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

Ryan Sim - October 22, 2013

Tuesday - Study It - Becoming Like Family

We asked yesterday if you could list of what comes to mind when you hear the word “church”. Our lists probably included buildings, events and services. It may have included organ and choir music, stained glass windows, dusty books, bake sales and more. It may evoke good experiences, or bad ones. But not how the Bible usually sees “church”. Church is described in several cases as a family. This is why our vision is to become a church made up of many groups who are “like family” with one another. But you might immediately think this means something strange and cultish, usually because our ideas of family today is pretty narrow. We think of family as the nuclear, immediate family in isolation. But in Jesus’ culture, in some cultures today, and not so long ago in Western culture, the family was the word used more naturally to describe an extended network of relations, often living in the same area. That was the context for family in Jesus’ day, and Jesus had plans to develop a new kind of extended family. Here’s a striking moment when he described his plans to create an alternate family: Matthew 12:46-50 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” On the one hand, it seems Jesus just put down his mother. I just saw “Guilt Trip” where Barbra Streisand plays Seth Rogen’s overbearing mother. She calls several times a day, tries to get him to drink water constantly, and so on. In the middle of their road trip, he finally snaps, and tells her off. It seems like that might be what Jesus is doing to his mother here. Is he putting her down, in his plans to join another family? Look at it another way. Jesus is actually elevating his disciples to family status. His followers, fellow practitioners of his kingdom, are his family. She’s not excluded. Later in the story of Jesus’ life and death, we see Mary his mother appearing as a devoted member of this extended family, and Jesus even assigns one of the disciples to look after her after his death, saying he’s her new son, and vice versa. Jesus isn’t narrowing his definition of family to exclude blood relatives. He’s broadening it, to include his extended family of followers as if they are blood relatives. Question: Imagine your immediate family suddenly adopting a dozen new members. How would it change your way of life? What would be the pros and cons?

From Series: "Becoming Like Family"

This series looks at becoming “like family” with others learning to follow Jesus. We're exploring how the church is not a building, institution or event, but a community of people. It's important that explore what church means as we prepare to launch a new church in Ajax in 2014.

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