Money Habits 2: Give Generously

Introduction

We kicked off last week with “The Barefoot Disciple,” and our small groups started this term. The name leverages the “Barefoot Investor” marketing, but it’s more of a marketing leverage than a similarity. There are similarities, too. Frank has read both and has thoughts on both. What are the differences between “Barefoot Investor” and “Barefoot Disciple?”

Frank explained that both take you on a journey and free you from something. “Barefoot Investor” frees you from the anxiety of budget management and takes you toward a comfortable retirement. Ken, a financial advisor, mentioned that a budget is more freeing than people think. Knowing where you spend your money frees you.

There’s anxiety when we think about money, and it often ends up in the “too hard” basket. We avoid thinking about it and have a black box of a bank account. Visibility is fantastic. “Barefoot Disciple” also takes you on a journey and frees you from selfishness and consumerism. It guides you toward shrewd spending, using your finances for yourself, your family, and God’s kingdom.

Most people I’ve spoken to haven’t liked the first two chapters of “Barefoot Disciple.” The journey doesn’t start well for many. Frank agreed, noting the prescriptive nature and tips that didn’t align with his thinking initially. However, he discovered it was about thinking differently in his heart about how to treat money.

What generally happens with money is that we feel like locking it away from God. We might say we’re Christian and on fire for God, but deep down, we think money is ours. The book tries to rewire your heart to think about how to best use resources for things with eternal implications. The first two habits feel like you’re thrown in the deep end, and then taught to swim later. Most people warm up to it as the book goes on.

Frank warmed up to it and started seeing the nuances, becoming more on board with the principles of shrewdly living for the kingdom and not letting the world decide what to do with our hard-earned cash. One of the journeys I’ve taken is the encouragement that the slope of greed pulls on us all the time. Talking about money is critical because it impacts our spiritual life.

Frank restructured his finances around “Barefoot Investor.” If someone is interested in thinking more, I’d recommend doing it. It helped Frank and his family manage their budget since 2020. It’s easy to manage and helps you save money, pay off debts, and not feel guilty about spending on yourself. For the last six years, they’ve been using it to manage the family budget in a healthy way.

“Barefoot Investor” leads toward a comfortable retirement, while “Barefoot Disciple” pushes past retirement to eternity. If someone is thinking about applying disciple principles to their money, I’d say we all need a kick up the bum in terms of how we see our money. While “Barefoot Investor” helps you see the wisest choices from the world’s perspective, Christians should be wired differently with different priorities.

The book asks what those priorities are and eventually leads to shrewd investment or kingdom investment. That can look different for many people, such as trying to find a Christian business to spend your money on. It’s about adding a God filter or a Jesus filter before clicking on a Black Friday deal or a Christmas deal. Is this the best use of what God has given me? Do I maximize my investment returns with a company that is unethical, or do I go an ethical route with less returns but better outcomes?

One helpful thing about the book is that it starts with being brutal about how much luxury we live in, which is uncomfortable. But the next steps involve thinking about spending missionally. It’s not just about feeling guilty for not giving enough, but about your spending and lifestyle. How is that being missional? How do all those things dovetail together? This week, we’re looking at giving habitually, then compassion next week, and then spending and saving stewardly.

Our Attitude Activates Our Giving

As we think about talking about money for a few weeks, this is a faith-raising exercise, not a fundraising exercise. The difficulty is that both coexist. We have Share the Joy asking for giving to toys and tucker for Christmas, compassion coming next week, and pledging towards next year’s financial budget. We talk about financial matters and spiritual matters at the same time. We just read this passage in 2 Corinthians 9, and those two things exist in that same tension.

In one sense, it’s a great passage to read when thinking about giving because Paul is already preaching to the choir. He says, “I don’t need to tell you about giving. You’re eager to help.” He’s been boasting about them, and the Macedonians were inspired by them to give. Paul isn’t writing to tell them they must give, but he’s reminding them about a giving opportunity they committed to a year ago. He’s communicating the way that’s going to happen.

It almost reads a little bit passive aggressive. He says, “You guys are great givers, but just in case I’m wrong, I’m sending some brothers to make sure and get you ready.” It feels like the mafia is going to knock on the door to make sure that gift is prepared. I’m confident that’s not the case because of the way Paul talks all the way through it. He finishes that section by saying, “We want this to be a willing gift, not one giving grudgedly.”

Paul can’t shoot off an email saying, “Hey, how’s that going? How are you doing with this fundraising exercise?” He has to send messengers because even if he sends a letter, it means sending messengers. As far as we can tell, this is a genuine community of generosity. Paul’s writing to them, but he wants to take the time to speak to the heart of generosity. The habit of giving helps break the heart of greed. There’s a pattern we can set up in our lives that can help us wrestle with a heart of greed.

