The Great Giveaway
The Great Giveaway
I was explaining to a co-worker that generosity is part of the character of God. God, as part of His essence, is generous. When you think about the great themes of the Bible, you can clearly see His generosity overflowing.
Throughout scripture there is a push from God that the people who are to reflect His person and image, are to be generous with others. However, when we look at the American Church by analyzing its behaviors, we begin to see that those who idenitify themselves as Christians are not very generous (Rodney Starks, What America Believes). We tend to give of our income, time, and resources in ways that approaches those who are outside the church.
Why is that? I think it stems from living in a consumeristic environment where we measure everything by "what does this do for me". In fact, most of us still measure our church attendance that way (The church is a community of people called together to carry out the mission of Jesus; its not really about you!). So true generosity is difficult because we do not approach it with the idea that being generous is demonstrating the Love of Jesus, and hence fulfilling the mission of Jesus, but analyzing the actions according to how much we enjoy it or how much happiness it provides us. Its not that being generous will not make us feel happy or joyful, but that generosity is not a tool for personal satisfiaction, but a celebration and demonstration of the love of Jesus to a broken world.
Lets not wait until the great giveaway on August 1st to be generous. Lets begin to see possessions and time as a gift from God and ask him to help us be generous.
May God bless you all,
Pastor M Traylor
I was explaining to a co-worker that generosity is part of the character of God. God, as part of His essence, is generous. When you think about the great themes of the Bible, you can clearly see His generosity overflowing.
Throughout scripture there is a push from God that the people who are to reflect His person and image, are to be generous with others. However, when we look at the American Church by analyzing its behaviors, we begin to see that those who idenitify themselves as Christians are not very generous (Rodney Starks, What America Believes). We tend to give of our income, time, and resources in ways that approaches those who are outside the church.
Why is that? I think it stems from living in a consumeristic environment where we measure everything by "what does this do for me". In fact, most of us still measure our church attendance that way (The church is a community of people called together to carry out the mission of Jesus; its not really about you!). So true generosity is difficult because we do not approach it with the idea that being generous is demonstrating the Love of Jesus, and hence fulfilling the mission of Jesus, but analyzing the actions according to how much we enjoy it or how much happiness it provides us. Its not that being generous will not make us feel happy or joyful, but that generosity is not a tool for personal satisfiaction, but a celebration and demonstration of the love of Jesus to a broken world.
Lets not wait until the great giveaway on August 1st to be generous. Lets begin to see possessions and time as a gift from God and ask him to help us be generous.
May God bless you all,
Pastor M Traylor