With this episode, Pastors Clint and Michael begin a new series exploring how each of us can resolve to follow Jesus Christ through new practices in the New Year. Today, they explore how practicing gratitude can be a transformative spiritual discipline within the Christian life.
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Transcript
00:00:00:14 – 00:00:23:52
Michael Gewecke
Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Passenger Talk podcast today. I’m Michael Gewecke here with Clint Loveall. We’re beginning a new series here on the channel where we are talking about faith resolutions. It’s going to be a really pretty short series as far as our series go. We’re just going to have three sessions here together. We’re going to be reflecting here in a moment as we’re recording this.
00:00:24:09 – 00:00:50:11
Michael Gewecke
We’re coming into a new year, 2023, and it’s a moment in the season of that cultural cycle where people are beginning to think again about new possibilities, about resolutions that they might want to make. Of course, you have those things that might be stereotypical your foods I’m going to eat or not eat or exercise I’m going to do or practices, I’m going to weed out, you know, whatever that might be.
00:00:50:22 – 00:01:30:57
Michael Gewecke
It’s a moment in which culturally we recognize the possibility of what might be new. And as we leaned into that, Clinton, I have been having conversation about what does that look like to bring that moment and to reflect upon it from the perspective as faith people? And how might we come into this season with a new kind of openness to places in our face that we might need to make some resolutions where we might need to decide that some action needs to be put to help us add new practices in our lives, or maybe subtract some practices in our life.
00:01:31:10 – 00:01:57:48
Michael Gewecke
Maybe if we were honest, this could be a moment for us of redirection in a potential set of places. And so today, coming to that, I think we want to invite that conversation both between ourselves and those of you joining us here to, you know, what are some things that might be worth resolving to commit to as we seek to grow in our faith together?
00:01:58:10 – 00:02:23:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think we find ourselves kind of this a week into the new year. Michael Piggybacking on the cultural conversation, the change of calendar is always that moment where a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people, give some conscious thought to where they are and where they’d like to be in regard to practices or weight loss or health or some behavior that they’d like to instill or cut out of their life.
00:02:23:43 – 00:02:52:28
Clint Loveall
And I think the idea is to maybe borrow some of that language and think about what are a couple of the things Christians might resolve to do better in the coming year. What what might you and I and others who are listening, who are trying to be faithful to Jesus, seek to incorporate in our life in some meaningful way that really would be a mark of our our Christian discipleship, our Christian faith and our Christian character.
00:02:52:28 – 00:03:19:27
Clint Loveall
And obviously, that could be a big list. We could put dozens of things on that list, but we’ve thought that for the next couple of weeks, three weeks, I think we’ll just highlight one thing at a time. And in some ways maybe these are the broadest. I in the sense at least I think, Michael, that they could apply to just about everyone.
00:03:19:28 – 00:03:46:55
Clint Loveall
I think each of us could aspire in these three themes to do better. And, you know, which brings us maybe 2.1. These are things to do. Well, you know, we were just talking before we turned on the recorder here. One of the interesting things about cultural resolutions is not only do most of them fail, we know they’re going to fail.
00:03:46:55 – 00:04:11:47
Clint Loveall
People laugh about them. We joke that that the gyms are full, but they won’t be in three weeks, you know, So spiritually, it’s no different. Anything that we want to do that is worth doing, it’s going to take some work. It these things are going to demand of us some conscious thought, some reflection and some effort. They’re not the kind of things that we just say, Oh, I want to do more of this.
00:04:11:47 – 00:04:23:34
Clint Loveall
I want to be better at that. And they happen. The Christian life demands some consistent effort and these kind of themes are no exception to that.
00:04:23:51 – 00:04:57:19
Michael Gewecke
You know, Clint, that’s well said. And I would point out that I think that when we turn the chapter and we begin looking at this not from a perspective of personal health or personal betterment, but we look at this from the perspective of faith, I think what we discover is that there’s actually a lot more at stake here than whether or not you’re going to keep your gym membership, because as people of faith, when we come to the question about resolving whether we resolve to do in our practice of Christian discipleship, what we’re asking is actually deeper than just behavior.
