With the massive increase in Christian ministers constantly asking for seeds and special offerings after preaching (something very popular of Nigerian preachers), I will show you why giving those offerings and special seeds will not guarantee your blessings, upliftment or financial liberation from poverty – the very baits most minsters use to coerce you into giving. People are naturally selfish. The average person is thinking primarily about himself and preoccupied with his personal concerns. It seems to me that this is a natural phenomenon. It takes an overtaking by the Spirit of God and compassion for natural people to break the trend. This is how it works: when you invite people to give money because someone else is in need, most people are not moved. Why? Simply because it doesn’t connect to them. It doesn’t matter how passionately you present the case, a few persons may eventually give a token out of sympathy to you the person asking, not necessarily because of the need. However, once the need concerns a person directly, maybe a sick relative or something that they have a stake or interest in, most people will be quick to part with their money without thinking too much. That is the premise for the psychology that most ministers apply when they want to raise offerings or money in church. There may truly be a need for the money in the ministry, but they know that it doesn’t matter how well the present the need, many people will not just respond, so they resort to riding on the alternative – attaching the giving to something that directly concerns people so it looks as though they are giving to themselves. If you observe, most calls for seeds and special offerings are tied to something that has to do with you. You will hear things like “sow a seed for your financial upliftment” or “sow a seed on behalf of your future, your marriage or your children.” Sometimes, it is called “seed for career expansion”, “healing activation”, “promotion” or someking of “breakthrough”. The secret here is to tie it to something that directly concerns you the potential giver, and make it something that you want so badly. That way, you are giving not because you want to give to God, but because you  need what it advertised as the result of the giving. They even make it sound as if the higher the amount you give, the more of the returns you get, thereby making God look like a Ponzi scheme. When you see people trooping out to give, the truth is, many of them are not giving because they love God and  are not giving to support the ministry or advance the cause of the Gospel, no no no, deep down inside, many of them are giving because they want breakthrough, promotion, safety, healing, good marriages,  good children, business expansion etc, and that my friends is not the kind of giving that moves God an inch. Will the money be collected and used by the Church? Absolutely. Will that giving hold any weight or value before God? I doubt that much. Why? Because that giving doesn’t come out of worship or reverence to God, it simply comes out of selfish desires. In some cases, people give out of guilt, because they have been made to feel that if they do not give, they’ve shut down God’s blessing on their lives. Giving out of fear or guilt equally amounts to no giving at all. If I didn’t want to be polite, I would have said you got scammed. By the way, not everything given to church is given to God. But that is topic for another day. So how would you give to get a blessing? Give to God as an act of worship, reverence and love, or give because you want to meet a need you hear about. The motive behind your giving shows God the true state of your generosity, and it is only generous and cheerful givers that get blessed and rewarded, selfish and self-centred givers don’t. Be advised.