Today I'm Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. God loves all people equally. But he does not bless all people equally.
Some people, he prospers for a very specific reason. If you want to find out what that is, stay with me. That's today on Living on the Edge. The anticipation, the joy of Christmas is a glimpse of how we're wired. We were designed to give lavishly to those we love.
Yet, when it comes to supporting our church or the ministries that feed us spiritually, sometimes we hesitate, we calculate, we wait for a better time. But according to the Bible, generosity is the smartest financial decision we'll ever make. Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram explains why God blesses generous people and how giving to kingdom work unleashes something far more valuable than a bigger bank account. Before we begin his message, I'll remind you that Living on the Edge is making headway on the December match that concludes midnight on Wednesday. But in order to reach our goal, we invite you to join us.
We'll share more details about the match later. Right now, let's begin Chip's message titled Why God Prospers Generous People. I want to begin with a little parable that I ran across. It was very interesting. Imagine, if you will, the scene.
Once there was a man lost in desert near death. from thirst. He wandered aimlessly throughout the burning sand for many days. growing weaker by the moment. At long last he saw an oasis In the distance, palm trees indicating there'd be water.
He stumbled forward feverishly, fell beneath the shade of the trees. Finally, he might quench his thirst. But he noticed something strange about this particular oasis. Instead of a pool of water or a bubbling brook, It was odd. There was a pump.
And next to the pump was a jar of water. And next to the jar of water was a small Parchment. with handwritten note. The note explained that the leather gasket within the pump must be saturated with the water for the pump to work. Within the jar was just enough water for this purpose.
The note also warned the reader, do not drink from the jar. Every drop must be poured down into the pump in the opening so the base of the pump can be soaked, the hard leather becomes softened, and as the leather is softened and expanded, an unlimited supply of sweet water would be available. The parchment's final instructions were simply to refill the jar for the next traveler. The man faced a dilemma. He was dying of thirst.
And there wasn't much water. But he found some. Probably not enough water to save his life. But it seemed like the height of folly to take the little bit of water that he had and pour it down the base of a pump. And so What do you do?
On the one hand, If the note is true, And he pours it down. He has all the water that he needs. On the other, if he drinks what he has, he might... temporarily quench his thirst. But find himself in an oasis and die.
As I thought of this, I have a little jar here. And it has a little note. And it's a note a lot like what he had. And I'd like you to think about this jar as your life. And all the water inside this jar is all the time, all the energy, all the talent, all the money.
all the opportunity. Your 401, your savings account, your car, your house, it's all that you have. And we have this ridiculous Command of God that says Give. Pour it out. Trust me.
Don't be afraid. Don't be so tight with your time. Don't be sea tight with your talent. Don't be tight and guarded. With your money.
Trust me with your life. And as you give it away, you will never reflect my son more. Then as you're generous. And then all the promises of Scripture are how smart that is. It's not noble or holy or wonderful to say, wow, I'm going to pour this down so I can have an unlimited supply.
It's smart. But it requires one thing, doesn't it? That note better be true. And that pump wouldter better have water. I want to give you four airtight facts.
About generosity that are absolutely true, that will help you and help me begin to take the kind of steps that will allow us by faith to say. It's smart, it's wise. To pour out our lives. In fact, Jesus is called, He poured out His life as a drink offering. Paul would use the same phrase when he talked about his life and his love for the Philippian church.
So are you ready? Four facts that I think will give us faith. Fact number one. God blesses generous people.
Some of you have been around. Do not get nervous as I share these verses because some of you are going to come to some conclusions: like, what's he saying? Is he taking us in this? Just listen. And what I want you to do as I read these verses, I just want you to ask and answer the question, does the Bible teach that God blesses generous people or not?
I've got Old Testament, New Testament, the wisest man in the world, and Jesus himself. Follow along. 1 Acts 20:35. In everything I did, Luke writes, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Luke 6.38 from the lips of Jesus. Give. Why? And it'll be given unto you.
Well, how? Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be poured into your cup. For with the measure or the size that you use, it will be measured or given back to you.
Solomon, the wisest man in the world, Proverbs 22:9. A generous man will himself be. Blessed. for he shares his food. With the poor, are you getting the drift?
Pretty strong argument.
Solomon, Proverbs 19:17, he who is kind to the poor. lends to the Lord. And what does God do? When people are kind to the poor, he will reward him for what he has done. Deuteronomy Moses writes, when you're out harvesting your field, And you overlook a sheaf.
You know, you're harvesting your field, and oh boy, we forgot that one back there. Notice what he says: Do not go back and get it, leave it for the alien, for the fatherless, and the widow. Why? So that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. Turn the page, if you will, Proverbs 3, 9, and 10.
He says, honor the Lord with what? Honor God. What's it look like? Honor God with all your wealth. How?
