Generous: God Loves a Cheerful Giver

I don’t want to be mastered by anything, especially money.

So the only guardrail I have found against this potential slave driver is to give generously.

And if you need another reason, God reminds us he loves a generous giver: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. ⁷ … for God loves a cheerful giver.”¹

Never mind about the freedom and the joy, the satisfaction and the reward of giving: if God loves a cheerful, generous giver, I want to be one!

But let’s dig deeper. Because there is an eternal perspective to your giving most overlook. And if you get this, if you embrace this eternal perspective, your life will change, and you will thrive with a financial freedom few ever attain.

Jesus pulls back the curtain on eternity and gives us a vivid glimpse into – now don’t miss this: into the direct correlation between how you give your money away here, and how you will spend eternity there.

Notice I did not say where you will spend eternity, but how.

Let’s start with Jesus’ conclusion to his parable about the rich fool in Luke 12. (The rich fool being the stingy man)

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted …”²

“Provide purses for yourselves” … by doing what? By giving generously, here. And where is this purse accumulating for you? Heaven. For eternity.

Jesus is saying that every time you give generously here, you are actually investing in a heavenly IRA, with an eternal interest rate return that blows the doors off anything you’ll ever see, here.

This sounds a tad self-serving, doesn’t it? Is Jesus actually saying our giving, here, is tied directly to rewards, there?

Oh yes. And there’s more:

“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”³

What is this “worldly wealth to which Jesus refers? Your money. And who is going to welcome you into heaven? Those who benefited from your generous giving.

Now just imagine stepping into heaven, and for eternity people from all walks of life are coming up to you and thanking you for giving to a cause that benefited them. Someone from Vietnam comes up with a huge smile and hugs you and says, “Thank you so much! I never met you back on earth, but now I know who you are. You gave money and it helped me find Jesus!”

You would reply, “But I never gave money to anyone in Vietnam?”

To which she would smile and say, “Oh, but you did, without realizing it. It ultimately found its way into my life and now I’m able to thank you for the first time!”

Wow!

If you get this, if your heart is invaded and absorbed into the generosity Jesus is promoting here, you will never be the same. You will never again be mastered by your money and, even more, you’ll actually be looking around for ways to invest in God’s Kingdom.

Not only will you not cringe when that request for help comes, you’ll be proactively looking for it.

Here’s what this could look like in your life:

You’re chatting with a friend and he tells you he was just contacted by a ministry, asking for financial help. He explains what a wonderful cause it is, and how he knows this is an investment going directly to the Kingdom front lines.

Now you’re upset. You can’t believe they didn’t call you! So you get on the phone and call the ministry, and complain that they neglected to ask you for help:

“Wait a minute,” you would say, “Why are you trying to jip me out of this chance at an eternal reward? I want in on this, too!”

If You Want a  Little More:

My dear friend Dan Weathers exemplified this generous heart. Dan didn’t make much money, so when he told me he planned to invest $20 a month in 721 Ministries, I said, “Thanks Dan. But you don’t need to do that. I know money’s tight.”

Dan wheeled around on me with a look I’ll never forget. He exclaimed, “Oh no, don’t you dare rob me of this blessing!”

Dan understood what God was saying through the Apostle Paul:

“Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. ¹⁹ In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”⁴

Can you imagine the welcome Dan received when he stepped into his eternal dwellings, built on the firm foundation of his generosity, here?

I want that. Don’t you?

So be generous. Be smart about it and invest wisely, but invest generously.