Throughout scripture, God’s people wrestle with this heart of greed. Jesus talks about the challenge of serving two masters. Money and greed can constantly be pulling on us, and we need to make sure our hearts are focused on Jesus. I want to think about two things that Paul tells us to help us think about the habit of giving. The first one is that our attitude activates our giving. It impacts our giving. Our attitude and how we think about this thing.

Intentional Planning Helps Combat Greedy Impulse

Paul says intentional planning helps combat greedy impulse. The intentionality and putting things in place will help us with a greedy impulse. He tells us that he’s been boasting about this planned giving. The church in Corinth has planned giving. He said they were ready to send an offering a year ago. This is planned giving, but it seems more than just a planned one-off giving.

In his first letter, 1 Corinthians, he explicitly tells them to do it as a weekly collection. He said, “On the first day of each week, you should each put aside a portion of the money you have earned.” Paul has encouraged them to do planned intentional giving. Putting this money aside so that it might build up and be a blessing to the church in Jerusalem. There’s something helpful about having that habit of intentional planned giving. It helps combat our greed impulses.

We know that we have impulses that undermine our greatest planning. I remember many years ago when I used to exercise, I used to go running with a friend in the morning. If I said I’m going to go for a run tomorrow morning, I’ll set my alarm. When the alarm went off, I would say running can wait. I’ve got more important things to do right now, that is more sleep. If I plan to meet with someone out on the corner in the cold early in the morning and I set an alarm for that, it’s a totally different situation. There’s something about the intentionality of that plan that actually holds me accountable to that.

When the alarm goes off, while I might have the same feelings towards getting out of bed in the morning, there’s another layer in there, and that is someone else is relying on me. Sometimes thinking about how we be intentional with our planning helps us fight some of those impulses that come. We’ve all experienced that in our best moments when we say I’m going to do this. It’s the New Year’s resolutions. There’s a saying, may your problems last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. That idea that they don’t last very long, and hopefully your problems don’t last long. But if you set things in place and hold accountability, we can be much more effective in that.

We’re encouraged to give regularly. Make it a habit of giving. When we think about budgeting, we talk about budgeted spending as setting aside the money you need to spend on the things you need to spend on. The habit of giving is budgeted giving. It’s setting aside the money that you’re going to give so you have it there to give. One of the challenges of “The Barefoot Disciple” is early on when he’s talking about that sort of thing and he gives examples. Often people’s reaction seems to be it’s too legalistic or even that the giving that’s suggested isn’t generous enough, and we might be encouraged to be more generous.

Part of what he’s saying is just find a way to start. We start off with pulling back in our luxurious lifestyle and living simply. But his next step of giving habitually, making it a habit, is to just start giving. His suggestion is to get a sponsor child and start to make that something you do, putting money aside for someone in that way. He says, “Allocate an amount of money that you would give to your church and just start doing that and make it a habit. Get that going.”

We’ve talked a lot recently about the change in the way we handle money, particularly as we think about less cash in our society. At this service, we don’t pass around an offering container anymore. We have a box at the back, and most people give online. We’ve found that if you’re going to have intentional planned giving, then setting up automatic payments is a really easy way to do that. Not because it’s set and forget, and we want to be careful of that because we still want it to be intentional, but it’s something that we can set up so that we can make it something that we do as part of our lifestyle as a habit. Intentional helps to combat impulse.

A Cheerful Heart Helps to Combat Reluctance

A cheerful heart helps to combat the reluctance that comes with generosity. Paul says this to the church in verse 7. He says, “You must each decide in your heart how much to give and don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure, for God loves a person who gives cheerfully.” It’s an interesting concept that we have a command to give cheerfully. That kind of doesn’t work, right? To say command someone you got to do this and also you got to do it happily. I mean, you try to say that to your kids, right? You say, “Go clean your room and be happy about it.” It doesn’t quite land like that. It’s interesting to try to process that.

We see it with young children trying to learn to share. It’s really difficult to teach really young children to share because they haven’t even gotten to the social development age where they play together. Really young children play side by side. The idea of sharing a toy isn’t really sharing a toy for young children. It’s playing with one toy and letting them play with another. It’s one of those things I think you almost analyzing the human heart. You watch the nature of a child playing with a toy, and another kid comes and plays with a different toy, and the first child suddenly decides that different toy is where their heart’s desire is and not the toy they had. You have that moment where it’s like, I need all the toys, not just my toys.

