Daily Manna · Day 97 · April 7
The Logic of Generosity
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
Many of us pray around the edges. After a hard year, asking God for something specific can feel greedy, so we keep our requests general and safe. We ask for nothing that could come back as a no.
George Müller ran orphan houses in Bristol, England, for more than sixty years, and at one time about two thousand children lived in them. On principle, he never asked any person for money. He asked God instead, wrote his requests down with dates, and later wrote the answers in the same books. His journals read less like a devotional book and more like a set of accounts. One story about him is retold often: the children sat down to breakfast with no food in the house, Müller gave thanks anyway, and a baker knocked at the door with bread. Müller also recorded the ordinary days, including days when help came only at the last moment. He said the first purpose of the work was to show that God is still faithful and still hears prayer, and he put it all on paper so that others could check it for themselves.
Paul is making the same kind of argument here. He is giving us a line of reasoning as well as encouragement: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" The reasoning runs from the greater gift to the lesser. God has already given up the costliest thing He had, His own Son. So He will not now hold back something smaller because He is unwilling to give it.
Be careful, though, about what "all things" means in this chapter, because Paul fills it in around this verse. It means being "conformed to the image of his Son." It means being kept through "tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword." It means being glorified at the end. Paul is not promising to pay for the life you had planned. He is promising that the Father who handed over Jesus will not hold back anything you truly need to reach home.
So before you put this down, ask God for something specific: the amount, the name, the date. Write it down if you keep a journal. Then write the sentence you will hold onto if the answer is no, and write it now while you are calm: He did not spare His own Son for me, so this is not neglect. The God who gave His Son for you has not forgotten you, whatever His answer is.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 97 is How Frail I Am (Psalm 39:4).