00:04:57:34 – 00:05:17:22
Michael Gewecke
And I want to be clear that there are behaviors that Christians should inculcate. We should learn and grow in our practices of prayer. Certainly, we should learn and grow in our practices of worship, of fellowship, of service. We should learn and grow in our practices of generosity, forgiveness. Some of these will be themes we’re going to address in this series.
00:05:17:40 – 00:05:48:03
Michael Gewecke
But Clint, when we talk about the stuff that we do, it might lead us to believe that these are the things that are ultimately going to make us sort of farther down the road. They’re going to carry us down the road of faith, when in reality the perspective of faith practice is valuable, not in what is defined as the action itself, but rather what it does to our character, who we become in the process of it.
00:05:48:03 – 00:06:11:09
Michael Gewecke
And today we’re going to spend some time reflecting on generosity. And I think that’s a good example of one of these resolutions. When we think about resolving to be generous people, we’re not resolving to do that because it’s a nice idea or we’re not resolving to be generous because it’s going to help us at tax season with our contributions.
00:06:11:27 – 00:06:46:17
Michael Gewecke
Rather, we resolve to be generous because it has the power to fashion within a spirit of generosity which reflect the divine and perfect generosity of a God who sent and gave his son in the perfect act of generosity. In other words, it’s not just about the fact that we’re doing something good. It’s that that that practice and that resolution leads us to become more and more like the one who is the perfect definition of what it means to be a full, complete and perfect human.
00:06:46:17 – 00:07:16:57
Michael Gewecke
That in the resolution itself, we become more and more of a particular kind of person. And that is a fundamentally, I think, different way to view the resolution. It’s not about adding bricks on top of each other, action upon action that make us good people with scare quotes, but rather it’s as we behave and resolve in a particular behavior, that behavior opens the way or a path for us become more like the one who we are called to reflect in our lives.
00:07:17:49 – 00:07:51:34
Clint Loveall
Yeah, Michael, I think of it as a matter of sort of integration. In other words, integrating or building those traits into our discipleship. So, yes, generosity is a is a good thing. But in this conversation, generosity is specifically a Christian thing. It is a mark of Christian discipleship to be open in spirit, to be open in giftedness, to be open in gifting others it.
00:07:51:34 – 00:08:20:22
Clint Loveall
It is a bent that is to be noticeable in the Christian life, in the Christian walk. And I think as I think about it, Michael, one of the struggles that I see in the broader world around us, in faith, in, you know, it’s maybe it’s not surprising. We’ve been through a difficult season. We’ve been through a divisive season.
00:08:20:49 – 00:09:01:58
Clint Loveall
There are lots of differences of opinion and thoughts on just about everything. But I think one of the sadnesses in that is that it has been a season in which many Christians seem to regularly give evidence to a kind of smallness of spirit. A lot of anger, a lot of accusation, a lot of bitterness. And it’s not to say that those same Christians might not be very generous givers in some aspect of their life, but as you hear and witness them generosity and openness, a graciousness of spirit is not the affect.
00:09:02:09 – 00:09:36:55
Clint Loveall
It’s not what gets communicated. And, you know, I want to circle back to what we said. This is hard. This is it is work to change some of those patterns. But I think we see a regularly distressing example of on graciousness or what we might call in gratitude in in a lot of Christian circles. I don’t think it’s a thing that the church is doing particularly well right now.
00:09:36:55 – 00:09:50:04
Clint Loveall
The broader church, I don’t mean First Presbyterian, I mean Christianity in general. I think there’s a sense in which General society, if by that we mean more than the dollars we give.
00:09:50:04 – 00:09:50:22
Michael Gewecke
Right.
00:09:51:50 – 00:09:58:48
Clint Loveall
Is a struggle right now for a lot of people of faith. And I think, you know that occasions this conversation well.
00:09:58:48 – 00:10:19:17
Michael Gewecke
So, Clint, that’s one way to look at this conversation. One way to look at this conversation is a couple of pastors sitting behind a desk taking time to reflect on the importance of where we give our money. And that is important. Our resources, our physical resources are important. Jesus makes it clear that you can’t serve God and money at the same time.
00:10:19:17 – 00:10:50:16
Michael Gewecke
And one way that the church has built guide rails or guardrails in our life is to say that we should actively reflect upon and measure where we invest our physical resources because if you are attentive, you will discover that it is the propensity of the human heart to invest in things that both matter to us, and that will become to matter more and more to us as time goes on.
