As we become a church, a community of people learning to follow Jesus in sync even while apart, we are working to be commited to five key things. This week, we’re looking to be commited to generosity in our resources. We want to be known for this as a community.
One of the first church leaders, Paul, wrote this to Timothy, who he was mentoring to lead churches after him:
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. – 1 Timothy 6:17-19 ESV
We asked yesterday if you knew anyone who worshipped money, and how you could tell. That’s exactly what Paul is warning about here. He doesn’t want the church to be a community where people set their hopes on material things. If we do, we will quickly find they are not eternally safe. Stocks fall, companies bankrupt, mortgages default, technology goes obsolete, and goods rot and rust away.
A right attitude about money and posessions doesn’t start with rules, principles or anything on this earth, rather it starts with God himself. If you put your faith and trust in him first, you will see money and material differently as a result. We’ll look at four shifts in our thinking:
It All Comes from God
God is not trying to take money away from us. We are being invited to share in God’s work and to commit our resources to this work. This invitation is always a privilege. It comes from our need for God, not God’s need for us
The book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell says something that Chrsitians have known all along. He looks at highly successful people in our world, and searches for the origins of their success. Not once does he find a self-made person who engineered 100% of their own success. Each had unique opportunities handed to them, that allowed them to excel. This is how Christians have always known our lives to work!
This is a shift: We are now managing the money, time and talents that have been entrusted to us by God, in order to make sure that God’s work is done. When applied to personal finances, to how we use our time and our natural skills and abilities, this is an absolutely radical concept. It goes to the very core of who we are and how we see ourselves.
We Need to Give
The conventional wisdom concerning money is that we have to learn how to hang on to it, not how to give it away.
We need to give in order to be free: The seductive power of money is undeniable. But it is disarmingly subtle. In ensnares us without our even being aware of it. It wraps chains around our hearts, our minds, our imagination without our even noticing….
There is only one way. The power of money can only be broken by learning to give it away. The basic question is simply, Will I control my money, or will my money control me ?
When we begin to give, the chains begin to break. This can be very uncomfortable, frequently it is painful. Yet once the chains are broken we experience the sheer exhilaration of freedom. Only then do we realize how tightly the chains were wrapped around our heart. Only then can we really understand what Jesus meant when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” We were created to give, not to hoard…Jesus wants us to be free.
We need to give in order to find fulfillment:
Enough always seems to be just a little bit more than I have right now. A study was done by an economist called George Barna and it shows that most people seriously believe that they need approximately $8-10,000 more a year to live the way they would like to and no matter how much their income increases they still believe they need 8k-10k more. They never find it.
People who give of their time and resources in service of others will tell you time and time again how incredibly fulfilling it is…that happiness doesn’t come from wealth, financial or otherwise, but rather because they are happy with what God has given, they are able to be contented and happy in all things, and that is a kind of wealth in itself that overflows into all parts of life.
Question: Have you ever found freedom or fulfillment in giving? Why?
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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Ryan:Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan, your host for the Daily Challenges. Each daily challenges are meant to help us explore what it means to follow Jesus, even in the midst of a hectic, busy commuting lifestyle. If you've never explored following Jesus in the first place, I'd encourage you to start with our Christianity 101 course. It's a great introduction to the basic things that we build on in these challenges.
We follow a daily, weekly rhythm to help us explore a different topic each week. Every Monday we introduce the idea for the week. Every Tuesday we study in the Bible. Every Wednesday we see how the Bible challenges and transforms our thinking and every Thursday we try to live out and put into action what we've been learning all week. Friday is the day for prayer and reflection; Saturday, a day for rest; and then finally, Sunday, is a day for community, especially Christian community because it's hard to follow Jesus alone.
We're going to be starting a brand new Christian community that meets in person regularly in Ajax starting this fall. Get in touch with me if you'd like to be part of the team that gets it off the ground. We're working through a series right now called "Reset." We're looking at how following Jesus resets our views of all sorts of things in life. We've looked at several already. We're coming close to the end of our series, but this week we're talking about how following Jesus resets our views of compassion.
Now, this might seem a surprising topic to you. Why would we need to reset views of compassion? Surely if somebody is compassionate, they're already on the right track. They're already doing what Jesus would want. That's partly true but there's more to it. For example, I recently saw an ad in Facebook. The ad was for something called "No Piracy" and said, "Valentine's Day leave you broke? Get some of that cash back. Report unlicensed business software. Get paid."
Now, paying for software is a great thing to do. Those who wrote it obviously need to put food on the table and they didn't write the software with the goodness of their heart. It's a business and it's important to pay the price of somebody who's done great work. However, you'll note that the ad isn't encouraging people to use licensed software and pay for it out of the goodness of their hearts. It's encouraging people to blow the whistle on businesses that are stealing software in order to get paid themselves. They have intentionally put the selfish pursuit of money upfront and said, "If you want money, if you're low on money at Valentine's Day, then you should really snitch on somebody."
You see what's happening here. They're taking something that is good and noble but they're asking people to do it for the worst reasons possible. Think about it. Why does somebody steal software? Because they're being selfish. Because they want to save as much as they can. They want to use something without paying for it. They're stealing because they're selfish. Now, why does somebody turn somebody in for money? Because they're selfish. They're trying to counter selfishness with selfishness, and it doesn't really work.
Now, we can run into a similar problem with compassion. When people are compassionate and caring for all the wrong reasons, it doesn't make it right. People can do good and kind things for others just to get some volunteering hours, to be seen as a good citizen, to raise their profile in a political campaign. You can imagine a list of reasons. Or they might be doing it for what they think of as good karma. I think if I do good and kind things for others, then they'll have to do good and kind things for me. Or what I've done won't go unnoticed and God of the universe or whatever will pay me back for my good work.
This is why stories if compassion for just purely altruistic reasons are so refreshing to hear. There was a story just a couple of weeks ago about a man walking along the side of the 401. Some people have seen him walking through Scarborough and it was only when he walked through Ajax that a tow truck driver actually pulled over and asked him if he was okay. He found the man severely hypothermic, probably with frostbite, hardly able to communicate, not able to say why he was on the highway at all.
He took the man, got him into his tow truck, and brought him to a church in Ajax before he was taken to hospital by ambulance. When the tow truck driver was interviewed he said he was just doing his job. Yes, I suppose he could say this was part of his job as a tow truck driver but not really. His job is to make money and he only makes money by towing cars, helping people out with vehicles, not people who happen to be walking along the highway.
I'd like to think the fact he brought that man to a church was a sign that there was another deeper reason why this man cared enough to stop and help another. The fact he consider the church a good first place to go suggest maybe when he says he was just doing his job, he was saying he was doing his job as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, not just doing his job as a tow truck driver. I don't really know. I don't know the tow truck driver. I don't know his back story.
What does it look like for somebody to care and be compassionate because it's their job as a follower of Jesus? We're going to see this week how Jesus challenges us to reset our views of compassion, at something we do to take advantage of others or to promote ourselves, and instead to see compassion as something we do simply because we are his followers; that it's part of our job as followers of Jesus.
We're going to try to see that, but first I've got a question for you to explore. When have you seen someone show compassion for the right reasons and when have you seen them show compassion for the wrong reasons? What do you think might be the right reasons? Have a great discussion. I'll see you tomorrow.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
