Today I'm Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. What if I told you that I had an investment tip that would net you a guaranteed high rate of return? That would allow you to enjoy many of its benefits right away and would significantly help others without affecting your bottom line. There is such an investment strategy and today you'll learn how to become the smartest money manager on the planet. Philanthropy is a big word for giving money away.
We tend to associate philanthropy with millionaires who need a tax break. But what if generosity has nothing to do with how much money you have or how holy you think you are? What if sharing your money produces an outcome you can't receive any other way?
Well, today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram describes how charity becomes the gateway to intimacy with our Heavenly Father. And then, just after Chip's message, we'll explain how you can leverage your year-end donation at livingonthege.org. Until December 31st, every dollar given to support Living on the Edge is automatically doubled in size and impact because of this match. more later. But right now, the message from Chip.
Let me give you four reasons now why it is genius to be generous. Number one, generosity changes our lives. Generosity changes our lives. It blesses our lives. It enriches our lives.
It makes life better. The very last words we ever hear in the Bible from Jesus are this, and they're not in the Gospels. It's a quote from Acts. Where the Apostle Paul quotes Jesus and says, Jesus said, It's more blessed to give than to receive. The word blessed, you know what it means?
Happy. Welfare, good. Uplifting, encouraging. People who give are more blessed even than those who give receive. I mean, this is the ultimate win-win proposition.
Second reason. Um is generosity connects us with others. A generous man will prosper, and he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. Proverbs 11, 25. A generous, literally that word prosper, a generous man will be fat.
It doesn't mean, you know, like. You need to go to Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, but it's this idea that you'll prosper, you'll have more than you need, and he who refreshes others, when you give and are kind to others, will himself be refreshed. When you give and when you're generous of your time and generous of your talent and generous with your money, generous with your stuff, let people use your car, let them use your house, let them use this. When you're generous, it connects you with people. Third, generosity helps us invest.
In what matters most. And so Jesus is going to be like a wise investment counselor in the Sermon on the Mount, and he's going to say, don't invest over here because it won't turn out bad ROI, but I do want you to invest over here, very positive ROI, and by the way, here's why. Look at it. There's a negative command, and there's a positive command, and then he gives the reason. And this is sort of investment counseling.
He says, Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. And would you underline the word for yourselves?
Now the way that you would accumulate wealth was through fine clothing, precious metals, and grains. And so, even that word rust has the idea not just of metals, but maybe of varmints getting in and eating your grain and ruining it. And so basically the grammar here is stop. Investing.
Solely on earth. And the reason is because you can suffer great loss. All those are temporal.
Now, by the way, he's not saying it's wrong to save because the scripture tells us elsewhere to save. He's not saying that it's wrong to prepare for the future. You know, the writer of Proverbs says you need to make provision and think about what's going to come. And it's not wrong to have something nice. We're actually commanded in Scripture to enjoy the good things God gives us.
This is a prohibition against selfish, greedy hoarding that you think this is now, and I'm going to have it, and my life, my success, my power, my happiness is going to come from investing my time and energy in the right now. in temporal stuff. Then he gives the other advice. He says, but store up.
Now, would you underline why? For yourselves. This is for your benefit. He's giving wise investment counseling, treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves can't break in and steal. In other words, it's a better investment because when you make this investment, 100% return.
And so, all through the Gospels, Jesus talks about what's it, so what it would be like to invest treasure in heaven. Treasure in heaven in Luke 16 is: you give your money and your time to help other people come to Christ, and when you get to heaven, they will welcome you because you gave. When you give a cup of cold water, when you provide relief and love in the name of Jesus, there'll be a reward. That's an eternal heavenly treasure. When you use your money to help the poor, you're lending to the Lord.
All those things. He says, there's a bank account with your name on it. with very specific reward in heaven that can't be touched by thieves. Or rust, or moss.
So he says that's great. Then he gives you the reason. Look at verse 21: for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Literally meaning, it says, for where you treasure your treasure, that's where your heart will be.
