Giving Practices

I could tell you so many stories Of “coincidences” that cannot be explained away as mere luck. 

God asked me to take a step toward something specific, but it was gonna make finances rather tight for us. I obeyed, and less than 24 hour later, someone handed me some money “just because”.

obedience always matters. The on-going practice we have of being generous, including tithing, postures our heart to Trust in God. Trusting in God is a risk and God moves toward those who trust in him.

John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard, used to say, “Faith is spelled R-I-S-K.”

I’m so excited for you, coming out of this Practice, to risk, to give in faith — because it’s highly likely you will witness miracles. 

• It seems that in this Practice in particular, God loves to show his hand. 

• I wonder if it’s because when we give, we become channels for God’s love to flow through us to others. That is main idea of this whole practice…becoming people of love.

• And that is a beautiful thing. 

We’ve covered a lot of ground over the last four sessions. 

We hit on four key themes from Jesus’ teachings:

There’s more joy in giving than in receiving. 

Watch out for greed! 

All we have belongs to God. 

Be generous to the poor.

Now, it’s time to put it all together.

To live a generous life will require a plan.

• It’s unlikely to just happen. 

• In fact, in our click-baity, algorithm-based-advertising culture of “more,” with an Amazon purchase here and there (which always adds up to way more than we realize), we often get our paycheck and then a week later, all the money is just gone, and we have nothing left to give.

• We need to develop a thoughtful, intentional plan to resist the deformation of mammon and practice generosity as an act of training under Jesus in Kingdom living. 

• If you don’t yet have a budget or giving plan, that’s step one — along with a plan to track your spending and stay in your budget. 

• That’s a baseline. 

• I want to help you develop a plan to build a life architecture to house a life of generosity. 

Biblical understanding of God owns it all, bring to the surface that the question is less, “How much should I give?” And more, “How much should I keep?” 

• In many church traditions, tithing is a central practice. Many people take their income, calculate ten%, and then give it to the church. 

• It’s easy to think that the 10% is God’s and the other 90% is ours to do whatever we want with. 

• But everything we have belongs to God and we are entrusted to use 100% of it well.

• There’s the famous dichotomy between savers and spenders. Savers are more motivated by fear and a need for safety and security.  Spenders are more motivated by greed and the lust for more! 

There’s a third option; not a saver or a spender, but a steward. One who, as an act of apprenticeship to Jesus, is working to channel God’s resources for good. 

• But this raises even more sorts of questions. What do I keep? What do I give? And where? And to whom? What’s an appropriate standard of living? Where’s the line between enjoying our life before God? And wasting his resources? What kind of car should I drive? How many pairs of shoes should I own? A million questions! 

I get how complex this is. Some of you have kids and other responsibilities in a place with a high cost of living. How do we weigh generosity to the poor next to our responsibility to our kids? I get that it is not simple.

But these are the right kinds of questions. 

And (I hate to break it to you), the New Testament does not spell it out for us. 

Instead it calls us to discernment; to listen deeply to God with a singular desire: to know and do his will as a person of love.

That said, there are six basic guidelines from Paul in his letters to the Corinthians. 

2 Corinthians 9:1-14

Our giving should be:

Regular, not sporadic.

He writes, “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money.”11

Proportional to our income.

“Each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income.”12

Meaning, the more money you make, the greater percentage you should give. 

If you are barely able to fund your basic life necessities, you’re still called to generosity, but it’s going to look very different than if you’re salesman and nail major commissions and have way more than you need to live on. 

The basic principle is: the more you make, the more you give.

Sacrificial.

“They gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.”13

It should hurt a bit. There should regularly be things we want to buy but don’t in order to give. 

Voluntary.

“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion.”14

Which means we need to make space to pray and discern. 

Joyful! 

“ … for God loves a cheerful giver.”15

God doesn’t want grumpy money! 

