Tag Archives: generosity

A Christmas Question: Whose Money is it Anyway?

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The Story
About ten years ago, I travelled to hundreds of North American cities every year to tell stories at Wycliffe Associates fund-raising banquets.
One morning my travel manager and I pulled into a Starbucks parking lot for our usual morning coffees before starting a long drive. “I’ll have a venti Café Mocha this time,” he said.

A few minutes later, I slid into my seat, handed Max his Mocha and sipped my Cappuccino while holding a Mocha Frappe in my free hand.
“Remember the waitress at our breakfast place who told us how to get to Starbucks? She said she loved Mocha Frappes. So, I bought one to bring to her as we drove by.”
“Right, good idea.”

After pleasantly surprising the waitress with her favourite coffee, she rewarded me with a smiling Thank you. As we drove down the freeway, I thought about how easy it had been for me to spend those extra dollars to make someone feel appreciated. What made it so easy was that I had not paid with my own money but with the Starbucks card provided by Wycliffe Associates.

The Application
Isn’t it easy to be generous with someone else’s money? Who wouldn’t vote for faster snow removal in our community when we don’t personally have to pay for it? It got me thinking about money and giving, especially appropriate now, at Christmas time.

The Bible has a lot to say about money, “All creation and its bounty are mine” Psalm 50:12 (MSG). God gave us the strength to produce all this wealth” Deuteronomy 8:18 (MSG). This means that all the money in the world belongs to God.

Although we are not owners of the money in our bank accounts, God has made us His money managers, and He will hold us accountable for how we spend His money.
Regrettably, some Christians give 10% of their income to God’s work and then act as if the 90% is their own, which they can spend however they want. Not so.

And speaking of tithing, someone once told me, “We are Christians and are living under Grace, not under the Law of Moses. So, tithing does not apply to us.”
“True,” I said, “But I, and many other believers, give 10% as a token amount to remind us that 100% of what we have belongs to God.” So, we act as Abraham who practiced tithing hundreds of years before Moses’ Law was given.

Jesus: Our Investment Advisor
Jesus gave us smart investor advice, “Store up treasures for yourselves, not on earth, but in heaven. (Mat. 6:20). If we give the tithe and beyond to meet the needs of the poor and to build His kingdom, we will receive one-hundred times as much in eternity. Mat. 19:29. (No Investment advisor can beat 10,000%!)

Jesus also reminds us that although we cannot take our treasures with us, we can send them ahead by giving them away to those who cannot pay us back. Lk. 14:12-14.
He said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be.” (Mat 6:21.) Our thoughts focus on our treasure. I want to take my thoughts out of the bank and into heaven, which is my forever-Home!

The Gift of Giving
Romans 12 lists seven gifts God supplies to His people to build His Church: prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, leading, showing mercy, and giving. In my experience, churches tend to strongly encourage congregants to be involved in the first six activities.

But the seventh: giving, seems to get less attention. It is true that statistics show that evangelicals per person give more to charity than any other social group. But statistics from Barna Research also show that, on average, evangelicals in North America give only 2% of their income. One report stated that one in three born-again adults said they tithed their income, but their actual giving and income showed that only one in eight did so.

Yet, financing missions makes the Church grow worldwide. It goes against the grain of our greed to pray, “Thank you for helping me to earn all this money. Now guide me to make wise decisions and give generously to those in need and to build your Church.”

Making it Easy
We need to spend our money, keeping in mind that our money is not ours but God’s. When that fact becomes a daily reality, we’ll respond to His inner voice to meet the needs of others by giving away God’s money. It will be easy and satisfying. Just as easy as it was for me to use the Wycliffe card to buy a Mocha Frappe for a waitress and be rewarded with a big smile.

Halloween, the Celebration of Fear

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Halloween, the Celebration of Fear

Spiders!


This week, fear-inducing scenes surround us. Figures of demons, devils and ghosts startle us as we walk into the mall, ducking to avoid spider-filled cobwebs hanging in doorways. Theatres advertise horror films, and Halloween costume parties are replete with vampires, witches, and warlocks. Yes, this coming Monday is Halloween, the yearly celebration of things we fear.

We usually think of fear as a negative emotion. Jesus kept telling His followers, “Don’t be afraid.” But there is also a positive side to fear.

What We Fear Shows What We Value
I have lived for extended periods in nearly a dozen countries. People in every culture and society consider their bodies important. They all dread suffering a crippling accident or debilitating disease. They profoundly respect loaded firearms, powerful machinery, poisonous snakes, and disease-carrying insects. Fear is what drives us to doctors for medical advice, while others call on shamans or engage in other actions that they believe will keep them alive and well.

