Make a PLAN
November 16, 2011
From Kevin DeYoung’s blog:
A PLAN for Giving Generously
P – Pray for a generous heart. Make people a priority over prosperity. Don’t think: “How much do I have to give away in order to be obedient?” Ask: “Give me opportunities to sow.”
L – Lifestyle cap. As we earn more, we should give more. If you are wealthier than you used to be, have you done more to increase your standard of living or your standard of giving?
A – Accountability. Set goals and find someone you can trust who won’t be threatened by talking frankly about finances. Sex and money–we don’t talk about them nearly as much as Jesus did.
N – No less than a tithe. Whether the Old Testament requirement is a binding prescription or not, I find it hard to imagine that Western Christians who have seen the glory of God in the face of Christ and enjoy great prosperity, would want to give less than was required of the poorest Israelite. Statistics consistently show that Protestants give less than 3% of their income to their churches. A tithe, for most churchgoers, would be a huge step in the right direction.
Unhindered
February 25, 2011
Here some thoughts from 2006, on my mind as I head to Highlands PCA to speak at their Missions Festival…
Unhindered. The word is the final word of the book of Acts. Paul is in Rome, under house arrest, just coming off a rather unsuccessful meeting with the local Jewish leadership. We know from history that this about the time that Nero begins his rampage to ‘cleanse’ the city from the blight of Christianity. Paul will soon be a victim himself. Yet Luke describes Paul as preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered.
Unhindered (Greek, akolutos) seems a strange word to describe the situation. The situation of Acts 28 sounds pretty hindered to me. But does this not tell us something about the kingdom of God? Does it not tell us that we judge things wrongly if we judge by what we see, that what we consider hindrances to the gospel’s advance do not really constitute hindrances? I think of Paul writing to Timothy, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory [2 Timothy 2:8-13]. The Word of God is not bound! Christ cannot be contained! The gospel cannot be silenced! The salvation of sinners cannot be stopped! This message is for everyone!
We look at obstacles: lack of laborers and money, uncertainty about vision and purpose, resistance and barriers in the community, hostile governments and religions. In the closing service I realized that the real hindrance is inside of me. I need the kingdom of God to get inside of me more and more so that unhindered becomes a reality in my life: content and relaxed, confident and humble, ready to spend and be spent, welcoming and bold, self-forgetting and Christ-remembering. Oh, that this would be the mark of our fellowship to increasing degrees! Oh, that we would see more of all openness, unhindered among us. Oh, that Christ would open our hearts, our mouths, our homes, our checkbooks, and our fellowship.
Boom and bust
February 1, 2010
A little economics lesson…and it beats the old animated Schoolhouse Rock features that fed my brain as a child.
By the way, Hayek was right…
Decline and fall of charity
January 15, 2009
Here is an article called “The Decline and Fall of Charity.” The author notes some troubling statistics and trends in the giving habits of American churchgoers and troubling statistics and trends in the way that churches spend money. Here is an excerpt:
…fewer than 5 percent of churchgoers actually tithe 10 percent of their income; the average, according to numbers from Empty Tomb, a Christian research group that puts out annual reports on church giving, is now 3.4 percent, or 21 percent less than what dust-bowler counterparts gave during the worst of the Great Depression. Figures show that churchgoer contributions have been cascading downward since the 1960s. Religious conservatives do give more. Problem is, they only give nominally more and other groups give next to nothing.
May God deliver us from the consumeristic mindset (READ: idolatry) that is corrupting us all.
50 million pennies
January 7, 2009
Even though this happened right here in Mississippi, it took a blog post from Justin Taylor to make me aware of it. The 
Mississippi Baptist Convention has built The Memorial to the Missing to enable us to get some visual sense of the number of abortions in the U.S. since 1973–estimated to be around 50 million. The memorial is filled with 50 million pennies collected from churches around the state and is located at their main office across the street from the State Capitol.
A plaque on the memorial reads:
“Before you is a collection of 50 million pennies! Each penny represents one child who has been aborted since the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade in 1973. A penny like a baby seems to be so small and sometimes of very little worth, but when seen in a collection of 50 million it becomes enormous.
Each coin is a person, but in many cases it also represents the difficult process of decision-making, fear, and loneliness. While some speak of pro-choice, these babies had no choice. While some speak of a mother’s right to control her own body, 50 million babies were not given their right to live.
Fifty million missing children represented by these pennies must be cause for us to stop, pray, consider what we are doing as a nation, ask God to forgive us, seek ways to help those who are struggling with the decision, and look to the Lord to restore each of us.”
I will give you anything you want…except
November 20, 2008
Vote as not voting
October 29, 2008
I voted last week at the majestic old Attala County Courthouse. Presbytery meets on the first Tuesday in November, so I’ve never voted on a touch screen or other electronic device that looks like an ATM or one of the “peep show” contraptions that NFL referees use to review disputed plays. It’s old school–paper and pencil, licking an envelope, signing across the seam, and that’s it. I didn’t like most of my choices. That brings me to recommend John Piper’s “Taste and See” article from last week, Let Christians Vote as Though They Were Not Voting. It’s a must-read. I am grateful for Piper’s clear-headedness and warm-heartedness and for his ability to make simple, profound application. He has served the Church of Jesus well again with this.
