WHY THIS MATTERS: Generosity | Erwin McManus - Mosaic

i was one of those people that did not grow up in church i had no background in christianity never seen a bible in my entire life and so when i began my faith journey there were so many things that now i was being informed that should be a part of my life practices i should take on disciplines i needed to develop and and and frankly a lot of those things were so strange to me they were um in in some ways a little bit intrusive they were causing me to rethink my values my my habits my practices and and the first one was just the whole thing about church now when i when it came to faith it was in the context of of church life it was around so many people who were followers of christ and i was invited to this church in orlando florida and and it was my mom and my sisters and my brother who were going and i was watching them interact with with these people known as christians and and begin to talk about the possibility of faith and i was pretty skeptical looking from the outside in and and yet suddenly when i i choose the cross line of faith and to trust jesus my life now i'm told that i should be at church every single week i had no idea churches met every single week i didn't know that all over the world there were people who call themselves christians who made it their practice and life to get up on sunday morning to get up on sunday morning and go to church now you have to understand this this was incredibly intrusive because i grew up loving football every sunday it was national football league day sunday was about watching football and now i'm supposed to make a huge shift in my life where i have to go to church and can't get up and watch the nfl and then on top of that i was in college and i started playing soccer on the college team and a lot of our matches were on sundays and suddenly now i'm being told well you're a new follower of jesus you need to make church you're a priority now i didn't know how to play all that out and how to organize it and all i knew that there was this incredible tension because this thing that i never even knew existed church was not supplemental it was essential and i had to ask the question why does this matter i mean this this really matter and and i quickly began to discover that that church was not supplemental that that being connected to people of faith and walking with them and joining with them and and making the church my tribe that it was essential to my spiritual vitality my spiritual maternity and and my spiritual health but then just past this this first introduction that church is now essential in my life this is something that must matter to me and quickly dead then i was well introduced to the concept of giving now if you did not grow up in church the idea of tithing and giving of your hard-earned money to a church where you have no control over how it's being spent is ludicrous it just it just seems insane and it took me a little while to wrap my head around this now i have to admit it first it wasn't that big of a deal of an issue because i didn't make any money and and i was in college i didn't really have a full-time job i was living off of loans and grants and and so tithing was really not something that that pressed me but the moment i left college and now i'm uh getting my master's degree and i'm having the uh to find a job and and make ends meet and and uh and i had no no one helping me from the outside this is just me paying my way through college and paying my way through my master's degree and and now i'm supposed to do this thing called tithe and i had no idea what the word meant and they very quickly explained to me that that as a follower of jesus you give 10 of your money to god through the church so that you can be a part of advancing the mission of jesus in the world now i i didn't necessarily disagree with the idea that you should help invest and and finance the good that's being done through the church i mean after all the the church had impacted my life and i intercede freely what i so desperately needed but for some reason the idea of tithing of giving 10 of my income that was a little bit tougher i mean i looked back and i realized my first annual income after i became a follower of jesus after i was finishing my master's degree i was paid six thousand dollars a year that was total that was the entire package six thousand dollars a year do you know how hard it is to give fifty dollars a month around six hundred dollars a year to tithe on six thousand dollars it felt like a million dollars and if i thought it was hard to give fifty dollars a month when i was making six thousand dollars a year ten years later i had double that income years later after i was married to kim i worked my way up to an income of twelve thousand dollars a year now they may not sound like much but that was twice as much as we were making when we first met and believe me giving a hundred dollars a month when you're only making twelve thousand dollars a year and within that twelve thousand you have to pay to take care of your family and to pay for insurance and to pay for health care to pay for gas and to pay for a place to live virtually impossible and it was so difficult to write that check for a hundred dollars a month and i know what it's like when you work so hard and you can barely make it through the month and barely pay the bills to trust god with your finances and what i'll tell you is that that that challenge that crisis is what formed in me an unshakable confidence and trust in the faithfulness of god what's fascinated me is that i was raised really with an environment of generosity my mom was always in every one of my memories an incredibly generous person now we were not people of faith we didn't grow up in church we didn't have that religious background to inform us but but my mom was always the the mom in the neighborhood who made sure all the kids in neighborhood had something to eat my mom was the one who always bought snacks and and and fruit and vegetables and every all the kids just came and and they just devoured everything my mom uh would buy and so our house became that that that home base for all the kids in the neighborhood and my mom was always posturing her soft and us as a family as a family that that just gave freely so that mindset was always placed inside of me and even my my stepdad with with all his quirks and and uniqueness he always taught me to be a generous person he always taught me to to give of myself and in fact i remember when i was out of high school and i didn't go to college not just working odd jobs and just trying to pay the bills that i needed a little extra money and so i decided to go sell my blood and and i i i got up and i was going to my car to go make this extra cash and and my stepdad asked me hey where are you going i said i i just found out that they pay you for um giving your blood and he goes what and he said yeah yeah yeah i'm going to make a little extra money so i'm going to start doing this on a regular basis and selling my blood and i'm not sure why but it really upset him and he said look people need blood as far as i'm concerned you are free to give your blood away but don't ever sell your blood and i'm not saying that people sold her blood are doing the wrong thing i'm just saying that in that moment he placed to me something i think really significant because just because you can make money on something doesn't mean that you shouldn't actually choose to give it away freely and so i was raised with these concepts i i was raised with a sense of generosity even living in el salvador and with my grandparents and my uncle richard i always remember richard being so generous in everything he did and we lived surrounded by poverty and and whenever people would would come by and they're begging for bread or begging for food or or begging for some change my uncle was always finding some way to give him the food we had or the clothing we had or the money we had and and so i'm really grateful that a part of the culture that seeped into me from a really early age was a culture of generosity and yet in spite of all of that you think that would just prepare me so well for the concept of tithing but but somehow the moment i was told you're supposed to give ten percent that just felt harder it just felt more difficult and more challenging to me and and then to realize that that giving 10 was not an act of generosity it was simply an act of faithfulness an act of gratitude that whatever i gave beyond that 10 percent that then became my space of generosity and in the context of the times in which we've lived and and facing the global pandemic and the quarantine and and the economic upheaval and millions upon millions of people on unemployment it would be easy to ask the question why does this matter why should we give and in fact if we give why in the world should we give to the church and it's this interesting tension because people absolutely believe the church should give to them freely but it's not quite as obvious to people that they should give to the church freely and so i want to kind of lay this from a foundational perspective of of why giving is so essential and i want to propose to you that giving is not supplemental that giving is essential that generosity is not supplemental that generosity is actually essential and that this this whole structure within faith of tithing and giving 10 of our income and then giving generously beyond that it's not primarily for the good you will do through the church but actually the way it repostures your life your heart your values your priority for the good you will do in the world now i want to go back to proverbs chapter 11 and read verses 24 and 25. it says one person gives freely yet gains even more another withholds unduly but comes to poverty a generous person will prosper whoever refreshes others will be refreshed let's go back up to verse 24 and just begin here he says one person gives freely yet gains even more another withholds unduly but comes to poverty and what i really want us to focus on here for a moment is how generosity frees you that sometimes when we think about things like giving and generosity and or tithing or whatever it may be we often think about what we're doing for others and by the way it's a beautiful thing when you give for the good of others but i want to begin here by letting you know what happens to you what happens to me when i choose to give when you choose to give it says one person gives freely and isn't it amazing how those two words are next to each other gives freely it's so important to actually begin to pull these two concepts together that you can actually become a person who gives and live in the reality of freedom and in fact the generosity that actually matters to god is the generosity that comes out of our freedom because that generosity actually gives us our freedom one person gives freely yet gains even more and what i find to be true and i see this in the scriptures but i see this in life all the time is that men and women who actually have a posture of generosity who give freely actually open themselves to receiving even more it is like a mindset shift it's a it's a perspective it's a filter shift if you look at the the the contrast here says another withholds unduly but comes to poverty why would someone come to poverty when they withhold unduly i've seen this even in the lives of of millionaires and billionaires when millionaires and billionaires are are lacking in generosity they may have those millions and billions but everything in their life begins to unravel it should not surprise you if someone has incredible wealth and lacks generosity that their marriages collapse that their families are in ruin that their inner world is hollow and empty it's not because of the wealth you see i think a lot of times people think oh it's because they have so much money that their world has fallen apart and it's not that at all the money isn't what destroys them it's that love of money it's that lack of generosity when you withhold unduly which is an interesting phrase by the way how can you withhold unduly if the money is yours where here's a thought that maybe we should all reflect on is it possible that everything you have was not entrusted to you so that you could use it for you but that god has entrusted you with wealth for the good you could do for others and when you're holding on to the wealth that has been trusted to you that is actually supposed to be used for the good of others you're withholding it unduly he says but that person comes to poverty and i think this is like an interesting tension even in our own society i i think that even the tension in our culture between capitalism and socialism is is the the conversation around how do you deal with the reality that people may have extraordinary wealth but lack extraordinary generosity how do you compensate for the lack of generosity for the lack of humanity if a person also has a disproportionate amount of wealth and so the way that economic systems governments try to solve that is well let's take away from the rich so we can disperse that to the poor wouldn't it be amazing if governments didn't have to think about that if in fact the more prosperous we became the more generous we became if if wouldn't it be amazing if we actually took our wealth and and yes buy the things you want or need or enjoy but but never let consuming be more essential than contributing wouldn't it be amazing if if the more wealth we had the more generous we became and so here the problems are giving us a system one person gives freely and gains even more and what he's actually telling us is that that when you develop a generous spirit when you have a generous posture in life you actually become open to all that god wants to bring into your life you gain even more only generous people can actually see behind that veil see a person who is greedy cannot see the power of generosity and how generosity opens the world to you i can tell you this if you hold on tightly to everything you have if you have a limited resource mindset if you're a person who's afraid to give because you're afraid to be without you will be blind to the endless opportunities all around you you will literally not be able to see all of the opportunities to prosper because you're focused on keeping what you have and so it keeps you close-fisted and close-hearted and close-minded to all that might be yours one person gives freely yet gains even more and i can i can stand here and tell you that this passage in this proverb has so much power and so much truth not simply because kim and i have experienced the power and wonder of giving but we have also experienced the extraordinary power and wonder of of receiving when when kim and i were first married we were we're both pretty young we're in our mid-20s 25 and we had so very little we had no furniture we had no real possessions in life everything that we owned we could put in in a in a grocery bag and and but we were so excited we were so happy to be married we're both getting our master's degrees and and we we got an apartment and we could barely afford the rent on that apartment so we did not buy a bed we didn't have a bed we could not afford a bed and kim and i had conversations about whether we should buy a bed or not and and and at that time i was a little bit uh more rigid in my way of thinking about these things and and i said we're not going to buy a bed a bed is a luxury it's not a necessity and and and kim could try to encourage me saying you know i think we should have a bed it would be great and i said no no bad it's it's it's not necessary and we did have a stereo because i felt like music was essential so i'm aware of my own hypocrisy in the process but so we had this great stereo and we were sleeping on the floor and when i would come home kim was just so amazing she would lay out all these different blankets and put these pillows and and create this like beautiful uh almost like saharan desert kind of bedroom and and and even without a bed she made it the most extraordinary place to to rest her heads and she said are we ever going to buy a bed and i said all right let's just pray and if god wants us to have a bad let let's let's see what happens but we can't tell anyone there said the rule is we can't tell anyone we don't have a bad and so we didn't tell anyone and years before we had been a part of a of a small church and we volunteered to work with youth and we just gave our time there and and gave our our energy our talents our love to these kids and one of those youth their parents would oftentimes slip in and listen as we taught and invest in their kids and and i did a series way back years before on the book of james and the father of one of those kids never forgot that and he was on a trip and he was a medical device salesman or something like that and he was traveling working with a hospital and of all the different things he was selling at the time he was selling hospital beds and he went to a hotel room opened up a gideon's bible if any of you know what that is he just happened to open up to the book of james and when he opened up to the book of james kim and i came to his memory to his mind and he felt suddenly impressed to call us and out of the blue this man calls us who's living in a different city and he says i know this is a strange question but do you guys need a bed and of course kim's like yes yes yes we need a bed and i was paralyzed from the inside out just absolutely shocked that somehow god could speak to this man as he traveled doing his work and told him exactly what we needed at that time in our lives and i said well actually we we do need a bed and and he goes all right pick it out and he sent us this world-class bed into our little apartment and we went from sleeping on the floor to sleeping and luxury now i can tell you is that there was a domino effect of generosity i never knew that kim and i giving our free time and investing in these kids would somehow cause us to gain even more and i don't even know if he could ever have seen how investing in us and being generous toward us would actually cause that generosity to expand to touch so many other people's lives and i've seen both extremes throughout my life the one who withholds unduly coming to poverty and the one who gives freely gaining even more see the reason giving matters is that it it changes you giving frees you generosity frees you it allows you to have possessions without the possessions having you it allows you to own things without things owning you it allows you not only to have a proper relationship to the possessions in your life but it allows you to have a posture where you can see all the possibilities and opportunities all around you i guarantee you if you lack generosity you do not have the eyes to see all the opportunities god is sending your way but when you have a heart of generosity your eyes become open to see the incredible possibilities and opportunities everywhere not only does giving free you not only his generosity free you but generosity actually heals you look at verse 25 it says a generous person will prosper whoever refreshes others will be refreshed now i really want to just take a moment and give context here because when it says a generous person will prosper there has been and there always are whenever you have healthy principles there's always something that that skews those principles or distorts them and creates something unhealthy out of them and out of language like this a generous person will prosper has emerged something that over the decades became known as the prosperity gospel and and a basic summary of this for those of you who are unfamiliar is that it's a teaching that says the reason you give to god is so that god will give to you and so really it's a consumer-oriented faith that sees god almost as a a broker where you give to god because that giving finally unlocks god's generosity and he'll give to you because you've given to him and it's been an approach toward coercing and manipulating oftentimes uh the poor who are desperate to find a way out of poverty and have a deep and sincere faith and someone tells them you give to me or you give to my organization or give to my my ministry and god's gonna bless that and give back to you and that's not what this teaches and and in fact years ago i was invited to speak at this church that has a global influence and a global reputation and and it was the first time it ever been in the environment of what is known as the prosperity gospel and and uh the the pastor there that and of that particular space and said uh during the offering um if you give to god's house god will give to your house and because i didn't think i'd ever be invited back i just went ahead and said during my talk hey that's really not a proper mindset and i talked about how um like lions hunt when they're hungry but tigers hunt for the thrill of the hunt and that we need to shift from being lions to tigers that that so oftentimes the only reason we ever go after god is because we need something but we actually need to pursue god for the joy of the pursuit and the joy of the journey that said the same thing is true with giving don't give because god will give you something in return give for the extraordinary exhilaration of the beauty of generosity and and i did that gathering at that place i think four times and each time during the offering in the most beautiful way possible i kept hearing the language change until the last gathering the pastor got up and said you should give to god's house whether god ever gives to your house or not because of all he's already done for you see and the reality is that that if you understand the scriptures and you believe them god himself has stepped into human history took on a took on flesh and blood his name is jesus the sinless and perfect life was crucified on our behalf was buried and then raised from the dead jesus gave his life for us what else does god need to do for us to be ridiculously generous toward god there shouldn't be any quid pro quo with god we shouldn't be going okay i'm going to give god because if i give you'll give to me god already gave here he gave everything he already gave the ultimate gift he already gave himself so there shouldn't be any expectation of quid pro quo i mean if right now if if i told you god will never give you anything else but you should still be radically committed to generosity would you think i'm out of my mind see i think a lot of times we try to find some secondary motive to motivate each other to give but i don't want to do that see i don't think god has to ever do anything else for you or for me see what he did in jesus the sacrifice of himself on the cross it's more than enough so i don't want god's generosity to become quote the motivator of our generosity in the reverse don't be generous toward god hoping he'll be generous toward you be generous toward god because god has already been generous towards you and yet he says this and and it and i believe in the truth of it a generous person will prosper i am absolutely convinced this is true that a generous person will prosper that generous people prosper at a level in a depth that wealthy people do not and i think we need to realize that that there's a difference between wealth and success and fame and the prosperity that the scriptures talk about is when the bible talks about prospering it's talking about a wholeness and a wellness of your being and yes that can have huge implications in every other arena in your life it can have financial implications and business implications and and economic implications and implications in terms of your success and influence and and and so many other arenas of life because when you live your life the way god designed for you to live it's going to go better you shouldn't be surprised by success but when he says a generous person will prosper i think he's saying at the deepest soul level that prosperity of a fulfillment where you can look in the mirror and be satisfied with the person you're seeing there where you're becoming the person that god created you to be and when you're finding the healing of your soul that you've always longed for this is one of the most beautiful promises in all the scriptures a generous person will prosper whoever refreshes others will be refreshed he's actually guiding us on a path to healing saying this is how you get refreshed you become generous you give yourself away you sacrifice for others you hold what you have with open hands and cling onto nothing because when you give and you serve and you invest in others you're refreshing them and you will be refreshed yesterday i was with kim just for a little while because she was really busy and she was scrambling around the house and running around i said where are you going and and she named a couple of the homeless people that come over to largemouth all the time and and she goes on i'm taking desmond i'm taking victor to get breakfast and and and and so i'm picking him up and taking him over there and you know one of my little voices my head it was like oh like what about my breakfast and what about me right and and and of course you know i'm more than capable of taking care of myself and and making breakfast for me and and yet kim makes the best breakfast in the world but i could see she was more alive yeah i know it's been a hard two years i i've seen the toll it's taken on on my family and my friends i see the toilets taken on on our team here at mosaic on on so many people and and and i i've also i've also felt the deep told it's taken on on my wife and yet i'm watching her full of life and full of energy and i i see hope being restored in her not because people are running around refreshing her not be not because people are running around trying to heal her or or make her life better all because she found two people who needed help more than she needed help who needed to be fresh even more than she needed to be refreshed who who needed to be loved even more than she needed to be loved and she was willing to give of herself and the sacrifice and and somehow in refreshing others i could see that that she was being refreshed her trips to malawi are exhausting the the journey is brutal and in fact if you've never been on a trip with kim um unless you have the the soul of navy seal i don't always recommend it because she doesn't mess around she doesn't let anyone live in the in the space of luxury everyone toughs it out everyone's the same and and she never allows her teams to have it easier than the people they're serving and and yet i don't know if anything in the world refreshes her more than serving in one of the most difficult contacts and environments imaginable see the scriptures are giving us an insight to how humans are designed see you're not designed to prosper without being generous when you lack generosity you lack the internal environment to actually enjoy whatever you are achieving listen to me we can have all the wealth and all the success and all the fame and all the celebrity and all the power in the world but if you lack a spirit of generosity none of that will prosper you and none of that will heal you because it's giving that frees us and giving that heals us it's generosity that sets us free and generosity that heals us and refreshes our souls there's just something unexplainable about the joy of giving and watching someone else experience the wonder of that gift the wonder of that moment it i think it may be the moment you feel most like god when you give of yourself with no motive with no intense of reciprocation no hope of of something being returned to you that moment where you simply give out of love a pure and true act of generosity it's in that moment i think we best understand god it's in the moment when we are most free it's in that moment where we find the healing that our souls long for i want to take a moment just to look at a passage in the new testament because i want you to see not only this generosity free us and heal us but i want you to see with me that that generosity also unleashes us in second corinthians 9 verses 6 to 11 paul says this remember this whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion for god loves a cheerful giver and god is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things at all times having all that you need you will abound in every good work as it is written they have freely scattered their gifts to the poor their righteousness endures forever now he who supply seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness you will be enriched in every way listen to this again you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to god paul is unwrapping for us the way god sees our integration of generosity into our lives it says now there's a basic principle here remember whoever so spiritually will also reap spiritually so he's saying look there's a there's a principle in the universe if you give very little then you're going to receive very little now this is just true in life by the way if you are unkind to people you will not receive a lot of kindness back if you are unforgiving toward people you will not receive a lot of forgiveness in return if you don't treat people with value you will not be treated with value if you don't value friends friends will not value you frankly this principle is true in every arena of life whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly so if there are deficiencies in your life and you say i wonder why this isn't true in my life look at what you've been sowing because your harvest what you reap is a direct relationship to what you have sown and whoever sows generously will also reap generously i can tell you i have had the most extraordinary experiences in my life and so many of those experiences have nothing to do with wealth or success or notoriety or anything they have to do with the value of relationships of loving people and investing in them and caring for them and genuinely caring about their lives because they matter and what i've seen in my life are relationships that i invested in 30 years ago 20 years ago 10 years ago five years ago that i had no idea would ever come back to me with something really beautiful have so often has returned to me to bring something so extraordinary that i could have never imagined it because you do reap what you sow and if you're reaping sparingly and maybe that you have also been sowing sparingly and if you want to reap generously through your life you have to sow generously he goes on to tell us each of you should give what you've decided in your heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion for god loves a cheerful giver because this is not about a habit or a practice or even a discipline or commitment this is about a posture of the heart you're saying you need to give an alignment to who you are and who you choose to become and so when you give from the right posture you give with joy and cheerfulness he goes on to say and god is able to bless you abundantly i love the the description here so that in all things at all times having all you need you will abound in every good work see god wants you to have everything necessary he designed your life to have everything necessary to live the life he created you to live but what we don't realize so oftentimes is that all the resources that god intends for us all those resources are locked into the treasures of meaningful relationships and if you do not value people you will always live your life in a deficit no matter how much you ever achieve no matter how much wealth you ever attain no matter how famous or successful others may see you in the quietness of your own moments you'll know the deficit of your soul but here he's saying that when you live a life of generosity when you posture your heart toward giving and serving and investing in others this is when god works and he pours out his abundance so that in all things at all times having all that you need you will abound in every good work as it is written they have freely scattered their gifts to the poor their righteousness endures forever now he who supply seed to the sower that's god by the way and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness he's letting us know that god wants to pour into us more than we could ever imagine but he's not going to pour more into us until we are willing to pour more into others god is not going to pour into us if we are a dead end god is going to pour into us if we become a portal of his generosity and his goodness to others he says you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to god so here's the endgame your generosity unleashes creativity it unleashes all the creative essence that god has placed in you he says then you will be enriched in every way why so that you can be more famous more popular more successful more awesome no you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to god so this is god's ultimate end that through our generosity people might see the generosity of god why this matters is giving makes us like god and generosity reflects the character of god and when we give we begin to live our freedom we begin to find our healing and we begin to unleash our creativity because we begin to do so much good in the world that the world becomes astonished and asks what in god's name is happening to that person's life and you can say that's exactly right what's happening in my life is exactly because of jesus and that's his name and you may be listening right now and you've been thinking about following jesus you you've been contemplating whether you should trust jesus with your life and and maybe more things that always hold you back is well you know what's what's the church's relationship to money but here's the more important question what's holding on to you are you holding on to things and so your hands are so tight you can't open your hands and take a hold of what god has for you see jesus tells us look you can't love money and love god you have to be willing to let go of everything and take a hold of him and so yeah it's a pretty extreme invitation give your life to jesus let go of everything else and take a hold of him and let him change your life so that everything you have will never have you everything you own will never own you and so that you can become an instrument of generosity to heal the world around you to set the world free to do the good that you could have never imagined that you're capable of doing if right now you'd like to trust jesus with your life and cross the line of faith i want to invite you right now just to pray this very simple prayer jesus i give you my life the relationship begins with giving but not with you giving your life to him but realizing he already gave his life for you so this moment when you say jesus i give you my life would you realize that what you're doing is receiving his gift of his life to come to dwell in you right now just tell him jesus i give you my life jesus i give you my life right now i just receive the gift of his generosity the gift of his sacrifice right now just receive him as you give him your life and let jesus change your life forever why this matters because giving makes us like god

Channel: Mosaic

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Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

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Length: 45min 17sec (2717 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021