One of the most positive aspects of fear is that it helps us to understand ourselves better. What we dread shows us what we value. To determine what things I value the most, I recently listed six things that frighten me the most:

  • I fear committing “moral lapse” sins. I read of fellow Christian leaders, speakers, and authors who, through pride, abuse their power as communicators. Others, through greed and envy, embezzle ministry funds. Others, through lust and gluttony, sin by inappropriate sexual conduct, overeating or drunkenness.
  • I value my fellowship with God and my reputation with those who know me. I value the respect of my wife, my family, and my colleagues. I value my current public ministry as an author and my history as a leader, speaker, and pioneer Bible translator.

 

  • I fear suffering a crippling physical or mental injury or disease.
  • I value serving God with my mind and body. I value physical comfort and freedom from pain. I value exercising a wide range of life choices and options.

 

  • I fear messed-up relationships with my family, friends, and colleagues.
  • I value our interdependence, helping each other to succeed, and the resulting mutual respect and appreciation.

 

  • I fear poverty.
  • I value being treated by God as His money manager, to give to those in need, to meet my personal and family needs; and to finance the cost of publishing what I write.

 

  • I fear losing all my computer data, my creative writing, personal history, my fifty-plus years of daily diaries, and a lifetime collection of photos, etc.
  • I value the written record of what I have done and experienced in the past because I constantly learn how God has led me, and I tap into it for my writing ministry.

 

  • I fear that our children, grandchildren, and their spouses may suffer the same sort of losses and troubles that I fear.
  • I value that God listens to my wife and me as we pray by name for each member of our family. We are like the apostle John who wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 JN 4)

So What?
During this Halloween week, let’s remember that even if some of our fears come true, our souls are safe. As children of God, we can sing, “Though trials should come . . . It is well with my soul.”

The Canela people, among whom Jo and I worked as Bible translators for twenty-three years, were terrified of evil spirits and the malevolent ghosts of their ancestors who were intent on sickening and killing the Canelas. When they received God’s Word in their language, huge changes came to believers who knew God’s powerful Holy Spirit now lived in their bodies, and they had nothing to fear from spirits and ghosts.

Hundreds of millions of people, however, continue to live in daily fear, beset by Satanic forces. They don’t know that Jesus, the Son of God, has overcome Satan. They, too, need to hear Jesus say, in their own language, “Trust in me, don’t be afraid.”

More Valuable Than an Enamel Plate

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More Valuable Than an Enamel Plate

I will never forget that young mother’s prayer during evening Bible class!

My wife and I were in the last stages of the Bible translation program, where for twenty years, we had been called Tehtikwyj and Prejaka by the thousand-plus Canela villagers living in the wilds of Brazil. Two dozen Canela men and women surrounded me, sitting on logs. We had sung hymns set to Canela indigenous music patterns, and in a few minutes, would read and talk about a new translated draft of a chapter of the Bible.

Prayer Time
Now, it was time to pray. First, I heard prayers asking God to heal sick children, for a good crop, and for help to find a lost bush knife. Then a young mother prayed:

“Great Father in the Sky,” she began. “I want to thank You for sending our brother Prejaka, and our sister Tehtikwyj, to our village long ago when I was just a baby. They are our teachers. First, they taught us to read our own language. Then, they worked with us to turn Your Words into our language. Now we can read Your Letter to us. Now we are discovering that You love us very much. Now we are learning how we can live to please you. Please help them to finish Your Book soon.”

Prayer for Donors
Then came the unforgettable part that brought tears to my eyes.

“I also want to thank You for all Prejaka and Tehtikwyj’s friends far away in their own country. They know that our brother and sister don’t have a food garden here as we do. So, for all these years, every month, their friends have sent them money so they can buy food. They keep on sending them their money, not just because they are Prejaka and Tehtikwyj’s friends, but because they are their brothers and sisters. Yes, they are all part of Your family, Great Father, and they are our brothers and sisters too.

“Maybe one of them is a mother and she is in a market, and she has money in her basket. And then she sees a new enamel plate, and she wonders, Should I buy this for my family so we can each have our own plate?

But then, she decides not to buy anything, and instead, she sends the money to our brother and sister so they can live here and make the books of Your Word.

“And she sure chose right because Your Word is so much more valuable than an enamel plate, even if it comes with a shiny new spoon.

As a reward, give these faraway brothers and sisters lots of healthy children; make their gardens grow well, and keep them from getting sick. Amen.”

What’s Happening Today
This young mother’s children have for the past thirty years grown up with a Bible in their language and are teaching their own children. Meanwhile, Bible translation programs are going on in thousands of languages around the world right now. Translation teams have completed hundreds of programs in the last ten years. It is very likely that while you are reading this column:

Somewhere in the world, someone is reading or hearing the Word of God in their own language for the first time.
Somewhere, someone whom you will not meet until eternity could be asking God to bless you, the donors to Bible translation and cross-cultural missions, because, as that young Canela mother said, “You sure chose right!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus and the Flight Attendant

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“Hey, kids! Share your toys!”
“Save some cookies for your brother!”

