The Grace of Giving

Excerpt from The Challenge of the Disciplined Life

The grace of giv­ing is often a tremen­dous stim­u­lant to the life of faith. This is why the offer­ing is cor­rect­ly placed as part of the wor­ship experience.

In Isa­iah 58 we read of a very reli­gious peo­ple whose pious devo­tion count­ed for noth­ing because it was not matched with active car­ing for the poor and the oppressed. ​“Is not this the fast that I choose,” pro­claims God, ​“to loose the bonds of wicked­ness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa. 58:6). Reli­gious piety is bank­rupt with­out jus­tice. If you want your fast­ing to have true spir­i­tu­al con­tent, then you are to ​“share your bread with the hun­gry, and bring the home­less poor into your house” (Isa. 58:7).

If our spir­i­tu­al vital­i­ty seems low, if Bible study pro­duces only dusty words, if prayer seems hol­low and emp­ty, then per­haps a pre­scrip­tion of lav­ish and joy­ful giv­ing is just what we need. Giv­ing brings authen­tic­i­ty and vital­i­ty to our devo­tion­al experience. 

Mon­ey is an effec­tive way of show­ing our love to God because it is so much a part of us. One econ­o­mist put it this way: ​“Mon­ey as a form of pow­er is so inti­mate­ly relat­ed to the pos­ses­sor that one can­not con­sis­tent­ly give mon­ey with­out giv­ing self.” In a sense, mon­ey is coined per­son­al­i­ty, so tied to who we are that when we give it we are giv­ing our­selves. We sing, ​‘Take my life and let it be, con­se­crat­ed, Lord, to Thee.” But we must flesh out that con­se­cra­tion in spe­cif­ic ways, which is why the next line of the hymn says, ​‘Take my sil­ver and my gold, not a mite would I with­hold.” We con­se­crate our­selves by con­se­crat­ing our money. 

Dr. Karl Men­ninger once asked one wealthy patient, ​“What on earth are you going to do with all that mon­ey?” The patient replied, ​“Just wor­ry about it, I sup­pose!” Dr. Men­ninger went on, ​“Well, do you get that much plea­sure out of wor­ry­ing about it?” ​“No,” respond­ed the patient, ​“but I get such ter­ror when I think of giv­ing some of it to somebody.”

Now, this ​“ter­ror” is real. When we let go of mon­ey we are let­ting go of part of our­selves and part of our secu­ri­ty. But this is pre­cise­ly why it is impor­tant to do it. It is one way to obey Jesus’ com­mand to deny our­selves. ​“If any man would come after me, let him deny him­self and take up his cross dai­ly and fol­low me” (Luke 9:23).

When we give mon­ey we are releas­ing a lit­tle more of our ego­cen­tric selves and a lit­tle more of our false secu­ri­ty. John Wes­ley declared that ​“if you have any desire to escape the damna­tion of hell; give all you can; oth­er­wise l can have no more hope of your sal­va­tion than that of Judas Iscariot.”

Giv­ing frees us from the tyran­ny of mon­ey. But we do not just give mon­ey; we give the things mon­ey has pur­chased. In Acts the ear­ly Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty gave hous­es and land to pro­vide funds for those in need (Acts 4:32 – 37). Have you ever con­sid­ered sell­ing a car or a stamp col­lec­tion to help finance some­one’s edu­ca­tion? Mon­ey has also giv­en us the time and leisure to acquire skills. What about giv­ing those skills away? Doc­tors, den­tists, lawyers, com­put­er experts, and many oth­ers can give their skills for the good of the community. 

Giv­ing frees us to care. It pro­duces an air of expectan­cy as we antic­i­pate what God will lead us to give. It makes life with God an adven­ture of dis­cov­ery. We are being used to help make a dif­fer­ence in the world, and that is worth liv­ing for and giv­ing for.