WESLEY’S TEACHING ON MONEY

Jesus said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own… Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.” (Luke 12:15,21 NLT)

In John Wesley’s sermon “The Use of Money,” he offered three rules for Christians: “Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.”

Gaining all you can means to earn all you’re capable of, provided you aren’t hurting yourself or others. Wesley specifically stated, “We ought not to gain money at the expense of life, nor at the expense of our health” (which is in effect the same thing). He also noted, “Our employ cannot be harmful to our neighbor, lest we violate the command to love our neighbor.”

Saving all you can means to set money aside before spending frivolously or on nonessentials, and specifically not to spend just to win the admiration of others. Of indulging our desires Wesley noted, “Daily experience shows, the more they are indulged, they increase the more.” He also warned those who had accumulated a vast estate not to give all of it to one’s children, particularly if the children would use it only to gratify themselves. Instead, he suggested giving enough to the children to keep them from poverty, then giving the rest in whatever way would glorify God.

Finally, giving all you can means to provide for the essential needs of your family, then for the care of those in need within the church, and finally for those outside the church. For Wesley, giving the first tenth of his income to God was something of a floor for his giving, not a ceiling. Even when his income was very small he sought to live in moderation and to give away the rest…

Wesley was teaching and modeling that holiness and a desire to serve God can be judged in part by looking at your finances. If Wesley were here today, I think he would ask, “What does your bank account say about your spiritual life?” 

-- Adam Hamilton in “Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It” 

#6468

THE PARABLE OF THE RICH FOOL – Part 3 of 3

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:19-21 ESV)

In the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12) the man was keeping things to himself. Covetousness had conquered his heart. He was not generous, and he was not rich toward God.

If you haven’t noticed, the parable commends generosity. Why? Several reasons. First, it commends generosity for the simple reason that we can’t keep what we own. We can’t take it with us when we die…

Why else? Because generosity breaks the power of greed and frees our heart from covetousness. Holding our possessions tightly endangers our faith. It constantly temps us to transfer our trust from God to riches… The history of Israel, as seen in Deuteronomy 8, illustrates the truth of this. When Israel was blessed, it started to trust in blessings and not the giver of blessings… they forgot the Lord. They eventually pursued wealth as an end in itself. It became an idol. The longer and tighter you hold on to your possessions, the more covetous you get.

Why else does the parable commend generosity? Thirdly, because riches laid up in heaven are the most secure. They truly last.  D. L. Moody once met a wealthy farmer. Boasting, the farmer said, “Everything you can see for miles is mine. Look to the south. Look to the north. It’s all mine.” Moody pointed to heaven. “How much do you have in that direction?”

When we are rich toward God, what we have can never be taken away. 

-- Excerpted from “How to Finish the Christian Life: Following Jesus in the Second Half” by Donald W. Sweeting & George Sweeting

#6434

GOD’S EXTRAVAGANT GRACE

“And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.” (2 Corinthians 9:8 NLT)

God dispenses His goodness not with an eyedropper but a fire hydrant. Your heart is a Dixies cup, and His grace is the Mediterranean Sea. You simply can’t contain it all. So let it bubble over. Spill out. Pour forth. “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8 NIV)

When grace happens, generosity happens. Unsquashable, eye-popping, bigheartedness happens.  

The grace-given give grace.

-- Excerpted from Max Lucado in “Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine”

#6378

A BAROMETER OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY

Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:21 NIV)

I think it’s easy to talk about things like faith and obedience and compassion in abstract terms.  The more abstract, the less convicting the truth is.  So let me get concrete.  Faith equals God-ordained risks in the face of fear.  Obedience equals God-honoring decisions in the face of temptation.  And compassion equals Spirit-prompted generosity in the face of greed.

If you really want to know how I‘m doing spiritually, all you need to do is look at my checkbook.  It doesn’t lie.  It reveals my priorities.  It reveals my passions.  And it doesn’t just reveal how I’m doing financially; it reveals how I’m doing spiritually.  It’s one of the best barometers of spiritual maturity I know of.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m certainly not reducing compassion to a financial transaction.  I think generosity has as much to do with time and energy as it does with money.  But sometimes love is measured in dollars. 

