Dr. Rodney Plunket

Giving that Feels Good 
a topical sermon on giving 

Last week most of Broadway’s households received a book by Dr Kregg Hood entitled, Take God at His Word.  And, by the way, if you were not here last week and have not received a copy for your household, we will distribute those again near the end of our service.  Hopefully everyone who received the book last week also followed the instructions that came with the book.  Hopefully we read the introduction and chapter one.

That first chapter biblically and emphatically made the point that God is the source of all of our blessings.  As a result, we should give generously with the confidence that God is fully capable of responding to that act of faith with additional blessings.  As 2 Cor 9:6-8 says,

The point is this:  the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.  And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

  Paul tells his readers not to fear the consequences of giving, because “God is able to provide . . . every blessing in abundance”.  But most of us have heard this many times, but many of us still have a hard time believing it.  We have a hard time giving because we are afraid that we are not going to make it financially if we do give.  In response to that fear, Kregg’s book says, “When you’re facing too much month at the end of your money, remember God’s promise to provide for your needs––and more” (p 16).  Too help each of us believe that what God promises is true, I have asked Jay Wischkaemper to come and tell us of a time when he gave and found this promise fulfilled in a surprising and powerful way.  Jay, come talk to us.

This morning’s lesson is entitled “Giving that Feels Good”.  Giving that feels good is motivated differently than giving that doesn’t feel good.  Some giving is generated by guilt, and there is no way to know how much money has been given over the years due to feelings of guilt.  In the passage that I read earlier the apostle Paul says, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”.  Even though giving motivated by guilt can gain funding for good causes, it is not the kind of giving God wants; and it is not the kind of giving that we are seeking to generate here at Broadway for three reasons.  Number one, it is unbiblical.  Number two, it brings no joy.  And the third reason is possibly the most important.  The third reason relates to the fact that a primary purpose for our Year of Stewardship is to “generate a thoroughly Christian attitude to wealth within our members”.  To cause the members of any church to give more but out of a sense of guilt absent of joy is directly counter to that purpose.  I suspect that such a motivation causes people to become more materialistic rather than less so.  That is not what God wants.  That is not what the leadership of this church wants.

And some here may be thinking that they are not wealthy and therefore are not in need of a Christian attitude to wealth.  Let me read something that should help us all see how wealthy we really are.  William Boice in Leadership magazine wrote,

Dear Lord, I have been re-reading the record of the rich young ruler and his obviously wrong choice.  But it has set me thinking.

No matter how much wealth he had, he could not––

ride in a car,

have any surgery,

turn on a light,

buy penicillin,

hear a pipe organ,

watch TV,

wash dishes in running water,

type a letter,

mow a lawn,

fly in an airplane,

sleep on an innerspring mattress,

or talk on the phone.

If he was rich, then what am I?

  We are wealthy.  It is time to be grateful to God for that wealth and to learn how to respond to all the wealth He has given.

  A second motivation for giving grows out of a sense of responsibility.  It might be referred to as “ought to” giving.  Over and over again the Bible instructs the people of God to be generous givers.  In 2 Cor 8:7 Paul instructs his readers to “excel” in giving.  So there is no doubt that we have a biblically mandated responsibility to be generous givers.

  And frankly some of us need to wake up to that mandate.  Many of you will have heard of the “20-80 rule”.  The “20-80 rule” refers to studies on congregational giving which indicate that 20% of church members give 80% of the funds, 30% give 20% of the funds, and approximately 50% give nothing at all.  I asked Richard Trussell, our Operations Minister, to do a study of how Broadway compares to that “20-80 rule”.  Richard took the first quarter of last year, because the first quarter is a very stable quarter; it has relatively few vacation times and some people have recently made new year’s resolutions about giving.  What Richard found was that at Broadway 24% give 80% of the funds, 35.5% give 20% of the funds, and 39.5% give nothing at all.  That means that we are only slightly better than the average congregation.  That means that some of us do need to learn to excel in giving.