So, what he's saying is, there's a relationship between what you worship. Don't make a bad investment where it'll be temporal, loss, can change overnight.
Some of you know about that, right? Jesus is just saying. He's not saying you're more righteous, more holy, you're better than other people when you invest in the things that last. He's just saying there are smart investors and there's dumb investors. Dumb investors focus all their time, all their energy around worshiping things and people that change and that will let them down and won't come through and can be stolen and removed from them.
And smart investors take a big part of their portfolio and they invest in things that can never change, never be touched, and will last forever. And then he goes because you've got to be asking yourself: how does this idea of your heart? And investments, and why is that so important? And so, notice he's going to give a metaphor, a picture. Look at verse 32.
He says, The eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness? I put a box around the word good, put a box around the word bad, and circle the word I.
Jesus is an amazing teacher. He talks out there's two treasures, then he's going to say there's two eyes, and later he's going to say there's two masters. And it says, there's treasure in heaven, there's treasure in earth. Which investment?
Now he's going to say: the way that you come about deciding where to invest has to do with your eye. Your eye is the lamp of your body. Your eye is what you look through, it's how you perceive, it's how you decide, it's where your focus is, it's how you get direction about where you're going to go. And there's a very interesting word. This word for your eye is good, the word good.
Uh you know how some words in English depends on the context what they mean? This word is haplos in Greek. It can either mean singularity or loyalty in focus. or it can mean to be liberal or generous, depending on the context.
So he says, if your eye is good, if your loyalty is toward God, and you're liberal and generous with what he's given you, he says your body will be full of light. In other words, you'll reflect God's light. You'll enjoy God's light. You'll share God's light. He says, but if your eye is bad, another interesting word, we actually, it's the word pone ras.
Literally, it means evil. It's used of Satan for being evil. And also there was a Jewish idiom that talked about the evil eye. And the person with the evil eye is a selfish, greedy, hoarding person. He says, if your eye is about you and accumulating and protecting and saving and not letting anybody in and trying to.
He says, then, even the light you think you have, Your focus, the idea that you think, if I just have this much, then I'll be successful. And if I'm successful, then I'll be a someone. If I'm a someone, then I'll have security. And if I have security, then people will love me. And that duh duh.
He goes, mm. Dumb. Dumb. Bad investment. Because it says there's two treasures you have to discern.
Two eyes that give your focus. And it says it really boils down to Your focus will determine. Notice, there's two masters. He says no one can serve two masters. This isn't like double employment.
He says you'll be a slave to one or a slave to the other. He'll either hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to one and despise the other. You can't serve God and mammon or money too. According to scripture, I bet the first 15 years I was a Christian, I would think there's God and Satan, good and bad. Those are the two big gods.
That's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches there's two gods. There's God and money.
Now Satan may energize that. But see if I have money, I think it'll deliver me. The success, the significance, the security, the people, the admiration, the fame. whatever it is that I think will really come through. And Jesus says If you don't get the right master because you have the wrong eye, you'll invest in the wrong spot.
And you can look like things are going really, really good, and just in one New York minute, things can get turned upside down. And that person you set your heart on is gone. That money you set your heart on evaporates. That house that was going to be the big deal. is under water.
The promotion that was going to make you a someone. You started the company and now the board says you're not fit to run it anymore and they decide they want to get someone else. And if you've ever been around a person who set their heart on some things and the thing crumbles, I will tell you what, it's painful to watch. And so the final thing he teaches here, he says generosity frees our heart. See, at the core of it, what Jesus says, you gotta invest.
I wanna protect you from investments, but the way to protect you from investments is I want to protect your heart. Because out of your heart flow the issues of life. See, when I'm consumed by the God of money, I work crazy hours, I consume, I use people to get things. And what that produces is very bad dysfunctional relationships. And so, like, there's lots of really old people in places whose kids don't care about them and don't talk to them and don't relate to them because they had their focus and their eye and their master on what they could have and succeed in.