There is an instinct to us that goes against generosity. But we’re encouraged here in that same way of trying to teach a child to share. We’re encouraged to give in a cheerful way. It almost sounds like it’s an opposite thing. How do we give cheerfully? Just like Paul tells us that the attitude activates our giving, the impact of our giving inspires our giving. The impact inspires our giving, and that helps us move towards a much more cheerful heart. We see it all the way through this passage, and we can see the illustration of it in our lives.

You can see the joy of giving a gift to a child by the way it impacts them. I saw a video recently titled “The Perfect Gift for a Child Who Loves Rocks,” and it was a box of just garden rocks. This toddler comes out, and you can tell it’s a great gift by the way the toddler responds to his garden rocks. He takes two of them just in awe of them and holds them up for everyone else to see his rocks. What seems like at first a bit of a like that’s not a great gift immediately realize it is a great gift because of the impact it has on him. It becomes a joy to the giver. One because rocks are really cheap, and two most importantly because of the joy that it gives them. Impact inspires the giving.

We see a similar thing here. We see it the way Paul plants this farming illustration right in the middle of this language about giving. If you look in chapter 9, we read this verse 5, he says, “I want it to be a willing gift, not one giving given grudgingly.” The very next verse, verse six, he plants this farming illustration. He says, “Remember this. A farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop, but the one who plants generously will get a generous crop.” Then he jumps out of that back into the cheerful language and says, “You must each decide in your heart how to give. God loves a cheerful giver.”

You see what’s going on there? He’s talking about this cheerfulness. Then he talks about planting generosity and goes back to cheerfulness. The picture here is the impact that comes from the generosity that is planted will help inspire the attitude towards the generosity. Giving is not a transaction. We see this picture of planting and harvesting, but giving is not a transaction. You don’t give to someone so they will give to you. That might be kind of you do exchange presents at Christmas time, but you’re not giving them so they will give to you. It’s not paying for a product, and you give money so that you can get the product. That’s not what generosity is. It’s not a transaction, but it is an interaction. There is something that happens there.

The Impact Inspires Our Giving

The reality is it’s not always a rewarding interaction. There is some generosity we experience in our life that is quite a heavy sacrifice that you give to someone who doesn’t seem to appreciate it. There’s times where we give to things where we don’t get to see the impact of it, and we might be confident there is one, but we don’t actually get to experience it. But giving is rewarding in healthy relationships where there is an exchange of love and gratitude. Giving is rewarding in healthy Christian ministries where you get to see the impact. Giving is rewarding in giving towards healthy social justice causes and opportunities to care for the needy. It’s not a transaction, but it is an interaction.

Paul draws on that idea of the impact of our giving in this idea of planting and harvesting. Paul has already given us an example of it that if we plant generosity, we get to harvest generously. He gave us the example there in verse two. He said, “It was your enthusiasm that stirred up the many Macedonians believers to begin giving.” Paul has given us the example of the church that planted generosity, and they saw an impact of their planting. As we plant generosity, we might see an impact. Paul says there is both physical and spiritual impacts, both physical and spiritual harvesting that we might see because of our giving. He points out that it’s a partnership with God.

We need to be really careful in this space that we don’t see it as some sort of transaction with God that God gives us what we want because we gave generously, or God gives us the wealth for us because we gave our wealth away. We want to be careful not to see it as a transaction, but it is a partnership that as God cares for us and God provides for us, we also care for others and give to others. There’s a partnership there. This is what he said in verse eight. God will generously provide all you need, and you’ll have plenty left to share.

God is also providing and growing a heart of contentment. As we think about that idea of God providing all we need, it’s important for us to think about what the idea of our needs are because it’s really tricky that we very quickly move the spectrum that the idea of need becomes a spectrum. Somewhere over here is want, and somewhere over here is need, and we figure out somewhere where that slider should go, and very quickly we start to declare things that we want as things that we need. If we’re to be really clear on what we need, we want to think beyond just things like what a good retirement is. God wants us to look into eternal perspective.

In eternity, the only thing we need is a right relationship with Jesus. If we are satisfied in that one true eternal need, we will see much more contentment in the other places where we feel like we are lacking in our lives. Jesus talks about it, and Paul talks about it, that God is one who provides seed for the swer. God is one who does provide physically, and everything we have that we live off has come from God’s generosity. He says in verse 10, “God will produce a great harvest of generosity. You’ll be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous.”