-- Mark Batterson in “PRIMAL: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity”

#5686

GENEROUS GIVING

God’s goodness expresses itself in His generosity. God is good, and God is a giver. In fact, He is the Supreme Giver. God spoke the universe into existence. God breathed into you the breath of life. God formed you in your mother’s womb. When you were lost, God gave you Jesus to show you the way home. And God prepares all eternity for you. God is a giver. You are made in His image. So the best-version-of-yourself will be a generous giver, too…

The most joyful people also happen to be the most generous. Generous giving is joy. To give is to become more like God.

God delights in your giving and even multiplies it to bless others. “God loves a cheerful giver. Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things… you may have an abundance for every good work.”  (2 Corinthians 9:7b-8) 

-- Allen R. Hunt in “Nine Words: A Bible Study to Help You Become the Best-Version-of-Yourself”

#5410

POSSESSIONS AND FAITH

It is a long-known principle that when wealth is tightly held, it waters down faith. In the Middle Ages some monks put it this way: “Discipline begets abundance; abundance, unless we use the utmost care, destroys discipline.” Evangelist John Wesley put it his way: “I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion!” Religion, he believed, must necessarily produce industry and frugality, and these produce riches. But as riches increase, so does pride, anger, and love of the world. American Puritans like Cotton Mather put it this way in speaking of his beloved New England and its spiritual decline: “Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.” Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “Take care, and be on your guard,” when it comes to your possessions (Luke 12:15 ESV).

If you can’t take it with you when you go, then now is the time to learn to be generous. Be generous because it is the nature of God to be generous. 

-- Donald W. Sweeting & George Sweeting in “How to Finish the Christian Life: Following Jesus in the Second Half”

#5406

A GENEROUS HEART

"Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  (Matthew 6:1-4 NIV)

Jesus obviously expected His disciples to be generous givers. His words condemn the “selfish stinginess of many,” as one author put it.

Generosity is not enough, however. Our Lord is concerned throughout this Sermon on the Mount with motivation, with the hidden thoughts of the heart. In His exposition of the sixth and seventh commandments He indicated that both murder and adultery can be committed in our heart, unwarranted anger being a kind of heart-murder and lustful looks a kind of heart-adultery. In the matter of giving He has the same concern about secret thoughts. The question is not so much what the hand is doing (handing over some cash or a check) but what the heart is thinking while the hand is doing it. There are three possibilities. Either we are seeking the praise of men, or we preserve our anonymity but are quietly congratulating ourselves, or we are desirous of the approval of our divine Father alone. 

– Adapted from John R. W. Stott in “The Message of the Sermon on the Mount”

#5363

SIMPLE GENEROSITY

"Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’" (Matthew 25:37-40 NKJV)

Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier and a Christian.  One cold winter day, as he was entering a city, a beggar stopped him and asked for alms.  Martin had no money; but the beggar was blue and shivering with cold, and Martin gave what he had.  He took his soldier's coat, worn and frayed as it was; he cut it in two and gave half of it to the beggar man.  That night he had a dream.  In it he saw the heavenly places and all the angels and Jesus in the midst of them; and Jesus was wearing half of a Roman soldier's cloak.  One of the angels said to Him, "Master why are You wearing that battered old cloak?  Who gave it to You?"  And Jesus answered softly, "My servant Martin gave it to Me."

When we learn the generosity, which without calculation helps [others] in the simplest things, we too will know the joy of helping Jesus Christ Himself. 

-- William Barclay in “The Gospel of Matthew”

#5193

EXTRAVAGANT GENEROSITY

“We love because God first loved us.”  (1 John 4:19 GNT)

Generosity begins not with what I give to God, but with what God has already given to me. The Bible says that extravagant, self-giving generosity is the tangible expression of the love that is in the very heart of God. We are generous to others because God has been so extravagantly generous to us.

