2 Corinthians 8:1-15 Stewardship

Another spiritual discipline the Corinthian church needed to work on was stewardship. Paul gave the church two examples and an exhortation to help encourage them to improve this aspect of their spiritual lives in order to meet spiritual and physical needs in the church.
The first example presented is the Macedonian church. Their testimony included the endurance of a great trial which they overcame through the care of each other in good stewardship and giving. Paul shares the key to their successful giving in verse 5, "...but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God." The Christians in Macedonia had their priorities in place. Remember, in Acts chapter 2, the early church in Jerusalem gave everything they had to the church in order to share it equally. The Macedonian church did not necessarily give the same way, but did realize that they themselves belonged to God. After we give ourselves to God entirely, which is what He desires, our possessions no longer appear as our possessions. When we realize that everything we have belongs to the Lord, our stewardship of those things will be liberated from the greed and pettiness that we are prone to exercise.
The next example of stewardship we see in this passage is that of Jesus Christ. First, we are told that our giving, "proves the sincerity of your love." Christ certainly proved his sincerity to us. We are told in verse 9 that He made Himself poor so that through His poverty, we could become rich. God told us that He loved us and proved it by giving us His Son. We should be willing therefore, in an effort to imitate Christ, to give to those whom we say that we love.
In his exhortation, Paul reminds us that a willing mind only goes as far as our mind. We have to do things in order for things to get done. Paul also reminds us that as we collectively supply to the needs of others, we also will be blessed in our time of individual need. If we as a church are mindful of the needs of our people, and are willing to give of our own excess, we can be assured that the church will be able to meet the needs of everyone, even when that someone is you.