With the very first fruits of your crops. You give the first and the best. What's the result? Then your barns will be filled with overflowing, and your vats will burst out with new wine. And then finally, Solomon in Proverbs 11:24 and 5.
I love this one. One man gives freely. yet gains all the more. Another withholds what is Justly do. but comes only to poverty.
A generous man will prosper. And he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.
Now listen very carefully. This is not a give to get. And this is not the prosperity gospel. This is not a formula where you can figure out, oh, this is how God has set up life. I'm going to figure out how to use God and somehow give so I can get more.
That's just being selfish. But what the Bible teaches from Jesus to Moses to Solomon to all through Scripture is very, very simple. You have limited capacity. You have limited time, you have limited money, you have limited opportunity, you have limited energy, you have limited talent. And God says to you, if you will take those limitations, And you will give the first and the best, and trust me, I have unlimited supply to help you fulfill my purpose in you and my purpose through you.
The bright idea that comes out of this is this. Generous living produces emotional happiness. Spiritual holiness. And as a general rule, material prosperity. No give to get.
No playing games with God. But you know people that are generous are happy. They're like anti-Scrooge You know, when you just can't wait for your husband or your wife or a close friend or one of your kids or a grandkid to open something, right? You know they want it. You know they want it.
You've been thinking about it. You checked it out on the internet. You bought it. You can't wait. You know what that is?
You're made to give and to bless others, and when you do, what happens? It's more blessed to. Give than to receive. But God says this is a way of life. There's an enemy to this though.
Left to ourself and in our flesh, I'm a selfish, greedy person. I mean, I want to appear generous, but protect me, right?
Now none of you are like that, but that's just left to myself. The only antidote to greed and selfishness and the power of money The antidote is to give. It's when I give God the first, when I give Him the best, it breaks the power of greed and that false belief that just a little bit more, just a little bit more, that it can produce security and it'll take care of me. And someday when I have then, that false belief. And then finally, what you find is people that are generous with material things and generous with their time, generous with the talent, just the hand of God's blessing is upon them.
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 livingonthege.org. From his series called The Genius of Generosity, again our Bible teacher, Chip Ingram.
Now you may be hearing what I'm saying and thinking, okay, now wait a second. Fact number one is God blesses generous people. And you might be saying, well, I think I'm pretty generous. But I'm not experiencing that kind of blessing. In fact, I got a lot of debt right now.
I got a lot of pressure right now. I don't have enough time right now. I mean, how does this really work?
Well, I I did a little experiment. I thought to myself, I wonder if there's a difference between being truly generous and just assuming or thinking that you're generous. I went to a little strip mall where there was multiple little restaurants and a Starbucks. And I went from person to person to person. I said, I'm trying to find 100 people.
I have one question. It's a survey. I just want a yes or no answer. No explanation. Yes or no.
And I mean, I had young people, old people, all kind of ethnic backgrounds. And I walked around and I was scared at first, but it got to be fun. I said, excuse me, the two ladies are stopping. Hey, I don't want any money. I'm not going to do anything.
It's a survey. Can I ask you this question? And I said, here it is. Do you consider yourself to be a generous person? Yes or no?
Do you consider yourself to be a generous person? Yes or no? If I ask you that, just right now, don't raise your hand, don't do anything, but just yourself talk. Do you consider yourself to be a generous person? Yes or no?
Well, my very unscientific survey revealed that 80% of the people at that strip mall considered themselves very quickly to be generous people. Only two people said. Yeah. And so I couldn't resist. I had a follow-up question.
So you don't think you're generous? No? Kind of like, I don't think I'm generous, and I'm not trying to be generous, buddy. Just, you know, move on, you know, get your own coffee or something. Yeah.
Here's here's Yeah. What if all the verses I talked about? aren't for people who think they're generous. What if all the verses, I mean, these are the words of Jesus? The words of Solomon.
What if What if God really has a standard or a criteria? That if you fulfill that, You're generous, and these promises apply to you. And if you just think you're generous, which I'm now learning 80% at least of the people think they are. then they really don't apply to you. And so let me give you fact number two.
Fact number two is that God provides clear criteria for becoming or knowing that you're a generous person. I mean, right out of the Bible. You know, you may have said yes, you may have said no, but I will tell you in about 10 minutes, you can know with absolute certainty from God's perspective whether He looks at you as a generous person. The first two are review and the last three are new. Characteristic number one, genuine generosity gives the first and the best to God.
When God looks at people, when they get the first crops, the first of their paycheck, the first blessing, the first opportunity, they come to God and say, I recognize all I have belongs to you. I want to give you the first and the best. People who do that from God's perspective are generous. Second. Genuine generosity is systematic.
And regular.