Motivated by devoted apprenticeship to Jesus:

(not religious duty or even philanthropy)

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”16

Meaning we see growing in generosity as an aspect of training under Jesus in kingdom living. 

If you were to answer a survey question with three options, which would best describe you today?

I do not listen to God.

I listen to God, but not about money and generosity. “I don’t ask him about that!”

I listen to God about money and generosity. “Is this for me? Or for me to give away?”

• Many of us don’t listen to God because we’re scared of what he may say.

• We still believe the myth that more money equals more happiness and we’re scared God may ask us to give our money away. And we don’t yet believe in God as our Father-provider. 

When should we start to give?

Easy answer: the time is always now! 

You may need to pay down debt or change your financial obligations, but even if it’s very small, don’t wait until you have more money to give. 

One, because wealth is uncertain. Proverbs 23v4-5 says it will “surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky.” There’s no guarantee you will be able to give later. 

And, counterintuitively, the less money you make, the easier it is to give. 

Let’s say you choose to tithe: If you make $1,000 a month, your tithe is $100. But if you make $10,000 a month, it’s $1,000 dollars. It will always be easier to give $100 away than $1,000.

And if you don’t let your heart be formed in generosity now, through practice, then once you do have more, you may not have the heart or capacity of character to give it away.

In fact, there’s debate on this, but most sociologists argue that the more money people make, the less they tend to give away. 

By percentage, not amount, but still, that’s surprising. 

Some people claim that generosity is just for the well-off. 

But, surprisingly, the most generous demographic in America is working-class Christians. 

Do not become yet another statistic of someone who makes more and just spends more.

Start now, even if you start small. And go on this journey over a lifetime.

But this raises the question: 

Where should we give?

To our church? To a nonprofit? To random people on the street? 

There seems to be three primary objects of generosity in the New Testament: 

Three Primary Objectives of Generosity:

The Church. The Poor. The Gospel.

The poor.

This is a main emphasis in Jesus’ teachings and Paul’s writings. 

I think of Paul’s summary in Galatians 2v10 of his decision with the apostles in Jerusalem: “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.” 

The church.

This is also very clear in the New Testament: We are to give generously to our church and specifically, to our spiritual leaders. 

Paul says things like: “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘The worker deserves his wages’.”1 

In the same way that pastors are responsible before God to see that the community is well-cared for spiritually, we are responsible to see that our pastors are well-cared for financially. 

This may dredge up all kinds of hurt for you. You may have broken trust in institutions of any kind, but especially the Church. 

It’s really hard for our generation not to be suspicious with so many scandals. 

So you may need to do some healthy conversations to make sure your church has healthy systems of financial integrity. 

Or you may just need to work with your spiritual friendships & community to overcome your distrust. 

But it is absolutely essential that we give in order to fund the life and call of God upon our church community. 

The Gospel.

In the New Testament era, that meant supporting the apostles. 

Paul would regularly receive money from churches he planted to plant new churches and preach the Gospel in new cities. 

He once said: “The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.”2

This could look like giving to a missionary, or an organization that does work with unreached people groups, or to cultural apologetics here in the secular West.

I think about Aselsi and their bible school. Reach world Mission and their Bible story activity books for kids in various languages. TBR. Bible Project.

But some portion of our giving should go to expanding the borders of the Kingdom in our city and around the world. 

• Our generation likes to give to causes and that’s not bad. 

• But as followers of Jesus, our giving should be done with special attention to the Gospel, the church, and the poor. 

• But it’s not limited to these three objects. 

• We want to be generous people everywhere we go. That may look like buying a friend a cup of coffee or sending a small birthday gift. 

• Generosity is a way of life. 

• But then comes the million-dollar question (no pun intended!): 

How much should we give?

Again, Jesus and the New Testament writers do not give us a clear rule to follow. They don’t tell us how many pairs of shoes is too many, or what’s an appropriate amount of square feet for a family of four. They don’t give us a math equation to plug into our budget and calculate an exact number to give away. 

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9v7: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion...” and “in keeping with your income”

Meaning there is no set amount. 

We have to listen to God for direction. 

And this will look wildly different for a high school senior working a part-time hourly job than a Wall Street executive. It will look different in a small town than it will in a global city. It will look different in different stages of life. 

And to give you a heads up, there’s no way to talk about this without getting into the awkwardness of class and culture. 

But we can’t let hyper-sensitivity and fear of what people will think stop us. We need to wade in. 

Seam: Let me offer you five best practices from those who have gone before us. Some of this will be applicable to you, some of it will not. But all will be helpful in your planning to become a generous person.

First is a practice that in biblical theology is called… 

First fruits.

The basic idea is that whenever you receive income, you immediately give a portion of it back to God, with special attention to the poor, the church, and the gospel. 

Right away. Not after you paid all your bills and bought all the things you want. 

It’s giving the first portion, not the leftovers. 

This may be a percentage you give, such as a tithe, or a little more or less, or it may be an amount that changes from situation to situation. 

So how much do we give? At least some! That’s a starting line. 

Reoccurring Giving.

This is where you setup an amount and commit to give it on a reoccurring basis.

This helps create the discipline...This also Helps me personally, give to God first, and sets a boundary so that I don’t spend it elsewhere.

A “blessing” fund

This is where you set an amount to give — it could be fifty bucks. Or less, or way more.

And you have it ready for spontaneous acts of generosity as you see needs cross your path. 

Years ago, we were already tithing (which we’ll talk about next), but a friend of mine challenged me to start a “blessing fund” and set aside one percent of my income to just bless people. 

At the time, we were on an old-school cash envelope system, and every month, we would have cash on-hand just to bless people as opportunities came up. We still do this and love it. 

Next up would be:

Tithing

The word “tithe” is from the Hebrew word maaser, which means “a tenth.” 

Tithing is an ancient practice of giving roughly a tenth of your income away to God and the poor. 

Now, there is a fierce debate in the Church on whether or not tithing is required for followers of Jesus, and if so, should it go to the church or the poor or both?

But whatever your view, many followers of Jesus, for a very long time, have found the practice of tithing to be a good baseline for a lifestyle of generosity. 

Now, 10% may be too much for you realistically in this season, but for many of you, it may not be enough.

The next step for you could be what’s called:

A graduated tithe

The idea here is just the New Testament principle that as your income increases, you raise not just the amount you give, but the percentage you give.

The more you make, the more you give.

My wife and I for a few years, increased our giving by one percent…we tend to give between 12-15% of household income.

I have heard of people who have moved toward a reverse tithe..they live on 10%, save 10% and give 80%

These are just a few ideas to spark your imagination… 

All of them are “radical” in our day and age where so many people believe the lie that money will make you happy. 

They only make sense if Jesus was right and true happiness is found in giving, not in receiving. 

Often, it takes us many years to learn to trust Jesus with our finances. 

But the more we come to trust him, the more generous we become. 

In fact, spiritual sages have long said that one of the most accurate ways to measure your spiritual formation is to look at your giving. 

What we spend our money on often shows us where our true priorities lie.

God is worthy of our full devotion…full, meaning not partial or fragmented. Devotion meaning whole-life loyalty and allegiance.

End by praying the Generosity Liturgy.

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Talk it Over (being honest & open with friends, a spouse, or your Group)

This week we looked at the practical ways we participate in financial generosity. What is one idea from Sunday’s message that impacted you?

Read 2 Corinthians 9:1 -14. What are some observations the Holy Spirit is highlighting to you?

Have you ever been surprised by a “coincidence” of God’s provision toward you? Share about it briefly.

What are the six basic guidelines from Paul (2 Corinthians 9) for giving mentioned in the sermon?

How does the concept of generosity relate to being a good steward of God's resources?

How can you practice generosity even with a limited budget?

Read Luke 21:1-4. What are some observation the Holy Spirit is highlighting for you?