and reaping the benefits of kind giving is a matter of faith and believing His promises are true. Everything we have is not genuinely ours at all. everything belongs to God. Our home, our car, our enterprise even our house is a gift to us from God. He blesses by allowing us to use the things we need. Paul reminds us if we give a little we get a little. But if we give generously and with a cheerful heart God in turn blesses us generously. His blessings and provisions are not only in our material needs but in peace of mind and heart. The richness of blessings of love and joy are direct gifts from God. As Christians it is our inexpensive duty to give 10% of our income to His work on earth. Just as our income provides for the needs of our homes, our income provides for the needs of the church. In Old Testament times, in the book of Nehemiah, the population gave the first fruits of their income. They gave the first fruits of their crops. They brought wheat, wine, oil, flour and the first fruits of their crops. Today our first fruits are in the form of money. As Christians with hearts ready to serve we also give our time and service. We give our talents and our abilities. In turn, we receive God's blessings. Our motives for giving must be to freely and cheerfully give with no expectation of anything in return. If God never did anything else for me, He sent His only Son to die for my sins and that in and of itself would be sufficient to be forever a servant for Him. He saved me from hell, I owe Him everything. I have been playing the piano since I was 8 years old. Music is a gift from God to me. The returning of it in aid to God is in accord with being a Christian He has also blessed me with the capability to write and this too I do for Him. It is inexpensive that we use the gifts He has so graciously given us to honor Him. Everyone is given talents and abilities. When given back in aid to God our talent will be blessed by Him. It is His promise to us. God never breaks a promise. The Scriptures are clear in regards to giving. "Don't be misled; remember that you can't ignore God and get away with it; a man will all the time reap just the kind of crop he sows." (Galatians 6:7 Tlb). Jesus Himself tells us, "For if you give, you will get! Your gift will return to you in full and overflowing measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. anything part you use to give-large or small-will be used to part what is given back to you."(Luke 6:38 Tlb) If you want favor with both God and man, and credit for good judgment and common sense, then trust the Lord completely; don't ever trust yourself. In everything you do put God first and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success. Honor the Lord by giving Him the first part of all your income and He will fill your barns with wheat and barley and overflow your wine vats with the finest wines. (Proverbs 3:5-10 Tlb) The message is clear-we harvest in proportion to our planting. In his message to the church at Corinth Paul offered them 3 guidelines for giving. First: He ended giving as a underground matter to be settled between each man and God. You can't out give God and no one should give agreeing to what person else is giving. If you are giving for praise of men you are giving for the wrong reason. Second: Paul said we should pray and ponder our giving. We shouldn't give on impulse except by the leading of the Holy Spirit. But mostly giving should be a deliberate decision. Third: Giving is to be a private, not a group decision. If you are looking for a pat on the back or a plaque on the wall, you are giving for the wrong reasons. Our desire to give should be to give the way God gave; because He loved the world He gave His only Son. Give out of a heart full of love. By being a kind and cheerful giver not only do we benefit but others do as well. First and leading the giver benefits materially and spiritually. When we give freely and cheerfully and God blesses us in return it shows us His faithfulness. Our faith grows as well. The recipient of the giving benefits and they see God's love. God's kingdom benefits and the church benefits. It is a winning situation all around. It is God who provides the means for us to be generous. Jesus tells us, "Freely you have received, freely give." (Matthew 10:8 Kjv) The principle of giving is awesome in realizing God's abounding Grace His grace is more than sufficient for us. He is so full of love and grace towards us that not only does He replace the resources we spend in Christian aid but He multiplies them to the extent that at all times and in all things He provides all we need. These same principles of giving apply to businesses as well. 10% of any enterprise should be charity. I have seen doctors drive ,000 cars and live in million dollar houses turn away a sick person because they had no insurance. The promise of reaping what you sow takes on a terrific connotation for these self centered people. The idea is this, like Jesus said, the more we give, the more we get. We don't just give so we can get though. We give out of a heart of love for God and for others. The more we are blessed, the more we can bless person else. John Bunyan wrote, "A man there was and they called him mad; the more he gave, the more he had." Giving in such a heart felt way is a basic principle of the Christian life. We give because of what Christ did for