Joyful Giving
Written by Megan Brown
Marketing Director | Fortify Foundation
Have you ever considered what giving truly looks like from a biblical perspective? Or considered what stewardship truly means? As believers, we know that God calls us to give, but what does that look like from a scaled-down, daily perspective? Before we can find joy in giving, we need to understand why God calls us to give, how God calls us to give, and how it ultimately brings us JOY.
First let’s answer the question, what is stewardship? We hear this word in church, in Bible studies, in conversations with peers, but what does stewardship truly mean?
In its most basic definition, stewardship is the job of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or property. In a biblical sense, it means supervising or taking care of what God has given to us. 1 Peter 4:10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace”. Everything that we have is a gift from God. We are called in scripture to be good stewards of what God has given us, managing it well. Do you see everything that you have as a blessing and gift from the Lord? If so, are you stewarding what the Lord has given you well? One of our favorite books and a foundational piece of our heart behind giving is The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn. Randy breaks down 6 key points to remember when it comes to giving.
God owns everything. Everything we have is a gift from the Lord that He has entrusted us with. We are the “managers” of what God has given us. This includes our finances, our material possessions, etc. When we shift our perspective from, “this is my stuff”, to “this is God’s stuff”, our entire outlook on managing what we have changes. We are no longer focused on what is best for me, but on what is going to glorify God most.
My heart goes where my money goes. If we believe that our money belongs to the Lord and we are the managers of it, then wherever we give our money, our heart goes there as well. Matthew 6:21 says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
Heaven is my home. What a sense of overwhelming peace when we rest in knowing that earth is not our eternal home! As believers in Christ, we are citizens of a better home, an eternal home, in Heaven. When we keep this at the forefront of our minds, we remember that the things we possess are temporary, not eternal. We all know the saying, “You can’t take it with you!” and it proves true.
We should live for the dot, not the line. Our eternal life is only a dot that extends into a line representing our eternal life in Heaven. Our earthly existence is but a blink of an eye in comparison to eternity.
Giving is the only antidote to materialism. We live in a world that is stricken with materialism. We are all guilty of putting more focus on our material possessions than on what God is calling us to. What if we started looking at our possessions as things God has blessed us with to further His will, not our own?
God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving. God calls us to work hard and to provide for our families’ basic needs (food, shelter, etc.). But He also calls us to be generous with what He has given us. And when we are generous, God blesses us all the more.
As we reflect on all that God has blessed us with, I leave you with this charge from Randy Alcorn: “Giving is a joyful surrender to a greater person and a greater agenda. It dethrones me and exalts Him.”