Timeless advice for troubled times ● Part 5 | "Live Generous"

Did you know you can be generous without actually living generously? Find out how to be someone who goes beyond the simple act of sporadic giving.

NOTE: The following content is a raw transcript and has not been edited for grammar, punctuation, or word usage.

Let's use our imaginations for a moment. I want you to imagine that you wake up... That you woke up this morning, or we'll say tomorrow morning, you wake up tomorrow morning and you find you have a checking account, and in that checking account is all the money you've wasted so far in your life. [laughter] Yeah, it's a lot of money. Now, let me be specific about wasting. I mean, the money you bad habited away. In fact, you bad habited a lot of money away, now you're trying to break the bad habit, and you're still spending money.

Imagine if suddenly you woke up with a checking account, and had cash for all the stuff you'd wasted money on your whole life. But here's the catch, but the only thing you could do with that money is give it away. You can give it away immediately or you can give it away over time. But wouldn't it be fun to have a checking account with all that money you'd wasted and you have to give it away, either immediately or over time? You know what? That would just be fun. So hang on to that thought. We'll come back to it in just a minute. Today, if you're just joining us, we are in part five of a six-part series entitled, You'll be Glad You Did: Timeless Advice for Troubled Times. So this is a series just about advice, and the reason we're doing this series is that we've all lived long enough to have made some decisions we're glad we made, we've all lived long enough to have developed some good habits that we're glad we developed.

We've all lived long enough to have some regrets and face the consequences of some bad decisions and some bad habits. In other words, and this is where the title came from, we all have stories, we all have stories that end with either, "I'm so glad I did," or "I certainly wish I had," or "I'm so glad I didn't," or "I wish I hadn't." So what we're doing in this series, this is a series of unoriginal you'll-be-glad-you-did advice. It's just an advice series. These are not moral or ethical imperatives, these are not rules you have to keep, but if you'll take this advice, this advice will keep you from breaking the rules that have the potential to break you, to break your heart, or as you're gonna see today, keep you from going broke. This advice, like the advice you give, because we all give people advice whether they want it or not, we've all given advice, this advice sits between the rules. So this is not moral versus immoral, legal versus illegal, this is not right versus wrong, this is just what we're calling wisdom. Wisdom sits between the rules. Wisdom are the insights that are informed by the fact or the knowledge that life is connected.

Insights inform by the knowledge that life is connected, that today leads to tomorrow, that what you're facing and dealing with today is the result of decisions you made yesterday, that one thing leads to another. So in this series, so far, we've given you three pieces of advice: Number one, the first piece of advice was listen, then we talked about forgive, and then last time we were together, we talked about defer. If you are married or are engaged or wanna be engaged or trying to make a relationship go the distance, and you missed last time we were together, you really need to go back and listen to or watch Defer. But my unoriginal, in some ways, learned-the-hard-way advice for today is not one word. Today, it's two words, and the two words are: Live generous. Live generous. Now, all of us know how to be, in the moment, generous. Generous in the moment. But what we're talking about today is different than "be generous in the moment."

This type of giving, the kind of giving we're gonna talk about, is in fact, life-giving. If you will take the advice I'm gonna give you today, you're gonna save more money, you're gonna give more money, you're gonna consume less, and maybe the best outcome of all is you will be less consumed by what you have, by what you don't have, what you want and what you ultimately hope to have some day, because we don't just live in a consumer culture, we are consumed by oftentimes our consumption, because we know what everybody else has. And not only do we know what everybody else has, we know what we could potentially have. And it's so easy to get. It's just crazy. I don't need to spend a lot of time there, but goodness gracious, you almost think about it and it shows up an hour later or two hours later, they bring it to your door in a little white bag and hand it to you. It's just amazing. So consequently, it is easy for us to be consumed by our consumption, which just ultimately consumes us, and it ultimately makes us... And if you're a person of faith or a Christian, this is so important.