us. population today just do not seem to be able to grasp the idea that God can and does multiply the kind giver's material resources. If you don't believe He does, try Him. Let Him prove it to you. Because of the evil in the world, the devil and his great deceptions, appearances seem to counteract the message of God. It seems as though the rich, who are often stingy with their wealth, get richer and the poor, who are normally cheerful givers, seem to get poorer. But the richness we are blessed with comes in many forms. These are called the "sevenfold riches of God" In the book of Isaiah episode 45:3 the Word of God tells us, "I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in underground places, so that you may know that I am the Lord. In studying the Bible and searching for these riches we can find the underground places: Ephesians 3:8 teaches us that as Children of God we are blessed with "the unsearchable riches of Christ. Romans 2:4 tell us of "the riches of goodness". Romans 9:23 reminds us of the "riches of wisdom and knowledge". Romans 11:33 mentions the "richness of mercy". Ephesians 1:18 tells us of the "riches of His glorious inheritance". And four times in Scripture "the riches of glory" is mentioned. Samuel Smiles in his book, Life and Labor is quoted as saying, "Sow a plan and you reap and act, sow an act and you reap a habit, sow a habit and you reap a character, sow a character and you reap a destiny." Generous giving from the heart endures forever. It is never forgotten by God. Being a kingdom giver is storing up eternal treasures. The effects of your kind giving will supervene you from generation to generation. We can only fantasize the benefits that are laid up eternally. By meeting the needs of God's population we are in essence giving thanks to God for all He has done and all He will do. The speculate we give is to meet a need. But the extreme goal is to honor God with our giving. Because we know that all things good and perfect come from Him. When needs are met God is praised, the cycle of life from the giver. Be blessed and be a blessing. Sow a seed. Honor God Sowing Reaping and the Riches of Christ

Brand Alchemy - Turning Lead Into Gold

Brand Alchemy - Turning Lead Into Gold He's the foreseen, Hulk. He's big, he's green and he's really, honestly angry. He is also the first of the considerable remake/sequels that Marvel Studios is putting out to reclaim the integrity of their brand. We all remember the first film by director Ang Lee. It was sharp, it was cool, the Cgi was good for its time, the "Hulk issue" was shown to be multigenerational and the movie had a mutated poodle...you see where I am going with this. Somehow, the first Hulk went off the rails. The new one, with Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, manages to pull the train back to where it belongs.

The importance of Brand to the modern Superhero You see the same things happening with other superhero blockbusters. Iron Man, splendid Four, Spider-Man, The Punisher, and The X-Men; and on the Dc side of the comic universe, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. All of these are going back to the customary material in some way; all of them are being true to the characters as they were in the beginning. To put in order for his role as The Joker, Heath Ledger was given the comics that first introduced the character while the writer, David Goyer, based his work on the comic series Batman: the Long Halloween. They even consulted with Jerry Robinson, one of the Joker's co-creators, on how he should be portrayed. The result: A Joker that is not your giggling '60s era Cesar Romero "Clown Prince of Crime." Ledger's Joker is the remorseless, murdering psychopath fans first met decades ago. Why go straight through all of this? Why not modernize the stories and the characters? There are all sorts of creative citizen in Hollywood; honestly they can do a great job bringing the superhero into the 21st century. After all, we all liked Daredevil and Electra, and all those great made-for-Tv superhero movies based on these same comics, right? Wrong. The fact is that every mediocre rendition, every adaptation, every low-budget attempt to capture the essence of these characters and stories is, at best a disappointment. At worst, it is a severe blow to the brand involved. As far as I am concerned, films like Electra or Batman Returns were the comic book hero versions of New Coke, mistakes that grew into an object episode for all involved. Marvel learned that episode all too well, as did the makers of the new Batman franchise. All of them are doing the work and being true to their brand, either right from the start or by practicing a minute brand alchemy and reclaiming it. Being true to your brand means being true to who you are and what you and your firm stand for in the marketplace. The owners of these stories forgot that over the years, selling their characters and storylines-their product, their brand-to citizen who liked the face aspects of the characters but wanted to recreate what was under that veneer in their own images. The results were painful to watch and did more harm than good to the franchises involved. Some Ideas for Being True to Your Brand There are some lessons to be learned here; lessons that, if adhered to, will keep you and your brand afloat for a long time to come. Do Not Reinvent the Wheel These