NewDayvotional

From the pastor for the people

Archives for December 2015

Why God Prospers Me

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God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving. 

In the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:16-21 God called the man a fool who hoarded everything he had, as if God had given it to him just so he could use it all for himself. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 we find the stingy rich man (who wouldn’t even share the scraps of food that fell from his table) in Hades, a place that one day will be thrown into the lake of fire. The Bible teaches we are blessed to be a blessing, not to hoard all we have for ourselves. But a materialistic heart will deceive us into thinking “It’s all for me!” But have you ever looked for a biblical answer to this question: Why God has blessed me so much? Why has God made me rich (by world standards, we are rich)? Well 2 Corinthians 9:11 gives us the answer, stating, “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous…” God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing to others. We are blessed to be a blessing.

When God entrusted the Jews with the salvation message, was it so they could keep it to themselves? No! God always intended that they (the Jews) be a light to the Gentiles (to those who weren’t Jewish). But the Jews got it all wrong. They acted condescendingly towards anyone who wasn’t Jewish and didn’t want to share the good news that had been entrusted to them. Let’s not make the same mistake the Jewish nation made – the mistake of not realizing that we’re blessed to be a blessing!

God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing to the rest of the world! Suppose God intended to reach the world for Christ and help an unprecedented number of suffering people. What might He do? Well, He might give us unprecedented wealth to meet all those needs and reach all those people, right? Well friends – that’s exactly what He’s done! The question is “What are we doing with it?” Are we increasing our standard of living or giving?

So let’s get practical. What can we do to begin increasing our standard of giving? Let me share some practical steps:

  • Some of you have never given a gift to the work of God through your local church. If New Day is your home church, why not give a first-time gift today?
  • Everyone is a percentage giver, but not everyone is a percentage giver on purpose. If you give, but it’s not a pre-determined percentage of your income, then becoming an intentional percentage giver is a great next step for you.
  • For others of you, God’s been tugging at your heart concerning the tithe for some time now. Maybe today is the day to take the dive? If you want your heart passionate about the things of God, the tithe is that threshold that ignites our heart for the things of God.
  • Some of you already tithe, but you’ve never given an offering – you’ve never given something above and beyond the tithe. I’d encourage you to give an offering for the first time today (again – the Christmas offering is a great outlet for an offering).
  • Finally – some of you have the gift of giving. Romans 12:6-8 says “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;  if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously…” If you have that gift, why not exercise it today?

If you’re going to hear “well done” on judgment day, you’ve got to recognize before judgment day, that when God blesses you abundantly (which is true of every single one of us here in America) it’s so we can increase our standard of giving, not our standard of living.

Giving is the Antidote to Materialism

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In 1 Timothy the apostle Paul is addressing rich people. That’s us by the way! By world standards we are the rich being addressed in the Bible! You see, if you own a car you are among the 3% of the people in the world that do. Many of us have two or more! If you earn $37,000 a year, you are in the top 4% of wage earners alive today. If you make $45,000 a year or more, you are in the top 1% of people who are earning money today. When I was studying demographic information in preparation to start a new church, I learned that the average person in our area makes a lot more than that! So we are in the top 1% of wage earners alive today! So we are the rich people Paul is addressing. And here’s Paul’s advice in 1 Timothy 6:18 to us rich people, “Tell them [rich people] to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others.” Having money has the potential to be a bad thing. If we have the money to buy lots of stuff, materialism can hold us firm in its grip if we’re not careful. But Paul here shares with us the antidote to materialism so that we can stay free from it’s grip. He says the antidote is to be “…generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others.” That’s how you get free and stay free from materialism. By being generous.

The laws of physics tell us the greater the mass, the greater the hold that mass exerts. This explains why the largest planets are capable of holding so many satellites and moons in orbit. Similarly, the more things we own – the greater their total mass – the more they grip us, hold us, and set us in orbit around them. Is there anything wrong with owning possessions? No! It just becomes wrong when they own you. The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:12, “I have the right to do anything…but not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but I will not be mastered by anything.”

We accumulate more and more because we mistakenly believe that the more we get the happier we’ll be but the truth is: The more you get the more you want. By drinking deep of material possessions you don’t quench your thirst for more, you intensify it. Solomon put it this way in Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” The more you get, the more you want. And it doesn’t satisfy. So why not try something new? Why not try giving?

When you give:

  1. It breaks the chains of materialism.
  2. It makes you happy. As Jesus put it in Acts 20:35, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive.”
  3. It not only breaks the chains of materialism and makes you happy, it also helps you to create financial margin. Giving money away is the number one way to create financial margin. Here’s how. Your lack of margin isn’t really a money issue. It’s a heart issue. Because your heart is materialistic, greedy and selfish – you spend and spend and spend to try and satisfy your insatiable appetite for stuff. And in doing so you use up any financial margin you had – and when this heart issue is really bad it results in negative financial margin (this is what we know as debt). It’s a heart issue, not an issue of how much money you make. Now here’s how giving money away actually helps you to create more financial margin. When you give money away it breaks the power of money in your life. That is, when you give money away God changes your heart. When you give…the grip that materialism, greed and selfishness has on you begins to loosen – a little bit at a time. And when you aren’t so materialistic you don’t spend as much on stuff you don’t need. When you aren’t greedy, you don’t have to buy every single thing you lay your eyes on. When you aren’t selfish you don’t need to consume all the money you have to indulge yourself. And in this way you create more margin by giving your money away.

So we see that giving truly is the antidote to materialism!

Live for the Dot, Not the Line

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Picture eternity as a line that extends forever to the left and forever to the right. Your life (and mine) is a little dot on the line of eternity. The dot is temporary (80 years if you’re lucky) but the line extends on forever. Well, the Bible says it’s foolish to financially live for the temporary dot instead of for the eternal line. Jesus put it this way in Matthew 6:19-20, “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.”  Jesus says: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Why not? Because treasures are bad? No. Simply because they will not last. Instead Jesus says: Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Why? Because it’s right? No. Because it’s smart! Treasures in heaven will last. It’s a pragmatic argument that Jesus is making. It’s a logical argument Jesus is making. We’re not to store up treasures on earth because they won’t last. They will all one day end up in the dump. But we should store up treasures in heaven because in heaven they will last forever. God is not against us storing up treasures. In fact, He commands us to store up treasures. He just wants to make sure we’re storying up our treasure in a place where it will last.

No doubt you’ve heard on the news about all the Syrian refugees fleeing their country because of ISIS. Pretend with me that they were all going to get to head back to their homeland in the near future. Pretend with me that the government told them they could work while in their host country and send money ahead to a bank of their choosing in their homeland but that when they left their host country they couldn’t take anything with them. If that were the case, would they lavishly furnish their temporary housing? No. They’d probably get by with the basics and send the rest ahead. Well, this is the attitude we should have while on earth. We’re here for 80 years if we’re lucky (that’s the dot) but then we’re in heaven for ever (that’s the line). Jesus challenges us here to be sure to invest in the line, and not just the dot, because the line last forever, whereas the dot is only temporary.

You can’t take earthly treasures with you when you die but here in Matthew 6 Jesus gives us a wonderful qualification that though we can’t take them with us, we can send them on ahead. So anytime we invest some of our earthly money into eternal purposes, we’re laying up treasure in heaven.

Now let me make a qualifying statement. These verses are NOT teaching us to neglect investing in our future here and now. They are just warning us not to neglect investing in our eternity later. How do we flesh this out practically speaking? We each have to find a way to do that. For me, I invest 10% into retirement. Like the ant, I’m storing up for the financial winter I know is coming (Proverbs 6:6-8). But whereas I invest 10% in retirement, I invest 15% into the kingdom of God. It’s not that I’m not investing in things related to my time on earth. It’s just that I’m not doing it to the neglect of investing in eternity. It’s not that I’m not investing in things related to my time on earth, it’s just that I’ve tried to strike the right balance between how much I’m investing in eternity vs how much I’m investing in earth. Some of you are living for the dot, not the line. Why not reverse that order by always investing more in eternity than in temporary?

My Heart Goes Where My Money Goes

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Jesus said in Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, you will care ABOUT whatever you invest money IN. For example, I was talking with one of my new neighbors recently and discovered that he’s a bow hunter. We got talking because I’ve been thinking about purchasing a bow myself. Man was he enthusiastic about his bow! He could hardly wait to take it out to show me. He passionately explained each part and what it did. He passionately defended Hoyt bows vs Matthews bows, explaining why Hoyt was better in his opinion. He went on and on, showing me a device he used to clock the speed of his arrows as he shot them. He showed me his shooting range in the back yard and much much more. Now as I’ve looked into buying a bow, I’ve learned why my new neighbor is so passionate about his. It’s because he’s got a lot of money invested in that bow. The bow by itself was like $900. The sights were another $400. He had a high-end stabilizer, high-end strings, and a high-end quiver. Because he was invested in the bow, he was passionate about the bow.

I read somewhere this week that the average person will spend $805 on gifts this Christmas season (a 14 year high according to the Florida Retail Federation). This explains why so many fights break out on Black Friday. People get passionate ABOUT whatever they’re investing money IN.

Now here’s the gospel (the good news) of Matthew 6:21. The principle works both ways! So far I’ve shared two negative examples of how one’s heart can turn towards the wrong things, but the good news is that by investing in the right things, our hearts can become passionate about the right things. Namely, by investing IN the things of God, our heart becomes passionate ABOUT the things of God!

 

So how do we become (and stay) passionate about the things of God? This is where the giving of our tithes and offerings come into play. God asks the nation of Israel in Malachi 3:8, “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” The tithe is 10%. God says that part belongs to him. Now this is so interesting to me. God could’ve made the requirement 2% or 3% or 4%. But He didn’t. He said that His part is 10%. Have you ever thought about why God says 10%? I believe the tithe is the threshold of where our heart becomes fully engaged in the things of God. So how do we become (and stay) passionate about the things of God? First, by tithing. Now secondly, by giving offerings. An offering is anything you give above and beyond the tithe. This is why we do a special annual Christmas Offering. We want to give you the opportunity to deepen your passion for God. Every time you give of your tithes and offerings, it’s like adding a couple pieces of wood to your fire for God. Question for ya: Is your fire about to die? Or is it raging? The good news is that you can do something about it if it’s not where you want it to be!