But “ought to” giving is still not the motive that God desires.  Even though it is certainly superior to guilt-driven giving, giving motivated only by the awareness that I ought to still lacks the joy that God desires, and this motivation can exist within a person who is still materialistic and who has not yet adopted “a thoroughly Christian attitude to wealth”.  Giving that is motivated by a sense of responsibility is not sinful or evil, but it is not giving that feels good, and God wants us to experience giving that feels good; He wants us to be cheerful givers.

Another motivation for giving is one that grows out of a sense of needs and the desire to meet those needs.  This is “want to” giving.  2 Corinthians 8 & 9 make clear that God wants us to respond to needs.  The Christians in Jerusalem are experiencing hardships and Paul asks his readers to respond to that need.  Seeing a genuine need should engender within any child of God a desire to meet that need.  But even that motivation is not the total picture, because it still does not create within us “a thoroughly Christian attitude toward wealth”, because this motivation is only activated by something external rather than a powerful, internal awareness of how God would have me use what He has given me.

The fourth motivation for giving grows out of thanksgiving to God; it is “can’t help it” giving.  I wish all of us were so thankful for what God had done for us that we could not help but give as an expression of our gratitude for His blessings.  This type of giving points our hearts in God’s direction and provides us with a tangible way of showing our thanks to him, and our thanksgiving is multiplied when we see the great things that God does with what we give.  When I see what God is doing with the money we give here at Broadway by blessing children, youth, university students, the Giriama in Kenya, villagers in Peru, citizens of the British Isles, the hungry at Carpenter’s children, inmates at Montford Prison, and the list could go on and on––when I see that I am even more thankful for the opportunity to give, and I want to give even more.  Yes, thankfulness is a good motivation for giving.

But there is one more motivation for giving, and I think it is the one that God wants for us all.  Look again at the Scripture reading in your worship bulletin.  Look at the first set of words in bold type.  The seven words found there are, “they gave themselves first to the Lord”.  Here in 2 Cor 8 Paul praises the Christians in Macedonia for their incredible generosity.  But he does not just praise them, he also gives us a vital foundation stone in our efforts to construct “a thoroughly Christian attitude to wealth”.  Because when Paul reveals what motivated these Macedonian Christians to give so generously, he also reveals one of the things that keeps us from being Christian stewards of our incredible wealth.

What is this that commonly keeps us from viewing our wealth in a Christian fashion?  It is our attachment to our wealth.  We just flat love it.  We don’t want to let it go.  We can even think that it is the key that opens every door.  How can we give something that valuable away?

Our faith, when we think that way, is not in God; it is in money; it is in wealth.  That is why the Macedonian attitude is essential if we are to develop a faithful, Christian attitude to wealth.  We must give ourselves to the Lord.  We must acknowledge that we are His.  We must know that we are dependent upon Him for all things––not money, but Him––not dependent upon wealth, but dependent upon God.  Let’s give ourselves to the Lord and our giving will flow out of our very nature.  The motivation to give then will be a motivation of worship, of praise, of joy at the awareness of His powerful work within our lives.

Then we will gladly give our money to His work.  We will gladly give our time and our talents to the cause of His kingdom.  It will flow out of us as worship, because we first gave ourselves to the Lord and found life in Him.

Truett Cathy, founder and chairman of the Chick-fil-A fast-food chain, goes beyond giving regularly to his local church.  Cathy knows the value of investing in the lives of young boys and girls.  Besides teaching a junior high boys’ Sunday school class for forty years, he operates nine foster homes, has provided over four hundred $10,000 college scholarships, and funds an annual summer camp for more than 1,000 children.

Among the Christian principles he instills in these children is the value of generous giving.  The way he puts it is, “Money is nice to have––as long as you’ve got it in your hand and not in your heart.”

Where is our money?  Is it in our hands to give generously to those whom God would have us bless?  Or is it in our hearts enthroned at the center of a materialistic philosophy of life?

  Giving feels good when it is motivated by a spirit of worship and praise.  Giving feels good when it is the result of having first given ourselves to the Lord.  During this year of stewardship let’s seek to give more and more of ourselves to the Lord.  During this year of stewardship let’s develop an attitude of worship that encompasses all that we do all of the time. 

If you need to give yourself to the Lord this morning, please won’t you come and allow your Savior to make you brand new?  Please come now as we stand and sing.