Ultimately, even if we can afford it, it causes us to become more and more self-centered, which is the antithesis of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. So today, for the next few minutes, I'm going to attempt to teach you how to live generous and to motivate you to live generous. Not how to give. You already know how to give, everybody knows how to give. In fact, part of the problem is that Americans easily confuse generosity with what we'll just call random acts of giving, but random acts of giving is not generosity. Random acts of giving is random acts of giving. And the way to understand the difference is similar to how we all consider ourselves good people. I mean, you're a good person, right? If I were to say, "Are you a good person?" "I'm a good person." And if I were to say to you, "You know what? I don't think you are a good person," here's what you would do, you would immediately tell me about something you did good, "Because I did that, I'm a good person," right?

Well, we do the same thing with giving, so I'm gonna press you a little bit today to try to convince you that you're not really generous, even though you do random acts of giving. And when I begin to press you, in your mind, you're gonna be like, "Oh, oh, I'm generous," and you're gonna think of something you gave or a time that you said yes when somebody asked. That's not what we're talking about. That's random acts of giving. Most Americans participate in some way of random acts of giving. This is just not that.

And our confusion regarding generosity, I think in some ways, is fueled by four generosity myths that permeate our culture. We don't know when we begin thinking this way, but these are complete myths. So this is gonna help you differentiate, so I'll hit these real fast. Myth number one, we've already talked about; the generous is spontaneous. Generosity is not spontaneous. Spontaneity is spontaneous. Giving spontaneously just means you're spontaneous, not necessarily generous, because greedy people will give spontaneously if they think it will help them or they feel pressure, or people are watching. Spontaneous giving, and I know this because of what I do, spontaneous giving is often emotion-based.

And giving based on emotion and spontaneity, that's not a bad thing. I just want you to understand, that has nothing to do with being generous. That is not what we're talking about. That's not generosity. Myth number two is this: That generosity is regulated primarily by cash flow. This is a myth as well. Saying yes spontaneously because somebody asked, again, that's not generosity.

So, maybe you said... Maybe you've had a situation where somebody was asking you for money to give to something, and what you do immediately is you think about how much money is in your wallet, how much money is in your checking account, how much money you have access to immediately. And so when you don't have access to it, you say, "You know, I'm really sorry I can't help right now." You said this, "I can't help right now," which meant your context for giving was what you had right there in the moment, or what you had in your checking account, or you're weighing your checking account against bills coming in or other things going on, and you really couldn't help right then. You wanted to help, but... Your heart was right, but you just weren't in a position to give. What you had in the moment determined what you could give in the moment. But people who live generous... This is why this is so important, people who live generous, they avoid that predicament. They're ready. Talk about why in a minute. Myth number three is this: The amount is what counts. This is totally false. You can't understand dollars without a context.

Somebody says, "I gave $1000," that might have been sacrificial giving, that might have been the equivalent of what they were gonna spend the next night on dinner with friends. You just don't know. So the amount doesn't determine generosity, and without context, we don't know what's a lot and we don't know what's little. We know what's a lot and a little to us, but we don't know what's a lot and a little to somebody else.

In fact, interestingly enough, on this point, Jesus actually addressed this one directly, He is with His disciples, they're visiting the temple, and he pulls his guys off to the side, he says, "I just wanna watch for a moment." So they're watching people come in and out of the temple, and the text says that, as Jesus looked up, he saw the rich... Now, how did he know they were rich? Well, the way they were dressed and who they were traveling with.

He saw the rich putting their gifts, their money into the temple treasury. And this was something you did publicly. He also saw a poor widow. Again, he could tell by the way she was dressed, he could tell by the fact that she was alone. Or maybe he even knew her story, we don't know. He saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. These coins, we refer to them as the widow's mite. These coins are so small, if I held one up here, you wouldn't... You would barely be able to see it. I mean, they're just little pieces, almost shards of copper. They were round like a coin, but they were so small, they were... It was the smallest amount of money. And she drops in two of these very small copper coins, and then Jesus looks at His guys. You remember this part. He says, "Truly, I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others," implication, "than all the others combined," to which we say... And His disciples were thinking, "Okay, what kind of math is that?"

