Matthew 6:1-6 [NLT]
1 “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. 2 When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. 3 But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. 4 Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
5 “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6 But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

Dear God, every time I have ever journaled on this passage, it has always been weird for me because I am doing it through a public prayer journal. I’ll admit that there are times when I stop and check my spirit to see if I am doing this for the approval of others or for their encouragement. I THINK it’s the latter. I certainly hope and pray that that is the case.

Another thing as a nonprofit that solicits donations from people is how I treat those donations, and what kinds of motivations I give to people for giving to our agency. The same is true for my wife and me and how we do our giving. Personally, I think it is a positive for the nonprofit when they put someone’s name on a donor list because it is like an endorsement from that donor that says that the donor believes enough in the organization to give money to it. When my wife and I give to a nonprofit, I certainly want that nonprofit to use my gift to its maximum effectiveness, and I think part of that is listing somewhere that I am a donor to them.

Now I am uncomfortable with getting into “donor levels.” One thing I’ve done in the past is asked a nonprofit that separates donations by size in their listings to list my wife and I in the lowest category regardless of how much we gave. I don’t want it to necessarily be known how much I gave, but I do want people to know that we support that nonprofit.

Father, I guess it all comes down to motives and why I do this. I’ll confess that I look at the statistics for this blog and look to see how many visits it gets. I can imagine that it would become a real ego problem for me if I felt like the people reading it knew who I was, but I am usually as anonymous to them as they are to me. But I do pray that the posting of these prayer journals is a witness to others. I pray that they will see the importance of spending time in scripture and prayer. I pray that they will be encouraged by the honest prayers of someone who is just trying to figure out my path by holding your hand through the bad times and the good. I pray that they will also be drawn into spending their own time meditating on scripture and seeking you with all of their strength, heart, mind, and soul.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen