Giving to the Lord

Jesus loves you. He died to pay a punishment for your sins. He gives us a purpose to love God and love others. He promises us that we will be with him for eternity, and He invites us to follow him.

So let’s follow him, and to teach you about a way to follow him tet’s start with something weird.

For those of you that don’t know, this is the last day of Summer for me. That’s right, Summer in Lodi Unified ends in the middle of summer. Its actually 65 days until the beginning of fall but summer break is over. Teachers report tomorrow and students report on Friday. But good news, almost all teachers like me receive a pay bump for years of service, so my total gross pay goes up to $92,644 along with my take home from the church at $21,600 for the year. Its a decent living. Thankfully my wife is farther along in the pay scale but even more in the beauty scale.

Why would any pastor mention how much he gets paid to start a sermon, What a weirdo?

Here is why?

First, it’s public knowledge. Nothing about what I make is hidden. I’m not telling any secrets, google me and you will find out exactly how much my benefits were from Lodi Unified and everything from a couple years ago. Its the law. Anyway, that’s not that important.

The reason is today we are talking about Bible verses about money. Here is the scripture.

Proverbs 3:9–10 NLT

9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. 10 Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with good wine.

And so much emotional stuff starts happening whenever people start talking about money. Which is understandable when there are people who will use the Bible to steal from people, to pay for their laziness. Their is fraud, there is corruption from people who are called pastors, churches, etc, etc.

Pastors get up and say give and then say stupid outlandish fake promises to get people to give money.

That’s not me.

So once again, I’m putting it out there. That is how much I make. My wife and I give 10% of what we make here to the church and give to other things as the Lord leads.

We live in a big home. We bought a home with my parents 18 years ago and lived together through my mom going to be with the Lord and now my Dad has married my mom Sharon so they live together in Brentwood.

I’m not bragging. I am being overly honest. Again nothing about my money is hidden from you. Do not use the excuse of the evil that happens in this world when it comes to theft and money to not let God talk to you about your heart.

How other people steal is not a justification for ignoring God.

If you will listen to God about having faith, trusting in him, if you pray to him for your salvation, health, your friends, a loved one, asking God to fix a car or help you find a job than listen to God when it comes to money. Cool? Cool.

Ok, I am changing topics for a minute.

I want to tell you about why Proverbs.

Which comes with a silly confession. I am super behind in our reading plan to read the Bible in a year. I am 17 days behind. So if you joined up and your much further back than that, who cares! Just keep reading.

Even though I’m behind, I love this Bible plan because of the devotional before we read the Bible. Often there are these great videos were I am learning all kinds of Hebrew, interesting text stuff, and right now I am in proverbs.

And while reading proverbs I felt led by God to spend time as a church here in this wonderful book.

Especially after seeing this video from the year of bible reading devotional , I really wanted to share Proverbs and the video with you. If you like it, you can start the devotional too but that’s not the point, what you need to is to hear what God is saying to you through Proverbs and I hope this video helps,

We won’t finish this video, but it will tell you a lot about how to read this scripture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzmYV8GNAIM

Up to 6:32

Here is what I want you to remember:

Proverbs aren’t promises.

Proverbs aren’t laws or prophecies.

Proverbs deal with probabilities. They are not about the exceptions but the usual.

So when we look at

Proverbs 3:9–10 NLT

9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. 10 Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with good wine.

It is in general. Everyone knows someone who loves the Lord, gives, and because of disability, coming to the Lord let in life, some kind of something they don’t have and wont have blessings. There are exceptions. What we look at is the general wisdom.

Does giving to God produce wealth. The general probabilities is yes, according to the wisdom of scripture. But every single one of you should be saying to yourself right now,

Did he just say give to God and I will get wealthy? That dude is nuts. This doesn’t happen. We’ve already talked about preachers stealing from people and then they are very poor.

I didn’t mean it that simply and if you look at those verses,

The general rule of this verse is honor God, but don’t just honor God with your words, your worship, but actually your real earned wealth.

I started a little controversy recently because I stated that if a church is doing a fundraiser, like a bake sale, even a yard sale, this is an admittance that the people of the church are failing to follow God. They are failing to live generously. They may not tithe. It is failing to understand that God calls on people to honor Him with their actual money and instead saying, “I’m not willing to give God money unless I get something, anything, even if it is a pie or a cookie, I want something to give to God through the church is dishonoring.

If the church lives generously, the church will have all that it needs to do what God is calling it do.

All of God’s people have enough for God to use to do exactly what He wants or to even add to what is needed. God can make money just show up.