[laughter]

And Jesus would have said, "That's kingdom math, that's Kingdom of God math." God is not impressed by amounts, God is moved by percentages. He went on to say, "All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth. In other words, they had a lot left over. They gave some percentage. But she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on, so she gave more than everybody else. She gave more than everybody else perhaps combined." She was the most... This is important. She was the most generous person at the temple that day, because the amount is not what counts. When it comes to generosity, it's not about the amount. It's the percentage that counts. We'll come back to that. Generosity myth number four. This is the last one, this is kind of for fun: Rich people are generous. No, they're not. [laughter] They're not. Let me explain this. Rich people are rich. Generous people are generous. And the two aren't necessarily the same. In fact, there's no necessary correlation.

In fact, the truth is, and some of you can attest to this because of the way you grew up or maybe the circumstances you're facing now, poor people, and Jesus just illustrated this in this little snippet of narrative we looked at, poor people are generally far more generous than wealthy people. And here's one of the reasons why, because poor people, truly poor people,, they are not trying to save their way out of their poverty. They're trying to survive. So consequently, they are very dialed in to people who are living on the edge because they themselves are living right on the edge of financial catastrophe. So because there's proximity, because there's overlap in terms of life experience, they are quick to come to somebody else's aid because they've been there and they know that if I help them, then when my moment comes, my day comes, perhaps they will help me.

So real quick, I'm gonna give you a definition of generous living or how to live generously. It's very clunky. I made it up. You don't have to memorize it because I'm gonna walk you through it. So, here it is. Generous living, here's what we're gonna learn to do. The premeditated, calculated, designated emancipation of financial assets. Hold your applause. That's right.

[laughter]

The pre-meditated... We're gonna talk about that. Calculated, designated emancipation that is the liberation of our financial assets. So the first word is "pre-meditated." In order to live generously, in order to live generous, you have to have a plan. Look up here. I don't care how much money you have, how much money, how little money you have, if you don't have a plan, you will not and you cannot be generous. If you don't have a plan, it is impossible for you to be a generous person. You will confuse random acts of generosity with generosity, but you're not necessarily a generous person, because without a plan, you don't know. You have to have a plan. You will be a consumer, and you will be what I call a Triple S giver, 'cause you're gonna give, we all give. The Triple S giver, spontaneous, we talked about that, in the moment, sporadic, just kinda here or there, when people ask me for it. In fact, you're gonna wait to be asked. And sparing, you will... Listen, you will never give as much as you can actually give without a plan.

You will feel the strain of what you give, but you will never maximize your potential to give, without a plan. It is impossible. You've got to have a plan. Now, years and years ago, one of the things that helped me with this, I read a book by Ron Blue, Ronald Blue, he's written a bunch of books on financial investing, inheritance, and in the book, he made this point. He says, "There's basically only five things you can do with money." Here's Ron's list, "You could spend it, repay debt, pay your taxes, save it, and give it."

And when I saw this list, and when I read this list, I remember thinking, that's actually the order that we live in, and it's actually the order most people give in, which amounts to this. Me first, creditors second, government third, me fourth, others last. Now, this is actually, me second, because the things I've borrowed money on are for me, so it's me, me, government, me, others last. Now look carefully, this is important, look up here. If you're not a person of faith, okay? You should think about this. I mean this is... This is a little bit incriminating, especially if you think, "Oh, I'm a generous person." No, if giving is last, you're not a generous person, you've put yourself ahead of pretty much everybody else, okay? But hey, if you're not a person of faith, that's up to you what you do with it. If you call yourself a Christian, if you're trying to be a Jesus follower, you can't live like this, you can't. If this is a reflection of your money, you are not following Jesus, you may pray, you may believe, you may be offended that I'd say that."How dare you say that to me?"

Just read the gospels. If you think I'm being hard on you, just read the Gospels, okay? You can't follow Jesus if other people are last in any capacity, because the whole idea of following Jesus is following Jesus, puts others first because he put you first. This is why Jesus said so much about money. Because money is oftentimes the key, and food, but money is the key to our heart, right? And it's the thing that determines where our heart is. Where your treasure is, your heart is, where your heart goes, your treasure goes.

