When we are giving to God, either of our time or of our money, we should be doing it with purpose, or a plan, so we can give God our best effort. The Apostle Paul tells us how servants should be working for their masters. Our Master is Jesus, so I will take it from that angle. Eph 6:23, Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. This passage makes it clear that we are to be serving the Lord with our whole heart; so we need to put our best effort into serving Him when we do. To put our best effort into something often means that we are going to be purposeful, so we need to do some planning so we are prepared to do the work. We also need to maintain our focus on what we want to accomplish, because Satan is going to try to throw in some roadblocks to stop us.
A couple from our church have shared that a few years ago they felt a burden to go to the Philippines to share the Gospel with the wife’s family, so with that plan they went. It would have been easy for them to get distracted with the joys of being back home with family and to not do their best and witness. But they did maintain their focus, did their best to stay with their plan and did some witnessing. And because they did, many of the wife’s family came to the Lord during that visit.
Part of our calling is also to be being obedient to serve the Lord at our local church. Either we share with one of our Pastors the desire to get involved, or sometimes they ask us to get involved in a ministry; so we do. We need to do our best and make a plan when we are ministering to the Lord, in whichever ministry we are doing. If we are teaching Children’s Ministry, we need to have our lesson prepared ahead of time. If we are Ushering or Greeting, we need to have our mouths freshened and be early so we are ready to greet people. If we are giving a devotional, we need to have it written out and rehearsed.
It is not to say in that giving our best that we are giving The Best that can be done. Surely there are people who can do it better than we can. God hasn’t asked us to be the very best, but to use the gifting that we have to the best ability that we can. We might even make some mistakes doing ministry; but we can learn from those mistakes and do better the next time.
Likewise, as we give our tithes and offerings, we need to plan ahead so we are prepared to give the best we can to the Lord, which is dependent upon our own financial ability. Just opening up our wallets at collection time isn’t giving our best; it is just seeing what money is still on us.
Jesus fulfilled God’s perfect plan for our salvation. It was a plan; God didn’t do a spur of the moment idea when He sent Jesus to die for our sins. That is why we can look at the Old Testament and see how Jesus fulfilled that plan through many prophecies.
Since God did planning when He gave His best for us; we should also be able to plan when we do ministry, and give our tithes & offerings, so we can give our best back to Him.