I was really inspired by Mike Bett’s video on Sunday about Kenyans praying for our upcoming Together at East of England Conference – details of that and the video are on the website www.togetherconference.com

There are a couple of people I would love to come to the Together Conference, who wouldn’t be able to afford it. If you would like to sponsor or part sponsor someone, then please pop a cheque payable to “The Gateway Church” in the offering box on Sunday with “Conference sponsorship” on the back please! A full-board adult ticket costs £127.50.

J.John shared a great story at the men’s day on Saturday of a guy on his own in airport lounge – who bought a latte and a bag of mini-doughnuts. He sat at a table where there was a guy reading his paper. He opened the bag of doughnuts and took one. The other guy looked, reached down and took one, to the astonishment of the first guy. He did it again and again and our guy finds himself getting increasingly annoyed, but not saying anything. How dare he take my doughnuts! The newspaper guy looks in the bag, sees one doughnut left, rips it in half, eats his half and pushes the bag towards our guy, before getting up and going to his flight. What a cheek! When our first guy gets up for his flight, he sees his own bag of doughnuts on top of his suitcase. Ooops!

Point is God owns all the doughnuts. God gives us all a bag of 10 doughnuts a month. Some are big doughnuts, some are small. But God gives them and really we are only looking after them. When we give back to God, through the local church, one of those doughnuts, somehow the other 9 stretch further! Perhaps largely because we are being more intentional with the other nine and because God blesses givers. The question isn’t “is God going to bless me” but rather, “how am I going to handle the blessings that God has already poured out all over me?”

Sometimes we can give an extra half or more from those 9 doughnuts because we are being blessed. There’s a great line in the film “Over the Hedge” where some cute cartoon animals are being introduced to the art of scavenging. They find a bag of doughnuts and the lead character, Ajay, points to a fat human in front of a TV and says “Ah, doughnuts – Humans use those for storing fat for the winter”. Jesus calls us to store treasure in heaven!