So it's not just a ooey gooey feeling or near Christmas or this person has a need and I gave them a couple hundred bucks or I helped this person over here. Genuinely generous people on a regular, systematic basis give. That 1 Corinthians 16, verse 2, where Paul is writing to them, it says, Now, on the first day of the week, I want you to prepare yourself, and I want you to decide. In proportion to how God has blessed you on a regular, systematic way. In the in the New Testament times, most people were paid daily.
They were paid at the end of the day. Most of us get paid every two weeks or once a month or by commission. And so the issue is, when I get paid, do I regularly and systematically give the first and the best to God?
So that would make us generous. If I don't do that, I can feel generous, but from God's perspective, I'm not. Third criteria. Genuine generosity is proportional to our income. Notice that same passage, 1 Corinthians 16, 2.
He says, let everyone decide on the first day of the week. According to what? according to his income. Let me put it this way. Let's pretend that right now I could invite one of you up here and you were just very bold and we learned that you earned $30,000 a year and live in the Silicon Valley.
And someone else was very bold and very open and vulnerable. And I had them come up and they own $300, or they make $300,000 here in the Silicon Valley, okay? A? B Both of them have maybe grown up in the church, both of them love God, and both of them have learned that tithing is important, giving the first 10%. But they've been taught that that's God's part and somehow unconsciously believe the biggest lie in the church that the other 90% is theirs.
So you just give 10% to God and it's like, boy, I'm glad that bill is taken care of. But they miss generosity completely.
So let's do a little bit of math. $30,000, give the first 10%, is $3,000. This person's going to live on $27,000. In the Silicon Valley hat. How sacrificial is $3,000?
That's a lot, isn't it? This person By God's blessing and grace makes 300,000. And by the way, don't read into good person, bad person. These people both love God with all their heart. This just person makes less, this person makes more.
They tithe and they give $30,000. The very first portion. But who who's the most generous? I'm just gonna go on a limb. We have people from all kinds of incomes.
I'm gonna go on a limb, and a number of you would say, I could squeeze by on $270,000 a year here in the Silicon Valley. I mean, it'll be tough. We'll have to really get a budget. but I'm gonna figure out how to make it. Do you understand?
What I want you to get is This jar represents yours, but some jars are bigger than other jars. For people that have small jars, What they give and how they give it. God never measures the amount that you give, God measures the amount of the sacrifice. That's generosity. That's why when the widow would drop in the two small copper coins and the other people gave large gifts, He wasn't saying the large gifts were bad.
In fact, the temple couldn't run without the large gifts. He just was saying comparatively, this woman has given more than them.
Well, you got to say, Jesus, your math is all wrong. No, they gave this much, and she gave this much. Why would Jesus say she gave more? Because it was a greater sacrifice. Generosity is the first and the best.
It's regular, it's systematic, and it's proportional.
So it's not like you pay a bill. You're on a journey as God blesses you more. You get to give more, you get to be involved more, you get to stretch, you get to love, you get to expand. I've had times where I was given more, and then I had times where everything went down to here. And one of the most humbling times of my life was to say, I used to be able to give this, now I can only give this.
It's proportional. Fourth characteristic of generous people is genuine generosity is sacrificial. The same setting. Paul writes a lot about generosity in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. He says, Now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that our God has given the Macedonian church.
He's writing to the Corinthians and he's talking about the Macedonian church. He says, out of their most severe trial, their overflowing joy, and their extreme poverty, it welled up in rich generosity. I underline those four things because I don't... I don't think we think about generosity coming out of that, do you? I'm going to be generous when there's an extreme trial.
I'm going to be generous when I'm under it. I'm going to be generous when... I don't have much at all, in fact, poverty. He said, what welled out of them was rich generosity.
Now notice what he says. He says, for I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability. And then notice the motivation, entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. And the service he's talking about is, over here, these Jewish Christians, there was a famine. And they didn't have any food.
And these Christians over here said, Gentile Christians, they were new Christians, and there used to be all this hostility, but. Christ broke that wall and they said, we have and they don't have, so we're going to share. It's sacrificial. It's like that widow. I came across a...
email that I want to share with you. This is maybe one of the greatest pictures of generosity I've ever seen in my life. Let me read it to you. In fact, it's close to home because it's a dear friend. He says, 10 years ago, I stopped to have my car washed at this brand new car wash at 87 in Capitol.
A couple friends, Chuck and Patty and his wife, had spent the last couple years developing the property. It was a huge investment for them. As my car was being washed, I went up to the office just to say hello. After a brief chat, and I was about to leave, I asked Chuck, hey, uh What's your blood type? He said, that's an odd question.
Why? She said, well, I need a kidney transplant. He said, that's interesting. He said, uh Well I have the right blood type. He said, I think maybe Maybe God wants me to give you my kidney.
I said, don't make any quick decisions. Think about it, pray about it. By the way, I've got five or six brothers and sisters. They're all being tested right now. Let's just see how it works out.
The very next day I got a phone call. Chuck said, Mike. I'm your man. God told me to do this. I want to do this.