There weren't relationships. 'Cause their heart got hard. Their heart wasn't for the things that really mattered. I've never had anyone that I've buried say, I'll tell you what, man, my dad, he had the coolest watch, house, and 401k in the world. I mean it was awesome.
In fact, I took it off his wrist when they put it in the casket. That's how good it was. The only thing you ever hear when people die All right. The relationship. that people had with that person and what that person did in relationship to them.
and who they impacted out of the love of their life. Very few things last. And so the lure. See? Just like, you know, in all these scandals, what do they do in scandals today?
If you want to know what's going on in scandal, what's the old axiom? Follow the. Come on now. Follow the money, right? The money trail.
And God says the same thing. Your heart goes where your money flows.
So if you want your heart to be about golf, spend all your money on golf. If you want your heart to be all about business, make it all about business. If you want it to be about real estate, go just spend your money where you want your heart to be. Because that's where you go. What Jesus is saying here is The mirror of your heart.
is your money. I mean, if you just want to know where you're at, you just look at.
So I. There's where my money goes. Those are my priorities. Those are my real values. And so what he does is he gives us this investment plan.
to protect us. We'll hear more from Chip Ingram's message in just a moment. First, we invite you to multiply your year in support of Living on the Edge through an exciting match that's active through December 31st. Every gift is matched. Every dollar multiplied by two.
Every investment maximized for kingdom impact. Double the impact of your gift at livingontheedge.org. From his series called The Genius of Generosity, again our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram.
So It's genius to be generous because it changes our lives. It's positive. It's a win-win. It's genius because it connects us deeply with other people. It's genius because it helps us invest in what's going to matter most so we're not disappointed and have a bad investment.
And it's genius because it frees our heart.
So here's the kind of $64 question. If generosity is so smart, why isn't everyone doing it? I mean, I could give you the statistics among Christians. It's not real pretty. Most Christians are not very generous.
But why? I mean, if what I just taught is true, why wouldn't we be the most generous people in the world?
Well, we're going to explore that, but uh And I'm not talking just about your money. I mean If you think this series is going to be about money and you're tempted to check out, let me warn you. Money is like the training wheels of authentic generosity. But let me highlight: this is why I struggle with not being smart. One is because wealth is powerful and deceptive.
I mean, money isn't neutral. According to Jesus, remember, he talks about the sower and the seed in Matthew 13 and Mark 4. And the sower of God's word, he casts the seed, and there's four different kinds of soils. And there's the hard soil, and there's shallow soil, and then there's the soil with the thorns. And the thorns that grow up are the deceitfulness of riches.
And the worries of other things. This is just reality. When money is deceiving me, I'm the last to know it. Most people that are greedy and hoarding think other people are greedy and hoarding, but not them. I mean, when your eye is bad, notice even Jesus said: even the light that's within you, he uses the same word.
We think we're doing okay. See, the problem with is It's so easy to be deceived, and we rationalize, and we're in denial, and compare ourselves to other people. The second reason. is because of the lure of mammon worship. I mean, the drive, I grew up thinking, you gotta be successful, you gotta be significant, you gotta have security.
And the way you measure that is what? I mean, I remember talking to a number of years, an executive here in the Silicon Valley is well connected, and he had had a conversation with someone who was, remember when they did, I don't know, they do top 40 or top 50 on Forbes now, but this guy was, they were doing top 50 at that time, and he was 51. And he wrote like a seven-page letter to Forbes demanding that he be put on the list because why he qualified as one of the 50 richest people in the world.
Okay. You think that's about money? I mean, that's like ego over the top. But the problem is, I can look at that out there and say, oh, yeah, I can't believe that. I mean, the guy's worth a bazillion dollars, and he's got to write eight-page letters.
But see, Mammon worship says if you have enough money, then you can buy that and be that and show that. And this kind of car says that, and this kind of watch. And, you know, now you got a place in the mountains, you got a place on the beach, and you know, you got the Maserati, the Ferrari, the Bentley, whatever. Or you're low-key about it, and you have lots. And just at the right time, you let people know what you have.