And here's the other thing, you live this way long enough as a Christian, you will be a hypocrite. Let me predict your future for you, okay? Some of you have already been there. Here's what I mean by you'll be a hypocrite. Live this way, and eventually when you hit a financial bump, you lose your job or you go through a divorce, or there's some other financial thing, you take a hit. Do you know what Christians do, when they have problems? They pray, that's what we do. In fact, you may not have prayed in a long time, it's like, "Oh God, help me." And when you have a financial bump or take a financial hit and you pray, you're a hypocrite, because here's what you're doing, you say, "God, I wanna invite you into my finances." God is like, "Well, that's... It's been a long time. This is a first. I mean, usually it's like, oh no, no, no, no. Now, oh, now you want me to get involved in your finances." I mean, how hypocritical is that?

So you need to reverse that order now as a Jesus follower. And it's not that you shouldn't pray when you hit a financial bump, of course you should pray, in fact, many people come to their senses financially, when they hit a bump, and they finally reverse that order and invite God into their finances, not in the moment of crisis, but habitually as a way of life, and that's what I'm inviting those of you who consider yourself Christians to do. To not do this. You are treating your Savior as a helper, not a king. "

I mean, what does that say about your appreciation and your confidence in God. So, that has to change, right? Otherwise, you know what? We're consumers, but we're not followers. That brings us to calculated. Aren't you glad we're moving on? The premeditated calculated. Okay, here's the thing. Here's what generous people... Here's how generous people think. Generous people pre-decide. That's what Calculated means. Generous people pre-decide, they don't wait to be asked, they don't wait to be asked to see what's in their purse or in the wallet, in their checking account or, "I gotta think about it, let me kinda get home and... " No, no, they have pre-decided, they've pre-decided an amount or a percentage, and percentage is better because percentage rises and falls with income. They pick a percentage and they set it aside and that money is as good as given.

In other words, when something comes your way, you put God's kingdom first, and money is the most practical way to do that. Giving first is a keystone habit. It will impact everything else you do financially, because when you flip that script, when you flip that list, I'm telling you, it impacts everything. Besides that, we never miss money that we give away. So back to our definition, premeditated, calculated, next up, designated. That means... This is just so fun. Generous people have already decided ahead of time where they're going to give or allocate their giving money. Generous people don't have to be asked. Generous people don't wait to be asked. Generous people are proactive. They've discovered, here are the things that are important to me, here are the things that are making a difference in the world, I'm gonna let them know I'm gonna be proactive in my giving. I'm gonna go ahead and designate this. This doesn't mean you don't give sporadically, this doesn't mean you don't give spontaneously, but that's the add on giving.

Generous people have already decided. And here's... I'm gonna give you a tip in terms of how to decide. Give, always give from a grateful heart, and a broken heart. A grateful heart and a broken heart. You need to ask personally, or maybe as a couple, if you're married or as a family, in fact, if you've got kids who are old enough to participate in this conversation, it's so much fun. We do this with our kids. But you decide, you ask these questions, "What are we grateful for? And what breaks our heart?" So let's talk about this one first, what am I grateful for? And the way... This question has to do with the things that benefit you. Well, what are the things that are coming your way, and you're so grateful for that, that you wanna donate to whatever organization it is that has benefited you or your kids or your family. And this is why, if you are grateful for your local church, you should have a plan for giving to your local church.

So, show your gratitude with your money. And if you have a plan, and if you've already designated it, it's painless because you've pre-decided and now you're proactive and you don't have to wait to be asked, right? And then, beyond that, you wanna ask the question, "Okay, what breaks my heart? What stirs or what breaks my heart?" Now, this is that thing that... There's something that... You know when you hear about those kids or you hear about people being trained to be able to do jobs, or people who are homeless, are at foster care or whatever it might be. Every once in a while, there's just something that kind of stirs your heart, or breaks your heart. You need to find an organization that's operating in that space, and you need to designate some of your giving money and you need to write them a letter, and say, "I'm gonna send you this every month. Don't ask me, don't... You don't have to do with Gala, you don't have to invite me to a fundraiser. No, I... See, I'm not one of those people. I'm a generous person, I don't have to be asked. I believe in what you're doing because what you're doing impacts me, because the cause that you're addressing stirs my heart."