Generosity is not optional for followers of Jesus Christ. It is the spiritual discipline that shapes our lives around the extravagant generosity of God. Our use of money undergoes a fundamental transformation when we stop asking how much of our wealth we will give to God and start asking how much of God’s wealth we will keep for ourselves. Generosity is the antidote to greed, which is one of the seven deadly sins. Greed is sinful because it is an inherent contradiction of the essential character of God. It is deadly because it results in spiritual arteriosclerosis that blocks the flow of God’s life into our lives and into the world. 

-- James A. Harnish in “A Disciple’s Path: Deepening Your Relationship with Christ and the Church”

#5107

GIVING IN RESPONSE TO GOD

“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”  (Ephesians 5:1-2 NIV)

Our God is a giving God. He is a God of abundance, and He loves to give. In Christ He sacrificed willingly on the cross and then invited us into fullness of life. As His children, we are called to imitate Him. Our generosity in giving is a demonstration of God’s character and a response to what He has done for us.

As we become more and more who God has called us to be – more like Him – through the process of sanctification, we reflect God more and more. We become more loving, more gracious, and, yes, more giving. Because God is generous, we are also called to be generous. Generosity not only points others to God, it is an appropriate response to what God has done for us. 

-- from an article entitled "Why is giving so emphasized in the Christian faith?" on the gotquestions.org website


#4467

RELATIONAL GENEROSITY

“Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing.”  (Philippians 2:4 TLB)

Most of us have opportunities every day to extend... relational generosity to someone and "make their day".  One student in nurses training learned this from her professor.  The last question on a pop quiz was "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?"  The student's initial response was, "This has to be some kind of joke!"  She had seen the tall, fiftyish woman at work but felt no obligation to know her name.

Following the exam a student asked if that question would count on the grade.  "Absolutely," the professor exclaimed.  "In your careers you will meet many people.  All are significant.  They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello."

The individual who related this incident said, "I've never forgotten that lesson.  I also learned her name was Dorothy." 

-- Dr. Norm Wakefield & Jody Brolsma in “Men Are from Israel, Women Are from Moab” 


#4458

ONE FAMILY IN CHRIST – Part 3

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”  (2 Corinthians 8:9 NIV)

Another characteristic of the family is its willingness to share. The early church went so far as to have its members selling their property, each refusing  to claim as his exclusive property what had belonged to him before. They had all things in common. When the one part suffered the whole suffered with it and when one part prospered then the whole prospered with it. There was a mutuality in the relationship in which all gave and all received. Some gave more conspicuously in spiritual things while others gave in material gifts. Hence the collection for the saints was a deeply spiritual exercise. In a happy family you don’t receive in proportion to your input. You receive in relation to your needs, the ones who make the least material contribution often being the ones who are most cared for -- young and aged.

How I pray that in our church we can learn to emulate a true family, emulate the divine generosity of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, although rich, for our sakes became poor that we through His poverty might become rich.

How I pray for the day when the… church would be marked by a membership that knows that all things come from God and all belongs to Him, that we have the privilege of being His stewards and that the very least we should give in thanksgiving for God’s abundant and limitless generosity is the tithe.

-- Desmond Tutu in The Rainbow People of God

#3962

A LESSON IN GIVING

An old man showed up at the back door of the house we were renting.  Opening the door a few cautious inches, we saw his eyes were glassy and his furrowed face glistened with silver stubble.  He clutched a wicker basket holding a few unappealing vegetables.  He bid us good morning, and offered his produce for sale.  We were uneasy enough that we made a quick purchase to alleviate both our pity and our fear.

To our chagrin, he returned the next week, introducing himself as Mr. Roth, the man who lived in the shack down the road.  As our fears subsided, we got close enough to realize it wasn't alcohol but cataracts that marbleized his eyes.  On subsequent visits, he would shuffle in, wearing two mismatched right shoes, and pull out a harmonica.  With glazed eyes set on a future glory, he'd puff out old gospel tunes between conversations about vegetables and religion.