Giving is about harvest, not hoarding
October 20, 2008
This is such an important point, because this is the point that most of us miss or simply don’t believe it. In 2 Corinthians 9:6-8 this is laid out for us: The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that having all contentment in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.
Think about what you have—what God has entrusted to you. Now think of yourself as standing with it in front of a garden. You can eat the seed corn, or you can plant the seed corn. What should the gardener do with the seed?
David Livingstone saw this, and spent his life with a harvest mentality. He said, “I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only as by giving or keeping it I shall promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity.” His whole life given to Africa proved what Livingstone professed.
It’s very tempting for us to say, “Well, Paul must be speaking to someone else other than me, because I’m not rich.” We may have in our minds some arbitrary line which we have not crossed in terms of personal wealth that constitutes “rich.” But let me just remind you of one thing: the one in our midst who has the least has more than the wealthiest person who first heard this letter read in his own congregation. We live in the most affluent society in the history of the world. We are among the wealthiest Christians in the history of the world, and the least of us has more than those who had the most in the congregation Paul was thinking of when he wrote to Timothy. God’s words are to all of us, no matter how little we relatively have in comparison to some others in our community, or even in this congregation. Paul’s words are for all of us.
Pray and seek God’s leading this week as to how you might invest the money God has entrusted to you. How should you use it to lay up treasures in heaven through: giving to support the needs of individuals, giving to support your local church budget so she can fund and expand ministry inside and outside the walls, and giving to support the extension of the Gospel?
Look around. Consider your life. Think of what God has prepared for those who love him—in short, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Sow generously toward that. Remember that great Christian epitaph: “What I spent, I lost. What I saved, I left. What I gave, I have.” That is the secret to eternal life: we invest in the eternities, and we reap assurance, a good conscience and a growing hope.
Giving is about thunder, not lightning
October 14, 2008
Lightning bolts are extremely hot, with temperatures of 30,000 to 50,000 degrees F. That’s hotter than the surface of the sun! When the bolt suddenly heats the air around it to such an extreme, the air instantly expands, sending out a vibration or shock wave we hear as an explosion of sound: thunder! If you are near the stroke of lightning you’ll hear thunder as one sharp crack. When lightning is far away, thunder sounds more like a low rumble as the sound waves reflect and echo off hillsides, buildings and trees. Depending on wind direction and temperature, you may hear thunder for up to fifteen or twenty miles. Which comes first: thunder or lightning? Thunder follows lightning.
Three thousand years ago an elderly King David stood before the assembly of Israel and rejoiced and blessed the Lord. Not out of tithes, but out of freewill offerings, people had given the materials for the construction of the temple that his son Solomon would oversee. 1 Chronicles 29:9 says the people rejoiced because they had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered freely to the LORD. In his prayer King David asked, But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.
Ultimately, the giving of ourselves through servanthood and stewardship is not merely a dry duty—as if we somehow have to repay God through our service and sacrifice. In truth, it’s quite the opposite: before you can give, you must possess. Before you can possess, you must receive. Therefore, all your service and giving is simply offering back to God what he has graciously given to you already. Your time, talents and resources are gifts from God, and it is a consummate privilege to offer these gifts to God’s glory and purposes in the world.
I can’t help but think that this is a forgotten truth, that somewhere inside of us there are lies about God that we believe—that God is stingy, that God holds back good things from his children, that God is mean and petty and uncaring as we can be.
This is why we say, “You can’t out-give God.” He shovels it in to you, and you shovel it out. But he has a much bigger shovel than you have. What a gracious invitation Almighty God has given to us that we might ‘participate in the journey’ of the Christian life! What can you think of that is more noble, more meaningful, more joyful, or more fulfilling?
Giving is about benefit, not misery
October 13, 2008
Look at the things Paul urges to Timothy regarding wealth in 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19. He says in v.6, Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. We are prone to lose our contentment with all that God is for us in Christ and begin seeking it somewhere else. Don’t lose your contentment with God so that you start looking for contentment somewhere else—and especially in things that fade away, things that will not hold their value when you draw your last breath. Ecclesiastes 5:11 warns us, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity.”
This is God’s word on money: it does not satisfy those who love it. If we believe him, we will turn away from the love of money. We will recognize that it’s a dead end street. Jesus put it like this in Luke 12:15, “Beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” If the Word of the Lord needed confirming, there are enough miserable rich people in the world to prove that satisfied life does not come from having things.
V.9-10 tell us that those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare and pierce themselves through with many sorrows. What a clear warning is here for us! We always have sign-up lists on the bulletin board for events and jobs for which we need volunteers. Would you sign a list for “Temptations, Snares, Senseless and Harmful Desires to Plunge You into Ruin and Destruction”? What about a list for “Pathway to Wandering Away from the Faith” or “Piercing Yourself with Many Pangs”? Well, 1 Timothy 6:6–19 makes very clear that what you do with money can do just that: get you involved in all sorts of temptations, snares and senseless and harmful desires. It can place your feet on a pathway to wander away from the faith. It can be a form of self-mutilation, so to speak. What you do with money and possessions can destroy you (v. 9) or can secure your eternal life (v. 19). This passage teaches us to use our money in a way that will bring us the greatest and longest gain.
As you give regularly and systematically, as you provide support for the local church where you receive pastoral care and training, as you give to meet needs of mercy and missions, you are demonstrating a commitment to God and you are protesting against all that passes for ‘life’ around you.
