April 24, 2012
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On Money and Generosity
This past weekend Jeremy and I had the privilege of attending a Generosity conference with some other couples from our Element Bible study group.
It totally rocked our world, let me just put it that way. It was all about creating a culture of generosity in our own lives and in the lives of the church. It was very motivating and convicting and presented in an interesting and engaging way.
One of the things Jeremy and I really decided to dig into was our personal finances. For a while now, we have known that we needed to “crack down” on our spending, but we just kept putting it off. It is more fun to just spend money than to have to watch every dollar and where it goes, right?
I am actually feeling really excited to shift our focus away from ourselves and what we can get or what we can buy for ourselves and concentrate on how we can help others and further the kingdom of God by being generous with our time, talents, treasure, and touch (relationships).
There were some pretty sobering statistics given about what Americans spend their money on and how little they give to God or to others. I would quote some, but I am afraid I would get them wrong, but one that does really stick out was the 94 billion dollars we spend on pop and chips versus the 83 billion that we donated to relief in Haiti. Wow!!
The speaker also talked about how the church is so slow to address finances or talk about money and how it is, in fact, the job of the church to help people be accountable about their finances and to give them tools to make wise financial decisions and to help them to learn to be generous.
As for me personally, let’s just say that my clothing budget has been reduced greatly…down to $25 per month, so I am going to have to make do with what I have for a while. Not that this should really be a problem!
While all of this ^^ was great, what I really wanted to write about was how this conference generated a discussion between Jeremy and I and how God used Jeremy to really show me/teach me something.
A little background: About 3 or 4 years ago, Jeremy and I finally started titheing. After years of making lots of money but never being very disciplined about our giving (we would give here and there, kind of hoping it added up to a tithe, but it usually didn’t), I felt very strongly that we were supposed to start titheing. Jeremy agreed, even though he had recently taken a substantial pay-cut!
We took a big step of faith and just went ahead with it…wondering how we were going to balance our budget while giving away more money.
God has been good. We have been able to manage and God has blessed us, but not in any big or really obvious way monetarily.
Fast forward to last fall when Jeremy and I were at a fund raiser for a local pregnancy resource center. We had already written our check out before we went in, but as we sat and listened to the speaker and he talked about being open to the Holy Spirit about how much we should give, Jeremy and I decided to greatly increase the amount of our check. Like, by 10 times as much as we had originally written it out for.
We felt really good about having obeyed God in that and I remember Jeremy saying to me that he was excited to see how God might reward us for that obedience.
Here’s the thing: God is not a genie in a bottle. There is no formula where you put in X and out comes Y.
But, I have heard many, many stories over the years (and again this past weekend) about a situation where people trusted God and in faith gave money only to have that exact amount come back to them in some unexpected form. You know those kinds of stories, right?
As the weekend progressed, I was really struggling with this. Why is God doing this for all of these other people but not for us?
We obeyed God and started titheing and nothing big happened financially. In fact, the firewood business we started has struggled to even make a profit.
We obeyed God and gave a very large (for us) donation last fall and never saw a return of that to us in any monetary way.
Now I know God doesn’t always bless the generosity of money with the gift of money back to us. I get that. But I was just feeling kind of cheated. Like, why don’t WE have a story like so many others I have heard?
We were driving home from our friends’ house on Saturday night after the conference and Jeremy and I were discussing this.
And he said something that I have been thinking about ever since.
He said “You know what? Maybe God hasn’t given us money back for the tithe that we have been faithful in giving. But…look at the friendships that God has blessed us with in the past few years and especially in this past year or two.
You know how if there was ANYTHING that we would want to be blessed in or anything that would be so meaningful to you, it would be relationships? How you are all about relationships? And when you think about it, aren’t those friendships so much more valuable to us than any money or material possessions?”
And he went on to say “Doesn’t it just remind you once again that God is a PERSONAL God? He KNOWS what would mean the most to us and He has blessed us richly in that area!”
I felt kind of ashamed. Here I am wondering why God hasn’t blessed us in the way that I think He should. Here I am putting God in my little box and all the while not even making the connection between our giving of our money and His rewarding us so richly in relationships.
I felt in awe of God and His goodness and His richness.
I wonder how many other times I do that? I look for and expect God to bless in a certain way or show up in a certain way and then He DOES bless and He DOES show up and I completely miss it because it wasn’t packaged in the way that I thought it should be!!
I just wanted to say a public thanks to God for His blessings and His faithfulness and I want to be a person who chooses to be generous even if/when I maybe don’t “see” any return. Because doesn’t obedience itself have its own reward?
Comments (17)
so well put my friend. I think i am only now slowly seeing how God works. It is almost never how we expect!!
…We are free when… we are able to give without always expecting a thank-you, and serve without always getting credit. We won’t always have to be right, first, or noticed because those things won’t define us…Jesus will.
“Whatever past achievements might bring us honor, whatever past disgrace might make us blush, all have been crucified with Christ and exist no more except in the deep recesses of eternity” from the book ” The Uncommon Woman” by Susie Larson
I read this, this morning and I was struck with the whole tithing thing and many other areas in my life and then I read your post (thanks for posting it to f/b). I don’t know… but it all has brought me to a point of reconsideration! In a good way!
i was looking forward to hearing about your weekend…and this blog post feels like a little start on that.
but oh man. wow. and then an ouch for me too. as i love what i read and also felt that pinch of conviction of how often my heart doesn’t match my words. a GIFT…isn’t a gift if i have a “return favor” in my mind. and also…different note but same thing. of what i call GRACE and yet have strings and demands that i tie with it. lots for this girl to think about.
