October 2 | Let Jesus Fuel Your Generosity

When we are kind and unselfish, we are being generous. When we practice generosity, God’s Word tells us we will be blessed in return. Why? Because doing something good for someone else increases our own gratitude and happiness.

Doing good is good for us.

The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor.

Proverbs 22:9 (ESV)

Where I work, we feed approximately 300 people each day (except Sundays). We feed a little more after church for breakfast on Wednesdays and a few less on Saturday mornings when the crowd is smaller. Feeding people is a genuine way of giving through service. By contributing our time and our talents, we can impact the trajectory of another person’s day.

Saturdays, through intentionally building relationships, have shown me the importance of being generous by demonstrating compassion, kindness, and love. It’s a day we focus heavily on nurturing relationships. Love, kindness, and compassion go a long way in transforming broken lives and healing broken hearts.

But giving isn’t just about the intangibles. Through the act of giving financially, our generosity is demonstrated in a more tangible way. A smile shouldn’t cost us much. However, pulling money out of our pocketbooks requires a little more willful sacrifice.

Giving money is something that pastors —and the best Bible scholars—can struggle to talk about during Sunday’s church sermon or Bible lesson. Talking about money makes people uncomfortable, in general. Talking about giving away money tends to increase that tenfold.

In large part, if not entirely, I believe that’s because we have a wrong understanding of who’s money it is and also because conversations about money tend to be wrought with tension and potential conflict. So we avoid them.

This is not healthy.

How much money should we give away?

Christian author, C.S. Lewis acknowledged our challenges with charitable giving in his book, Mere Christianity.

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Chances are, if you grew up in church, you learned about tithing. In all likelihood, like me—an infrequent childhood church attendee—what you learned about giving in church was lacking, if not wrong all together.

Aren’t we supposed to tithe? Yes and no. I’ve found the concept of tithing today causes us to either give out of rote obligation—like Cain—or legalistically limit our giving to ten percent. After considerable study, I don’t think that’s what Scripture teaches us, at all.

We will unpack tithing and how much we should give in several future posts during #Blogtober.

Suffice it to say, I believe you should give as much as you can, for as long as you can, whenever you can. Oddly, this requires some intentional, thoughtful planning. We aren’t talking about simply opening up the coffers and letting all the money spoil out. That’s not only bad stewardship, but it also misses the point of giving altogether.

While I believe we are called to freely give, I also know we aren’t called to give carelessly.

Think about this: Do you know anyone who taught a class on generosity?

As I sit here and type on my small screen, I can’t think of ever taking a class on generosity or attending a Bible lesson on giving—and I’ve been around for a minute. How about you?

Dear reader, I look forward to hearing about your experience with giving in the “Comments” section below. Hopefully, this post will generate some thoughts and conversations about generosity and giving among us, our families, and our friends.

Abundant blessings,

Rainer Bantau

The Devotional Guy™

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