And you know what? It's all. It's all relative. Because you may not have any of that all kind of stuff, but man, you got a pair of jeans. You probably didn't understand these are diesels, baby.
They make Wranglers, man. I mean, we all do it. We all do it. Mammon worship, impressing, success, significance, what I look like, what I've got, what zip code I'm in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it sucks, guess what? And it just demands your life. Whatever you worship, it demands your life. You gotta work, and you got up early, and there's pressure. The third reason it's generosity is difficult is it demands faith.
I mean, if we actually believed in heaven, I mean, if I told you, if I told you, hey, I got this amazing investment, 90% of it fails, you really need to invest with me, you're going to go, what? That's what Jesus is saying. Treasures on Earth. 90% of it's going to fail. Treasures in heaven, 100%.
Great ROI. Where do you want to invest? See, if you believed in heaven and I believed in heaven and I believed in the eternal rewards, I'd be going, duh. It doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy nice things now. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have a good savings plan, but it would mean I'd draw a line, like I have, that this is my standard of living, and any and everything over above that.
God, you keep bringing it in, I'll pass it on. I mean, my dream is to give more and more and more and more and more until the day I die. I got plenty. I've got more than I ever dreamed I'd have. But it requires faith.
The number one reason people aren't generous Other than greed and selfishness, we just sort of It's fear. At the end of the day, what is it? I would be generous with my time, but I only have so much. And if I give this away, I'd be generous with my talent, but I can't volunteer for that because I got a ticker. I'd be generous with my money, but I'm afraid I won't.
God says, wait a second. I have unlimited supply. The reason Jesus talked about money, the reason the Bible teaches about this, it just is the easiest way to see it. When I've given money and God blesses, given and God blesses, I get to see in reality, this is real. But it requires faith.
And there's times where he's, at least in my life and people I've known, he asks you to take some steps when you think: well, if I do this, then what about me? And he goes, well, well, what about me? You think I can deliver or not? The fourth reason is because of what I call temporal myopia. It's just, that's nearsighted.
But I thought it sounded more cool than Near-sighted, temporal myopia. Jesus was teaching and as he was teaching a man yelled out, Master, Master, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me. And Jesus said, who made me your financial counselor? But he took that moment, he said, Hey, everybody, since that guy brings it up, beware. Beware.
You better be really, really careful of the deceitfulness. Of money and what it will do to your heart and your relationship with God. In fact, let me tell you a story, and this is in Luke chapter 12. It tells a story of men who, his business was booming and booming and booming. He goes, You know what I'm gonna do?
I'm just gonna build bigger and bigger barns, and I'm just gonna eat, drink, and not worry about anybody else. Life is about me, it's hedonism, it's about pleasure, it's about when I arrive. I have arrived, and I'm gonna do it. The Bible says God required his life that night. and said, You fool.
And then Jesus explained this nearsightedness. He said, so it will be with all those that are rich toward the things of the world, but not rich toward God. I don't know about you. I want to be rich toward God. And every time I've ever been generous, people I know, they're ever generous, you know what happened?
God just blesses. What you do, and how you wrestle in your own heart, and that's where you're at. What your body language tells me. Ooh, if this is really true, I'd have to make some adjustments. Yeah, you would.
It's called peeling off the calluses of your heart. Faith. Letting the Holy Spirit warm it up. But here's what you need to hear. Generosity is the gateway to intimacy with God.
Some of you don't feel real close to God. I didn't feel very close to John Saville. You start realizing that it's his money instead of yours, and you just say, Well, every day, I just that checkbook.
So, how do you want to spend it today, Lord? And to this day, I'm still asking God, you know, I've got a few hours left in the day. How do you want to spend it today? And then as I was studying this yesterday morning reviewing, around the table, I gave each of my grown kids, around the table and their mates, a $100 bill. And I said, here's what I'd like you to do between now and Christmas.