It has been on our hearts to to increase our generosity and not be all caught up in spending our time, money, etc focused on ourselves…we also don’t have a “huge” story of how God has blessed us because of it but over and over again we have seen His faithfulness in places we wouldn’t have even stopped and recognized it before.
I love how you say he is a “personal” God! He really does know how to give GOOD gifts to his children!
I think that addressing finances gets touchy because it can be such a personal and private thing but it is also an area that quickly reveals where our priorities lay.
Blessings to you as you walk this path in obedience and with confidence trust in Him knowing you are storing up treasures in heaven as you give back to the one who owns it all~
this touched me more than i can really go into detail about…. i’ll just say i needed the reminder that God’s blessings are often different than what we might think. and true riches are so much more than money!!
another honest, real life audrey post!
“Because doesn’t obedience itself have its own reward?” I loved this post and the conference sounds great. Through our adoption journey our wants/needs were seriously adjusted as we scrimped and saved and it was seriously amazing how much we were able to save ourselves just by being disciplined with our spending. God has really opened my eyes in the area of our finances….and of course prompted the whole 7: experiment against excess. You should check out Jen Hatmaker’s book — Here is a blurb about it in case your interested. http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/12/26/an-experimental-mutiny-against-excess
Wow… this really struck me… deep. God blessing us… I know I must miss a lot of his blessings because I often have my head so far up my own ass. Budgeting turned us around big time, but now we kinda stopped again and we really should get back on track.
I enjoyed your post and the comments.
The conference you went to sounds like it was really good.
It is in our selfish nature to expect a “return”!
God rewards us with joy in our hearts when we give. That should be enough!
He will bless us, but we shouldn’t expect a material “thing”. God owes us Nothing! After all, the money (or whatever it is we’re giving) is His in the first place….and here we are “Soooo Generously! giving a wee little bit back to God and then expecting Him to give us something for us giving back what is His in the first place! (This is what I tell my kids) It always convicts me when I think about my selfishness and materialism!!!
Thanks for the post. Good reminders.
Hope you’re having a good week. =)
Completely different subject, but your post reminds me of something our pastor said on Easter Sunday about us being so absorbed in our own pain / grief / self-pity that we can’t see Jesus and then we wonder where He is. And I know you weren’t wallowing in anything big (He was talking about something else), but your words reminded me of how often I expect God to work a certain way and then I don’t see the things He IS doing … just like Jeremy was talking about. And how cool is that God talks our love language?
The conference sounds amazing!
Wow. So much to think about. I am so selfish!! This was a start on a new perspective for me! Thanks for writing!
I liked hearing your thoughts on all of this, Aug. Like you, I so wish to get away from that “God (and others) owe me something for the little bits of giving I do.” Glad you had an encouraging weekend. Glad too that you have been blessed with relationships that matter. Isn’t that truly what life is all about anyway?!
WOW! Some really good thoughts you shared Audrey. I need to read your posts more regularly!! =) I always love them when I do…. but, right now my reading time is sketchy. Thanks for the thoughts you shared here and I love those thoughts that Jeremy shared w/ you about God rewarding in a different way then what you guys were expecting. It’s always a good reminder for myself too when I remember that ALL we have is already God’s and what I am “giving” is already His. And to give with no expectations of a return. Simply give. That conference you attended sounds really good….those statistics you shared….tsk!! unreal!
I know it is alluring, sometimes, to read of and contemplate participating in donations to exotic-sounding locales. That certainly has its appeal, to some.
I admire you for making a donation to a worthy cause right in your own area. To me, that is what it is all about, for most of us. Giving back to the community in whatever ways we can.
Someone mentioned the concept of grace. In Lakota language, there is a word, wawokiye. It means to give or be generous without expecting anything in return. Maybe that is what Creator has in mind. And maybe the minute we can overstep the bounds of our need for recognition and reward, we fall into the state of grace we were created to live in.
Bear with me on this, dear girl. First of all, the Holy Spirit does not “convict” Christians. He convicts NON-believers. So, breathe easy there. As for giving, tithing, most of us have bought the twisted versions and emotional pleas from the pulpit to give at least 10%. We’re under the New covenant, not Old Testament Law. Our giving should be responsive, gracious, purposeful…cheerfully; not out of guilt, conviction, prodding or to look good (which I believed was truth until recently). Old Testament tithe was a tax, not a gift. These are things I’ve just recently learned and I love knowing that as long as I give because I love Jesus and he gives me this generous heart, he will bless me in whatever way and time he chooses but I no longer give with that expectation. (Once upon a time, I DID give, hoping for some kind of monetary reward in return!) I know you realize that already and I hope you can enjoy the freedom that you have in his love and grace. You might love this book I’m reading and learning from: 52 Lies Heard in Church Every Sunday And Why the Truth is SO Much Better by Steve McVey.He also posted YouTube videos. I’m getting YEARS and YEARS of pulpit messes all straightened out.
God created you with a very giving, caring heart. i have been blessed by it! and i am so excited to see where this journey takes you…
so amazing how God works! Sometimes when we give, it seems even more is taken from us, but we don’t see the whole picture, especially not right away.
You have such an honest, open heart, and I think you verbalize what a lot of us feel inside but don’t know how to put words to. So true how often we expect some kind of return when we give something to God… Jeremy’s perspective on this was so good, and it makes me look at circumstances in my life that don’t look the way I expect them to, and want to see GOD in them, not the box I’ve put around God… Thank you for sharing this!