Using our money, to give to God, doesn’t help God. It doesn’t. It helps us.

Jesus points this out when he spots a poor widow giving at the temple.

Luke 21:1–4 NLT

1 While Jesus was in the Temple, he watched the rich people dropping their gifts in the collection box. 2 Then a poor widow came by and dropped in two small coins. 3 “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. 4 For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.”

It was her heart. Giving helped her. That was what she gave to God and God did things with it. Its still true today. Proverbs, lis a book about folllowing God in everyday life, so surprise, surprise the wisdom from it still works today.

In the work of Dr. Christian Smith out of the University of Norte Dame Science of Generosity. His work adds scientific evidence. This is what he wrote.

“Generosity is paradoxical. Those who give, receive back in turn. In giving of ourselves for others’ well-being, we enhance our own well-being as well. In letting go of some of what we own, we actually increase our own security and sense of comfort. By giving away our own resources, we move ourselves toward flourishing. This is not only a philosophical or religious teaching. It is a sociological fact. Drawing on ... a nationally representative survey of two thousand Americans and in-depth qualitative interviews with forty households. The generosity paradox can also be stated in the negative. By clinging to what we currently have, we lose out on pleasures that we might have gained. In keeping what we possess, we diminish its long-term value to us. By always protecting ourselves against future uncertainties and misfortunes, we are formed in ways that make us more anxious and actually more vulnerable to future misfortunes. In short, if we fail to care for others, we do not properly take care of ourselves”

This research is specifically about the mindset of generosity and not giving to God. He went futher in another work.

Dr. Smith along with collegues, Michael Emerson and Patricia Small, that in 2008 proved that most American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual earnings. And a startling one out of five self-identified Christians gives nothing at all. What happens? They miss out on the generosity paradox or the proverbial promise that generosity creates a mindset for wealth and more importantly, many of the societal problems the church could be addressing don’t really get the money they need.

The problem with Christians, especially in America is we can trust God with everything that doesn’t cost us. We don’t trust God with our money and the principals he already put into place fail.

Another fact that showed in the research from Dr. Smith is People who give to the church are usually generous with the church, and also with other organizations. They are the most likely to give to other non-profits, volunteer their time, and more benefits.

In other words, the problems of society get addressed when followers of Jesus live generously.

You may say, but I am poor. I don’t have a lot. I have to make up for all the time I wasted in bad living. I have to have money for my problems. Other people with more money should deal with that.

Its a mindset that needs to change and even in your own poverty you may completely change the world.

God doesn’t need our money. We need to show God that we trust Him with our money no matter if it is pennies or millions of dollars.

Here is what I mean.

You know that show Abbott Elementary, the shortest adult in the show, Quinta Brunson, is her name, she is an actor and the producer of the show. She and both Hall & Oates of the band Hall & Oates, and legendary football star Howie Long of the Raiders, have something in common. A faithful, little girl who gave an offering in 1833.

In 1833! That right, almost 200 years ago, Hattie Wiatt, a little girl, came to a small Sunday school and asked to be taken in, but it was explained there was no room for her. The building was too small. The little girl could not go to Sunday School.

In less than two years she fell ill, and died. No one guessed her strange, little secret until beneath her pillow was found a torn pocketbook with fifty-seven pennies in it, wrapped in a scrap of paper on which was written, “To help build the little Temple bigger, so that more children can go to Sunday school.” For two years she had saved her pennies for the cause which was nearest her heart. The pastor told the incident to his congregation, and the people began making donations for the enlargement. The papers told it far and wide, and within five years those fifty-seven pennies had grown to be $250,000, and today in Philadelphia, you could see, the great church, the Baptist Temple, but you can also Temple University, whose famous alumni include Howie Long, Hall & Oates, QUinta Brunson, Bob Saget, Dr. Karen Williams a leading researcher in cervical cancer, because Temple University has a Hospital.

All from a little girl wanting to give generously. 57 pennies.

I met a guy, Dave the Deputy, his job is to clean up estates. A person dies, and he makes sure the right people get the legal property ownership. You would be surprised what he thinks is worth something and what he doesn’t really care about, knowing it will end up in the trash.

Your poverty is not an excuse to ignore God with your money. 57 pennies can change the world. Honor God.

Proverbs 3:9–10 NLT

9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. 10 Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with good wine.

What if we continue to see God as worthy of us, as worthy of all of us, our singing yes, our prayers yes, how we treat others yes and also our money. Because we love God. And what we spend our money on, that has value, God deserves our love.