Unlimited Resources but Limited Receptacles
God's generosity is limited by our receptacles of faith, and we must have a large enough faith to receive His gifts.
A.W. Tozer emphasizes that God's infinite nature means His goodness, mercy, love, and grace are boundless, and that to think of Him as limited is to misunderstand His true essence. He argues that while many acknowledge God's vast resources, fewer believe in His generosity to share them, which requires a deeper faith rooted in divine revelation found in the Bible. Tozer challenges Christians to recognize that their spiritual poverty stems from their limited capacity to receive God's gifts, as these are distributed according to the receptacle's size rather than the giver's abundance. He calls for believers to expand their faith and receptivity to fully experience God's blessings.
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Since God is infinite, whatever He is must be infinite also; that is, it must be without any actual or conceivable limits. The moment we allow ourselves to think of God as having limits, the one of whom we are thinking is not God but someone or something less than and different from Him. To think rightly of God we must conceive of Him as being altogether boundless in His goodness, mercy, love, grace and in whatever else we may properly attribute to the Deity. It is not enough that we acknowledge God's infinite resources; we must believe also that He is infinitely generous to bestow them. The first is not too great a strain on our faith.
Even the deist will admit that the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, must be rich beyond the power of man to conceive.
But to believe that God is a giver as well as a possessor takes an advanced faith and presupposes that there has been a divine revelation to that effect which gives validity to our expectations. Which indeed there has been. We call this revelation the Bible. Believing all this, why are we Christians so poverty stricken? I think it is because we have not learned that God's gifts are meted out according to the taker, not according to the giver. Though almighty and all-wise, God yet cannot pour a great gift into a small receptacle.
Sermon Outline
- The Nature of God's Resources
- God's resources are infinite and boundless
- This is essential to a proper understanding of God
Key Quotes
“To think rightly of God we must conceive of Him as being altogether boundless in His goodness, mercy, love, grace and in whatever else we may properly attribute to the Deity.” — A.W. Tozer
“God yet cannot pour a great gift into a small receptacle.” — A.W. Tozer
Application Points
- We must have a large enough faith to receive God's gifts.
- God's generosity is limited by our receptacles of faith.
- We must learn to trust in God's infinite resources and generosity.