Would you just ask God as you come across someone who has a need? And it can be a poor person, a hurting person, a friend. Just whenever God speaks to you, you've got $100 between now and Christmas. Would you love them for God and in my name? Would you just do whatever you think would really, you know why I did that?
Because I want my kids I want my kids to understand. They'll be pretty free spending my money, I think, don't you think? And they're already generous. But I just, I wanted to give them that experience between now and Christmas. And then I said, when we get together at Christmas, tell me the stories, will you?
Just tell me the stories. I just want to hear. That's what God's done for you and me. Brilliant people ask these three questions. Am I using the money entrusted to me in accordance with the owner's wishes?
And who's the owner? God. Am I carefully keeping account of where all the owner's funds are going. I mean, a lot of us, if we just got even on a basic budget, we would have excess. to share with others.
We're just sloppy with it. Third, am I becoming best friends with the owner? By the privilege and opportunity of managing his resources. You know, you want to hear some answers to your prayers? Try this one.
Okay, God, I want to take a little, here's $50, $20, $100, $1,000. I'm going to set it aside. Who do you want me to bless? Would you show me in the next few days as I walk around who you want me to help? I will tell you what, he will.
And you'll give it and you'll have this charge of joy. And something great will happen. And you'll get connected to your Father, some of you, in ways that you never have. Yeah. This is the genius of generosity.
that God would give us an opportunity to partner with Him by sharing in the joy of giving. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Bible teacher Chip Ingram. We'll hear a closing comment from Chip in just a moment. It's Christmas Eve, and we commend you for spending this half hour with us. We're hoping and praying that today's program inspires you to elevate your walk with God as you engage in the joy-filled process of giving.
Chip, there's not a day that passes without someone telling us what they gain from Living on the Edge. For 30 years, God has used this ministry to inspire better marriages through a deeper walk with God. I can't tell you how many letters I receive. They'd say something like this. Chip.
My spouse and I have been going to church for years, but we've been kind of just going through the motions. Then we started listening to Living on the Edge together, and something shifted. We're talking about spiritual things again. We're praying together. Our faith is becoming real in a way like never before.
You know when couples grow deeper in their faith together, Everything changes. Their marriage strengthens, their parenting improves, and their entire family is transformed. I can't tell you. How thrilled I get when people talk to me about their marriage getting restored. And if you've listened to Living on the Edge, you understand that Teresa and I had to go through marriage counseling, and that book called Marriage That Works is really just a testimony of how God worked in us in practical biblical ways, and that we actually believe that God's direction for marriage from Ephesians chapter 5, it's his will, and there's fruit, and there's blessing.
And when you give to Living on the Edge, you help us put those kind of tools in couples' lives. And I just can't tell you my heart and the joy that I have because when a marriage comes back together or when it gets renewed, it impacts the whole family. It impacts kids. It impacts relatives. When you give to Living on the Edge, It's not like just a ministry.
You're actually restoring families, and the dominoes go on and on and on. You've heard a lot about this match, but you have to know that this is a huge part of all that we do at Living on the Edge. It's a huge portion of our income. And so if you care about families, if you care about kids, everyone talks about America changing. America's got to change from the heart before it changes from the head or whether it's political or any other way.
And so let me encourage you to join us. December 31st, the match is over. This is a window of time to have your gift doubled. and really make an impact in the lives of hundreds of thousands of families. Even on Christmas Eve, we have people standing by to take your call.
As you're ready to respond to CHIP, just call this number, 888-333-6003. If you prefer to give online, just go to livingontheedge.org. and many in our audience prefer to send a check in the mail.
Now you can do that by addressing your envelope to Living on the Edge, PO Box 30007, Atlanta, Georgia, three zero zero two four. Our address again is PO Box 3007, Atlanta, Georgia 30024. I'm Dave Druy, inviting you to join us tomorrow, Christmas Day, when Chip Ingram assures us of God's never-ending presence while I'm Living on the Edge. Uh