We see there both the physical of providing for needs but also the spiritual reward that we’re getting a great harvest not of produce but of generosity that God is growing in us our own heart of generosity so you’ll be riched in every way so that you can be even more generous. Giving is truly worship. Like worship, it is both joyful, and it is also a sacrifice. It is an act of obedience. It is responding to what God has called us to, and it’s an act of relationship as we seek to live out our life with him. There is both a physical and a spiritual harvest for us. We see that impact in our lives, and there’s a physical and spiritual harvest in others. We see that impact in their lives.

Paul spells that out quite explicitly. He says verse 11, end of verse 11, “When we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God.” We see a spiritual impact in them. Then he spells it out. Verse 12. “So two good things will result from this ministry of giving. One, the needs of the believers in Jerusalem will be met,” a physical impact. “And two, they will joyfully express their thanks to God,” a spiritual impact. Both those things happen as impact. We want to think about that. One of the things I think really helpful in “The Barefoot Disciple” book is thinking about as the book goes on more and more thinking about how you see the most impact from your giving and from your spending and actually taking places actually assessing how we give and spend in a way that generates real impact in people’s lives and thinking beyond just it’s giving it away to actually it’s seeking to give in a way that’s effective and helpful.

We want to think about how we have a physical impact in this world. Giving to places like giving to the poor, giving to the needy is a way that we do that. One of the things that my house has found really helpful is early on, I can’t take credit for this. This was Susie drove this, but both our kids, we got them a sponsor. We call them a sponsor sibling. So, they’re compassion sponsor child, but they’re both the same age as our children. We got them when our children were young, and they’re the same age as our children. We’ve had our children write letters to them and interact to them. We teach them the impact of what they do. We see that that impact of the the physical in their life.

Similarly, I think when we had the Kenyon choir come and some of us had them stay in our houses and the the value with our kids to just see and be reminded how much we have and how little they have and the reminder of what impact our giving can give to others who are in need. These things inspire joy in us. We see a physical harvest. We also see spiritual harvest in people’s lives. As much as possible, when we compare we when we can pair up giving to physical needs to giving to spiritual needs, as much as we can pair that up is the m is the way we can get the most out of our giving. Finding organizations that pair up both caring for people spiritually and caring for people physically is a helpful way to increase the impact of our giving.

I remember years ago I was talking to a guy who had been through a number of years of low he was on the poverty line, and he was needing help. One of the things was he said, “I always picked and choose where I went for help based on the guys that didn’t force me to listen to their Christian stuff.” He didn’t use the word stuff. He was like, “I don’t want to hear that stuff. So I just I wouldn’t go to those places that made me listen to Christian stuff, and they just gave to me freely.” It’s tricky. It’s a tricky space, isn’t it? We try to love people gener generously. The most generous love we can give anyone is to share with them the greatest joy of all, which is life in Jesus. How do we do that in a space with someone who just outright refuses to hear that? As much as possible, when we compare those two things up, we are sharing the eternal gift at the same time as sharing a physical gift.

Giving Helps Release the Grip of Greed

Let me finish with this. The heart of the matter is the matter of is a matter of the heart. It’s a well-used phrase by preachers, and it’s so true when it comes to giving. Giving is a ministry of grace. It’s a ministry of God’s grace because God’s grace is the cause. It is because of God’s grace that we want to be a giving people because he gave to us. It is because of the relationship that has been enabled through Jesus sacrifice that we might be friends with God that makes us want to live a life of sharing with other people. God’s grace is the source of our giving.

Our giving is like a tap, right? When you turn on a tap, the tap doesn’t magically produce water. That’s not how a tap works. The water is already there. There is a source that provides it to the tap, and we are just allowing the source to flow through the tap. The same thing is true as we think about giving. We’re not called to be a dam of God’s gift that gathers around and holds it in some kind of body of water so that we have it all. We’re much more called to be a waterfall of God’s grace where God’s grace flows over us and out into those around us. God’s grace is the source, and God’s grace is the ultimate gift we can give. A relationship with God is far above anything else. It is the eternal need, and God’s grace transforms hearts.

As we think about the spiritual impact of generosity on others, it is also a spiritual impact of generosity on ourselves that God is transforming our heart. There’s that passage where Jesus says in Luke 12, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be also.” Two things are happening there. One of them is it’s kind of a litmus test on where your treasure is. If you look at where your heart is, if you look at where you’re investing, that’ll tell you a little bit about where your heart is. The opposite is true as well. As we invest in God’s kingdom, he grows in us a heart for his kingdom. As those two things happen, our joy of generosity will grow hand in hand. Giving helps release the grip of greed by helping us treasure Jesus even more.

Let me pray.