His only request was, could we make sure we get this done before hunting season? Oh no. I couldn't believe it. As it turned out, all my siblings were eliminated for one reason or another. Chuck went through the testing.
The results showed that he was a better match than anyone else. We had an operation. Chuck later gave his testimony about this experience several times and Importantly, he's met with multiple kidney donors and recipients to encourage them to consider doing what he did. To date, Um five different people have received a kidney. and who knows how many indirectly because of Chuck's testimony.
Even though they were unknowns, Even though he was just getting his business off the ground. He chose to be generous. Consistently, Chuck says this. It's the best thing I've ever done. I'm so thankful God allowed me to do it.
kind of raises the stakes on what it means to give, doesn't it? I mean, most of us are sitting here, depending on where you're at, going. Oh, you know, I think God really wants me to get my finances in order, and I got a lot of debt. Or, you know, gosh, when he used that illustration about the 10%, I've been given 10% for 22 years, and I thought that was just God's, and I would have to rethink my whole equation.
Some guy was willing to lay on a table and let someone cut out half of what he owns. But From all I can tell, kidneys are pretty important and we do have two, but most of us want to have two. But he had a friend that didn't have any. And he gave one of his two, Are you starting to see, see, when God sees that? You know what the heart of God says?
There's a generous man. There's a generous woman. There's a generous student. There's no give to get. There's no formula.
It's the heart of a father saying, you know what? He's treating his friend the way I feel about him. He's loving him and he's giving and he's caring. And when God sees that in your heart as evidenced by your behavior. Then God, guess what?
He just he's a father. He just wants to give whatever you need. You need more time? You need more resources. You need a greater opportunity.
You need more money. God has, He has an unlimited supply. But only right now, about 2.8 to 3% of all the people who claim to be born again in America are willing to say, I believe you to the point that I would. Pour out. the first portion of even my income, let alone my time.
and trust that your supernatural supply will meet all my needs. And the theory goes: well, someday when I get enough, or someday when things turn around, or when I can get this, or get that, and that's not how it works. Out of their deep poverty and severe trial. When he was starting a business, when it was the last thing you wanted to do in the world was put your life at stake. That's sacrificial.
That's generosity. We're midway through a message from Chip Ingram called Why God Prospers Generous People. Stick around. Chip has an illustration he wants to share with you, and that's coming up in just a moment. But first, I'll remind you that Living on the Edge is in the final stretch of one of the largest match challenges in our 30-year history.
And the deadline for receiving your gift is on or before this Wednesday, December 31st.
So, for just a few more days, every dollar that's given toward reaching our goal will be multiplied by two, yielding twice the impact on someone who's ready to deepen their walk with God. Chip? There is a massive difference. between knowing about God and actually knowing God. You know, lots of Christians can tell you facts about God, but somehow there's a disconnect between their head knowledge and their heart experience.
They believe intellectually the right things, but they're not experiencing the transforming power that Jesus promised. This was brought so home to me a few years ago as my back was hurting, and I went to see this doctor, and he was a friend. He went to our church. He says, I think I can help you. And in the conversation, I challenged him to read the Romans 12 book, True Spirituality.
And we met the next time, and he said, Hey, I got to tell you something. I said, What? He goes, I surrendered to Christ. I said, great. And he was a former college athlete, and so he gets in the Bible every single day.
And I go back for all the checkups. And three months later, he's saying, man, my life is completely changing. I mean, how I see my family, how I see everything I do at work, he goes, There's a big difference between a church-centered Christian and a word-centered Christian. And he was the picture, the snapshot of what I see happening and how God uses Living on the Edge. You know so many people, and with good intentions, it's basically in your head and you believe a set of things, but there's not transformation in how you live and how you spend your money and what comes out of your mouth and how you treat your mate or how you go to work.
Living on the Edge was made by God to bridge that gap. We help people move from information to transformation, from knowing about God to walking with God, daily in intimate fellowship that changes their life. And then changes others. Your support of this match helps Christians discover. that faith isn't just a set of beliefs to hold.
It's a vibrant relationship to live. As you sense that God is stirring you to respond, please follow His prompting. Whatever amount He places on your heart will be multiplied by two because of this match. To give right now, go to livingonTheEdge.org or call us at 888-333-6003. To send a check in the mail right to LivingOnTheEdge, P.O.
Box 3007, Atlanta, Georgia, 30024. Because of the match, your gift of $100 will become $200. A generous gift of $250 becomes $500. Double the amount, twice the impact, until we reach the goal. And the deadline for receiving your match gift is Midnight New Year's Eve.
Call 888-333-6003 or visit livingontheedge.org. Why is it that some people seem to prosper and others don't? I'm Dave Druy, inviting you to hear Chip Ingram's biblical answer tomorrow on Living on the Edge.