characters have been colse to for years, some for decades. Why is that? Spider-Man was born out of two things: fear of radioactivity and fear of spiders, neither of which have gone anywhere. The Hulk is something else. It is a retelling of a first-rate tale, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. True, it has updated story with modern technology but the tale of a scientist that experiments upon himself and becomes a monster is intact. What these examples tell us is that once you have something that works, you don't need to fiddle with it. By all means keep your brand current in the same way you would keep your goods or aid mix current, but convert for the sake of convert doesn't help and can honestly hurt you. Even when you think you have a good fancy to rebrand your business, you need to consider what you will gain versus what you might lose. After all, look at what happened to New Coke. Keep Focus One of the things that marks most super heroes is their tragic beginnings-the death of a loved-one, a devastating assault, a planet explodes, a horrific injustice that must be avenged-and the more monstrous the event, the more monstrous the hero. While the four Batman films of the '90s kept that initial tragedy, that initial trauma, the driving force that should have come from it was lost by the second film and we were more interested in the villains than in Batman himself. Why? We lost interest because there was no real focus on Batman and his fancy for existing. Focus was on the tragic beginnings of the villains. In fact, this was so bad that not even the introduction of Robin and Batgirl in the third and fourth installments could save it. The problem was that the seminal moment in the life of the main character was glossed over rather badly. The death of Bruce Wayne's parents was a fact, it was dealt with in a fairly perfunctory and superficial fashion and then Bruce was fighting crime in a heavy latex bat suit. Makes sense, right? Personal tragedy leads to nighttime, rooftop romps in black rubber. There seems to be a disconnect here. What are missing are the pain, angst and inner friction of the main character that leads him into that duplicate life. Instead, the films were all about action. Now, that's fine if your demographic is 12-year old boys (or adult boys with the mentality of 12-year olds), but from the point of view of sustaining a story-let alone a franchise-it doesn't hold up and things that don't hold up over time are not good for a brand. So, what does hold up? What hold up are all the aspects of your firm that differentiate you from your competitors; all that goes into supporting your brand. It is your goods mix, your service, your sell space, the way you interact with the society and with your customers and vendors. These are your core competencies and focusing on them means you are focusing on what sets you apart-you are focusing on your brand. Be Brilliant The third major episode we can take away from the up-to-date reinvention of the superhero adventure movie is the need to be, for lack of a good word, brilliant. One cannot conceive of Iron Man without Robert Downey Jr. Or The foreseen, Hulk without Edward Norton. Why is this? It is not adequate to naturally remark that in the scenes without them, the movie drags. It's not adequate because that is only a sign of a more general issue. By the way they play the characters, it is sure that these actors have made them their own, and that adds something intangible to the films, a quality that takes what might otherwise be a fairly pedestrian action-adventure film and makes it great. More than that, these films don't scrimp. The Dark Knight filmed at locations in England, Hong Kong and in Chicago because the filmmakers wanted all to be right. The computer technology they poured into it was top-of-the line as well. Why is that? To make money you have to spend money and nowhere is that homily more self-evident than in the movie business. The great ones spend what they need to do it right. That means location, equipment, actors, technical people, Cgi, props, costumes-everything. Doing it right is all part of your brand. In fact, it is a very large part of your brand that cuts over your products, your services, your output and manufacturing, your personnel and your management. In each of these areas, doing things right shows the world that you are fully dedicated to quality. That means you need the right people, citizen who take your firm as seriously as you do, the right products and materials and the right procedures and processes. When you get that mix right, stand back and put on some shades. The results will be brilliant. The lowest Line Keeping your brand on top takes work. It is not an advertising issue, or a marketing issue; it is a whole-business issue. Just as with the superhero brands that are dominating the movies this year, your brand must be reflected in all you do, from you personnel decisions to your office or sell space to your customer aid to your products and services. All of these things are your brand and you need to treat them as such. It isn't often that Hollywood teaches us something worthwhile, but this is something every firm owner needs to learn. It will be fun to see of J.J. Abrams has learned it with his upcoming Star Trek prequel. Of course, with Simon Pegg as Scotty, I have to wonder. Brand Alchemy - Turning Lead Into Gold