Any time you can marry your giving, your passion and your time together, that is a win for you. So what breaks your heart? What stirs your heart? What problem in society or maybe in the world would you love to see solved? Find somebody in that space who's doing a great job, and then just decide every month or every time I get paid or every year we're, boom, sending them a cheque. Don't have to ask because I'm generous. I'm not the average American giver, I've got a plan, I've picked a percentage and I'm designating it based on what I'm grateful for and what stirs or breaks my heart. This is what connects your heart. This is what connects your heart to your giving.

Now, another way of saying all this is this, saving prepares you to say yes to you and you should save money, living generous... This is what's so powerful, living generous prepares you to say yes to what's important to you. And, look up here, if you don't have a plan, you won't be ready. If you don't have a plan, you will be inconsistent. If you don't have a plan, you'll be thinking, how much is in my checking account? That's how everybody else does it, don't be like everybody else, because if you do, you put others last, you put the Kingdom of God last, you put the church last, and you just can't consider yourself a Jesus follower, if that's the case. If you do this, I'm telling you, you will make more thoughtful, intentional, passion-filled, and less emotional giving decisions. And you'll feel better about... This is kind of a bonus. You'll feel better about saying no to every ask that comes along, here's why. Because generous people, generous people don't feel guilty saying, no, because they've already said yes. Generous people don't feel... "Thank you for asking, but no."

I don't feel guilty. No, no, I don't feel guilty because you see, I'm not an emotional giver, I don't give based on the plea and the pictures. I mean, if you've got... You can give money on anything you want to, I'm not telling you to say no, I'm just telling you when you say no, it's because you've already said yes. This is why I say the simplest way to organize your financial life is this, you give first, save second, live on the rest.

You give first, you save second, you live on the rest. If you give first, you will probably save more and you will live more responsibly, I guarantee it. This is a key stone financial habit that impacts everything else. And the result? Is more joy, more peace, 'cause you're preparing for your own future and more freedom to live responsibly in this world that we live in that just constantly reminds us of what we don't have, what we think we need, or how to upgrade something that we already have. Now, wrapping up. Imagine, imagine if this had been your lifestyle since you got your first job. Imagine if your whole life, if you just picked a percentage, boom, it's $10 a week or $100 a week, or [0:36:06.0] ____. Imagine how much money you would have given away responsibly to things you believed in and were passionate about? And do you know what all that money here... You know where all the money went that you didn't give away? You don't know. You have nothing to show for it.

So I'm challenging you to begin living generous. Again, back to where we started, imagine if you had that checking account, all the good you would do and all the good you could do. And you know what? You're generous in your heart. I bet most every one of you are generous, "I wish I could do more." Hey, do you really wish you could do more? "Well, I did before you preached this sermon, now I'm kind of afraid to answer that question." Because if you... Come on, if you wish you could do more, you could do more. I'm telling you, you have no idea what your giving capacity is until you have a plan. And if this scares you, it shouldn't, what should scare you is living another season of your life without doing this, that's what should scare you because generous people are the happiest people. Jesus said it this way. Here's what he said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." He was not kidding. Blessed means happy. Jesus says, "You wanna be happy?" I wanna be happy. Well, then you can't... Listen, you can't consume your way to happiness. You've already tried.

It's impossible. Because you are made in the image of creator God, and He says, "You wanna be happy? Then you flip the script on how you manage your money, and you'll save more, you'll consume less, you'll give more, and you will be happier." You won't be blessed, and I wanna be clear, you won't be blessed in the sense of, you gave God a dollar, he gave you 10, I don't believe that. You live in the United States of America. Good grief, we've already won the lottery, for most of us, when you think about what's going on in the world. So this isn't about give to get. This is about give because you've been given to. And that's the power of a plan, and that's the power of percentage, and this is what it means to follow Jesus with our finances. I don't want you to live another 10 years, or get another 10 years down the road, and have missed out on the joy that could be yours by doing this. So decide, I just want you to decide. I want you to plan to live generous, which means you make a plan, you pick a percentage, and then you go for it, you designate it, you get busy, you share it with your family, you make this a way of life and you watch and see what happens.

You watch and see what happens to you on the inside and in your heart, and watch and see what happens in your finances. It is a keystone habit. It has the potential to change everything. So give generously. More important, live generous. You will be glad that you did.