Generosity and Design

Generosityvs. Stinginess

Generosity is demonstrating the nature of God by wisely reinvesting the resources that He has entrusted to us.

“But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” —Luke 6:35-36, 38

God’s design for the body of Christ has to do with community.  In the very beginning, God saw that it was good at the end of each day, and the first thing God said was NOT good was that Adam was alone.  (Gen. 2:18)  To align with the way God has designed our community, we are supposed to depend on each other, and generosity is essential to a dependent community.  God’s whole design for the way we operate is not living a selfish lifestyle.  If we live selfishly we will self-destruct and implode into little puddles of selfish goo.  Rather, He has designed us to live our lives pouring out ourselves, because this is His nature.  Philippians 2 says we should have the same mind as Christ Jesus, who made himself of no reputation even though he was in the form of God, and took the form of a servant, and humbled Himself even to the point of death.  ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ is one of the principles behind generosity that is woven into God’s design for our lives.  When we are generous, we are blessed.  We reap what we sow.  But the beautiful thing about the way God designed us is that it is in the very act of generosity that we are blessed.  In other words, we do not get the blessing if we give generously to get something out of it for ourselves, (which is a selfish motive) but we are blessed by giving for the simple reason that that is how God designed us to be blessed.  We thrive when we live the way God designed us.  We operate best under His principles.  One of those principles is generosity, and when we live generously, we fulfill His goals for our lives.