According to 1 Corinthians 13:3, giving, just by itself, if it is not motivated by love and accompanied by a love-walk, will not benefit the giver. The profound relationship between profiting (materially) from our giving and love was first brought to my understanding in a dream in 2006, in which I was told never to separate love and prosperity. I narrated that dream in detail last week.
The second time God vividly taught me that giving and love go hand in hand, was four years later in 2010. Because that dream was highly symbolic, allow me to just give its interpretation. First and foremost, God showed me that saving money by itself cannot deliver a Christian from poverty. As it is written, “. . . there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty” (Proverbs 11:24b). God then went on to show me that the only thing that will break the back of poverty in a Christian’s life is the former part of Proverbs 11:24 – giving (“There is one who scatters, yet increases more”).
But in that dream, there was a certain individual for whom the back of poverty couldn’t be broken by giving! In order for giving to profit that person, and thereby deliver them from poverty, that person had to first remove all that is not “love” from their life/heart. I was meant to understand that things like “evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, . . . defile a man” (Mark 7:21-23). Until a person forsakes such things and begins to walk in love by obeying the commandments of God (John 14:21), their giving won’t benefit them.
Therefore, if we want God to accept our sacrifice of giving (Philippians 4:18), and to bless us financially because of it (2 Corinthians 9:7-8), let us not neglect love. For “though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and thought I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3).
God bless you.