On one visit, he exclaimed, "The Lord is so good!  I came out of my shack this morning and found a bag full of shoes and clothing on my porch."

"That's wonderful, Mr. Roth!" we said.  "We're happy for you."

"You know what's even more wonderful?" he asked.  "Just yesterday I met some people that could use them."

-- Mark Tidd


#3523

ALL THINGS BELONG TO GOD

John Wesley wrote extensively on the use of money, the danger of riches, and the importance of giving. For Wesley, all things belong to God. This changes how we perceive the manner by which we earn money and save money, causing us to do so in appropriate ways. And in changes how we spend money, making us more responsible, and shapes how we give money. Wesley valued industrious and productive work, but he believed that acquiring money does not provide a profound enough life purpose to sustain the human spirit. When he wrote, "Earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can," he drew an unbreakable link between acquisition and generosity, inviting us to use our material wealth to deepen our relationship with God and to increase our positive impact for God's purposes. 

-- Robert Schnase in  Five Practices of Fruitful Living


#3098

GENEROSITY SAYS "THANK YOU"

What makes some people generous and others stingy? One explanation is gratitude. When we realize that the hand of God gave us the things we have, we aren't so inclined to greedily hoard them. Generosity assumes that there is an unlimited storehouse of blessings available to us, and that we can never exhaust it. Generosity is a practical way of saying, "Thank You!" It is our gift to God and to the men and women who have shared with us, asking for nothing in return.

-- Stephen Arterburn in The Power Book

 
#2747

GREAT GENEROSITY

"You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity." (2 Corinthians 9:11)

Jesus' teachings abound with tales of rich and poor, generous and shrewd, givers and takers, charitable and selfish, faithful and fearful. He commends the poor widow putting her two coins in the treasury; giving out of her poverty, she "put in all she had to live on" (Luke 21:1-4). The story upsets expectations by pointing to proportion rather than amount as the measure of extravagance.

In the story of the farmer who built bigger barns, placing his trust too much on earthly possessions, Jesus asks the spiritually probing question, "And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" He warns, "Take Care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (Luke 12:13-21)…

And Jesus recounts the parable of the three servants entrusted with varying talents to illustrate God's desire for the faithful to use what has been given to them responsibility and productively. The steward who fearfully hoards and buries his talent for safe-keeping is rebuked (Matthew 25:14-30). How people use what they have matters to God.

-- Robert Schnase in Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations


#2746

THE OVERWHELMING GENEROSITY OF GOD

Jesus told about a landowner who hired day laborers to work in his fields and paid them all a day's wage, in spite of the fact that he had hired workers all day long – some right up until the last hour. To make it doubly hard on the ones who worked all day, he made them watch everyone else get paid first. Well, you can imagine there was a good deal of grumbling from this group over those who worked only an hour or two getting the same thing they got laboring under the hot sun all day. To which the landowner replied: Wait a minute. Didn't I pay you what we agreed upon? If I want to be generous to these others, what is that to you? Take your money and go. (Matthew 20:1-16)

Here's what I love about this parable: slipping away from there with a day's pay in your pocket for an hour's work. You're wondering if someone made a mistake and paid you too much, but you're reluctant to point it out to anyone for fear it was a mistake and you'll have to give most of it back. But then you hear that the generosity of the employer was the reason your pocket is full, and you can't believe your good fortune.

This is precisely what it feels like to be a Christian. You didn't contract for this righteousness. You didn't labor to get into this family. You didn't study hard and read your Bible every day and go to church every Sunday and gain extra credit for being on the worship committee in order to ensure your place in Heaven. You are in this for one reason and one reason alone – the overwhelming generosity of God.

Grace is what makes you keep checking your pocket to make sure your life with God is still there. Worship is what happens when you find out it is. In fact, what you receive is so overwhelmingly generous that you will probably need a tote bag to carry it all!

-- John Fisher in The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional


#2589