Parents need to improve their children’s behaviour frequently. Why? Because babies are born selfish, the most selfish people on the planet. It does not come naturally to a child to share with others. It takes years of consistent example by self-less parents and constant reminding to teach children to look not just to their own needs but to the needs of others.

The Flight Attendant Story
I sometimes wonder what little kids think when they hear a flight attendant tell their mommy to be selfish. You’ve listened to them on every flight. After the seat belt demonstration come the instructions for the oxygen mask. “If you are travelling with a small child, first put on your own mask, then put the mask on your child.”

How selfish! How unloving! What a terrible example to a little kid!

No, not really! When mommy makes sure she stays conscious, she is acting in practical love to her poor, gasping little daughter beside her. It’s a fundamental principle of life. We must look after our own basic needs first before we can meet the needs of others.

Jesus Story
Jesus, like the flight attendant, taught the same thing. How do we love our neighbour? First, love yourself, then love your neighbour as you love yourself. That was the preface to Jesus’ famous story of the Good Samaritan who stopped to help the naked, bleeding victim of a vicious mugging. The hero in this story not only felt sorry for the victim, but he also had wine and oil to cleanse the wounds, and he had cloth for bandages. He had enough clothing for the victim to wear and a donkey for him to ride on. And when they arrived at the inn, he had money to pay the innkeeper for food and rent. (Luke 10:25-37)

Before starting his journey, the Good Samaritan first looked after his own needs for the trip. Since he had supplied himself to meet his own needs, he could now share some of his supplies and clothing to meet the naked bleeding, robbery victim’s needs. By loving himself first, he could give what he had as an act of love to someone else.

Your Story and Ours
The Bible teaches that our human instinct to love ourselves and care for our own needs is normal and natural. Satan, of course, wants to pervert this natural instinct, and he tempts us to focus only on meeting our own needs. That is why we need to follow the Bible’s teaching to “look also on the needs of others.”

Our world abounds in opportunities to show love to others—a pot of freshly made soup for some sick friend, a bag of winter clothes to distribute among the indigent, donations to the Food Bank. And missionaries keep telling us about people’s enormous physical and spiritual needs in third-world countries.

God is pleased when we reject Satan’s temptation to be selfish, but we must not be so focused on the needs of others that we neglect our own physical, mental, and spiritual health. We must first take care to have a strong relationship with God. Then we must take care of our family members and our work responsibilities. If we don’t care for our own spiritual, mental, physical, family, and financial needs, how can we possibly make an impact for good on the needs of people around us? We would be like a mommy who disobeys the flight attendant’s orders and tries to help her little girl first, but both end up slumped unconscious in their seats.

Jo and I were tempted at times to focus all our energies on meeting the numerous needs of the Canela people with whom we worked in our younger years. Sometimes we neglected to meet our own needs for rest and recreation. Sometimes we even failed to meet each other’s needs. It might sound very “dedicated” to focus so intensely on meeting the needs of others, but, as Jesus taught, we can’t love others properly unless we love ourselves first.

Christians’ Right Thinking About Money

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The last blog post, Christians’ Weird Thinking About Wealth, provoked many interesting comments. One of the most interesting was a friend who shared a testimony with me different from any other remark I had received.

Other friends have told me eye-popping stories of how they could fund major mission projects through the amazing wealth God helped them produce. This time, however, the amazing story came from an unexpected source. He is an ordinary guy, just like you and me, not gifted with the ability to produce great wealth, but with the ability to act increasingly as the manager of God’s money.

The Pseudonym
He was happy for me to share his story with you in this column but wanted to remain anonymous since staying unknown brings a special pleasure and joy to him. So I’ll call him Mac, a fitting name since it reminds Bible readers of the apostle Paul’s description of the Mac-edonians in 2 Cor. 8, MSG.

“Fierce troubles came down on the people of those Macedonian churches, pushing them to the very limit. The trial exposed their true colours: They were incredibly happy, though desperately poor. The pressure triggered something unexpected: an outpouring of pure and generous gifts. I was there and saw it for myself. They gave offerings of whatever they could—far more than they could afford!—pleading for the privilege of helping out in the relief of poor Christians.”

Mac’s Story
Here’s what Mac wrote, “For years I have been proving the Lord’s faithfulness in providing money for me to give away, even though my income isn’t excessive. One passage of Scripture that has encouraged me is Psalm 81:10 where I saw myself as a money manager, rather than as a consumer.”

In this passage God reminds Israel he brought them out of Egypt and was prepared to bless them abundantly. “Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it,” God promised. When your mouth has been filled, the next thing to do is to chew and swallow, consuming what you have been given. But Mac read it as a manager; when God gave him money, he did not consume it all. Instead, he shared it with other people.

