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March 22, 2023

When you look at creation, you have to assume that God is generous. This earth is expansive and yet we could fit 1,300,000 earths into the sun. And the sun? Our sun is a medium-grade star. Now, being big is not the same as being generous. However, if you have an uncle who is exceedingly generous and loves you and is worth $15, that is nice. But if you have an aunt who is exceedingly generous and loves you and is worth $15,000,000 then her nice has a little more impact in certain ways. Being generous is wonderful, but being so big that you have the capacity to act on that is how we need to understand God. God is generous with his grace. God is generous with his love. God is generous with his oversight. God is generous with his provision for everything that we need for life and godliness. God is generous with his salvation. You get the idea.

As followers of Christ, we are followers of our generous God. In fact, we are followers of this generous God because God is generous. Our identity in Christ is directly related to the fact that God has generously poured out his love for us in the life and death of Christ on our behalf. Therefore, growing in Christlikeness is going to mean, among other things, growing in generosity.

When we think of being generous, we often think of money, and this is certainly part of it. But, being a generous church is more than generously supporting our church and the ministries that we support financially. What if we faithfully sent extra funds every month to our missionaries, but we really did not know who they were and we were not current on what they were doing? Would our funds be helpful? Sure. Is that the kind of support they need? Oh no.

One of our elders asked us to pray for him because he said that he is too stingy with his time. He was confessing what most of us struggle with. It is way easier to write a check than to invest time. But being generous means giving of myself, not just funds. Think about it. God didn’t send us a check, he sent us himself. The life of Christ was the deliberately unhurried investment of long days for the eternal good of our souls.

There are many ways in which our church is generous and I thank God for that, applaud that, appreciate you for that and want to acknowledge and encourage that. I also want us to be deliberately generous in our funds for gospel purposes and our time. Together they are an amazing combination.

Tonight, we are having a church-wide prayer meeting for some of our missionaries. These are dear brothers and sisters on the front-lines whom we support with funds. But they long for way more than funds. They need us. They need our affection. They need our prayers. They need our interest and attention. And we need them. We need them to be faithful, fruitful, and safe. God uses the prayers of his people to display his generosity in so many ways. Let’s be generous with our time and gather tonight to pray.

Amazed by generous grace,

Bob

Sunday’s text:    2 Samuel 6:16-23