Mac went on to write, “Twenty years ago the Lord gave me a thought I continue to pursue: ‘Why don’t you pray and ask Me for money so you can use it to help build My Kingdom?’

“It has been quite a journey, limited, I’m sure, only by my lack of faith. As I have fearfully stepped forward each year, increasing my commitment to financial stewardship, I now see how the Lord is ‘rebuking the devourer’ {a reference to Mal. 3:11 in which God promises His people that pests will not devour their crops, and in Mac’s case probably keeps his roof from leaking and his car from falling apart} so I can give half my income to Kingdom ministry (home church, summer camps, Bible colleges, missionaries, and the poor.)

“This has become a significant source of joy, particularly during this time of economic challenge. Twenty years ago, I didn’t believe it to be possible, but God’s economics continue to defy human explanation. All Praise to Him alone.”

What About Us?
Since people like Mac tend to obey Jesus’ command to do all their giving in secret, we don’t hear challenging and encouraging stories like this in church, unless they are second hand, like this one.

May God help us all to “open our mouths wide” to his provisions so that we can be outrageously generous to people and ministries in need.

Christians’ Weird Thinking About Wealth

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My Skilled Friend and I
“Jack, I can come over this morning and solve that garage door problem that’s got you licked.” I was delighted with our handyman friend’s offer after I had I told him of my useless struggles. When he arrived, he looked over the problem and said, “I got this.” That afternoon, I sat at my computer, and my fingers rattled my keyboard. As the sentences of my current Work in Progress scrolled up my screen, I thought, “I got this.”

God’s Gifts to His People
During my evening  walk, I meditated on how every human being is exceptional, with at least one of several skills—things that they can potentially do better than other people. Every Christian also has at least one unique ability, given by God, that he or she can develop in His service. An accountant looks at a sheet of numbers that look like gibberish to me, and smiling says, “These figures sing to me.” My wife can flip open a cookbook, glance at a recipe and intuitively know what it will taste like.

So, what should we do with these abilities and ministry gifts from God? 1 Peter 4:10 has the answer: “Each one should use whatever gift he (or she) has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” The apostle Paul lists God-given skills like teaching, serving, encouragement and giving, among others. (Romans 12:6-8)

The Gift of Creating Wealth
What bothers me is that some Christians do not appreciate one amazing gift that God has given certain ones of His people. I’m talking about the ability to recognize and capitalize on profitable business opportunities, with the result that those who work hard with this God-given skill become wealthy and are outrageously generous.

A Negative Attitude
What makes Christians so critical of rich Christians—people who have been gifted by God to make a lot of money? Well, the Bible uses some extraordinarily strong language in judging rich people. In Chapter 5, the apostle James rants against the rich, telling them to weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on them. He refers to rotted wealth, corroded silver and gold that will corrode their flesh like fire.

After reading some of this chapter, we might come away with the idea that being rich is sinful. Not so. God cursed these people, not because they were rich, but because they had disobeyed God’s command concerning gaining wealth:

  1. They had exploited the poor, paying unfair wages, and had dealt dishonestly with customers, employees, and the government.
  2. They trusted in their wealth, abandoning faith in “God who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” Deut. 8:18
  3. They spent their money on themselves and did not care for the poor, nor did they further God’s work on earth.

It is not money itself that is evil, but the love of money and the sinful, selfish ways some people become rich.

A Positive Attitude
We will think positively about rich people when we note God’s blessing on people who become rich by using their God-given wealth-producing talents while also obeying all His commands concerning wealth.

Some of our financial supporters have been gifted by God to produce a lot of wealth in business. They earn it legally and honestly, performing a constructive service to humanity. Their morals and business ethics are beyond reproach. They understand that all the money they earn belongs to God and that they are merely managers. They prove this by giving away a significant proportion of their income to meet human physical and spiritual needs.

And yet, sometimes I hear negative comments about Christians who live in large, well-furnished homes and drive newest model vehicles. That bothers me, especially when I happen to know that the wealthy persons they referred to earned their money honestly, continue to trust God, and are generous to the point of extravagance in their giving.

A Biblical Attitude
So, what about driving that new car, or living in a lovely house? God said it this way, “Don’t muzzle the ox that treads out the grain!” I’m sure that our handyman friend’s home has not only a functioning garage door opener; all his machines and appliances work at full efficiency.

In the same way, we Christians need to be glad for the special income-generating abilities our Father gives to some of our brothers and sisters when we see them enjoying a beautiful home, even one large enough to house celebrations for plenty of friends and overnight guests, and an vehicle that we might consider luxurious. We need to be glad for them and praise God for giving them this wealth producing ability.

And not just because they passed on some of that wealth to meet our needs!