00:10:50:16 – 00:11:23:25
Michael Gewecke
It is remarkable, actually, if you watch to see how what on its surface is just us, you know, going to give money to a particular restaurant or us investing in a cause that matters to us, it’s fascinating how quickly we go from people who are on the sideline to putting that thing at the center of our life. There is something substantial about what we use our money for and our resources towards and the way that that impacts our deeper values and character.
00:11:23:25 – 00:11:47:47
Michael Gewecke
So on one hand, yes, that’s part of the conversation. On the other, though, let’s take a moment and reflect upon the fact that this isn’t about just financial giving. This isn’t just about our resource. This is about how we operate in the world. And you use the word, I think, instrumental to this conversation as we think about Christian generosity, we have to grapple with Christian openness, open handedness.
00:11:47:47 – 00:12:12:52
Michael Gewecke
If the closed hand, if the fist is the symbol of anger, of fighting, of discord, of strife, I think the open hand is the Christian symbol of giving, of generosity, of the letting go. And that, I think, is what is so critical, because when you restrict the conversation, Clint, to money, the letting go sounds like an appeal to we want your resources.
00:12:12:52 – 00:12:38:58
Michael Gewecke
But if you open the conversation to letting go of all of the things that clamor for our attention in our life, how we use our time, how we use our resource is where we invest all of the things that we care about in the time that we have to care about those things. If we let some of those things go for the sake of another person, we begin to discover that generosity is not fundamentally a consumerist movement.
00:12:39:25 – 00:13:00:30
Michael Gewecke
It is fundamentally a question of who we’re going to be. Are we people who are open to allow the things within our lives to be shared with others, or are we the kind of people who will hoard and gather to our self that is a question of character and identity, not fundamentally a question of what data you send to the IRS and tax season.
00:13:00:30 – 00:13:05:31
Michael Gewecke
I think that is the conversation that people of faith need to have when we think about being generous people.
00:13:06:05 – 00:13:29:00
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I’ve been fortunate to know many generous people in my life, Michael, as have you. And I think most of our listeners would be able to identify some in the thing that I think we would all be able to say is that it is exceeding only rare, maybe in fact unheard of, that they would simply be generous in one area of their life.
00:13:29:24 – 00:13:56:04
Clint Loveall
People who are generous with money are typically generous with praise. They’re typically generous with patients, they’re typically generous with time. It it is not simply enough to say, oh, that person gives a lot in this area and therefore they are generous. Generosity is bigger than that. When we talk about it from a faith perspective, when we talk about Christian generosity, we mean all of that.
00:13:56:04 – 00:14:34:13
Clint Loveall
We mean a giving spirit, we mean a a predispose position toward saying yes, toward open handedness, toward graciousness. And when we give someone something they deserve. Right. That that’s not exactly generally when the server right at the restaurant does a great job and we tip them generously. Yes, that’s gracious to some extent, but it’s not. It’s not the full extent of what we mean when we say generosity.
00:14:34:15 – 00:15:00:48
Clint Loveall
Generosity also applies and maybe particularly applies to those moments when you wouldn’t have to give someone something when they haven’t deserved it. When you’re kind to the person who you have every reason not to be kind to, when you’re patient with the person who is on your last nerve when you bite back. The word that you could justifiably point at someone with anger.
00:15:01:19 – 00:15:25:06
Clint Loveall
Those are the moments of of Christian generosity as much as, Hey, I gave a very nice donation to this or I went and spent a day and volunteered here. Those are also wonderful things, but it’s a bigger picture than I think. We often we often start with. And so maybe this thing, Michael, would be to back up and say, where do we begin?
00:15:25:06 – 00:15:42:45
Clint Loveall
In other words, the first question we encounter, why do we give? Why is it that Christians should aspire to this idea of generosity, this broad definition of what it means to be open handed and giving people? Why is that matter in the first place?
00:15:42:54 – 00:16:13:39
Michael Gewecke
So I’m going to turn to Scripture to make a case for that. I think that we see in many moments in Scripture, like the Old Testament as an example, the practices of alms giving is required. It’s expected of the people of Israel. We have been going through the Book of Exodus together and practices such as leaving a field open and allowing at some definite period of time for those who are poor to be able to go glean from it is a practice of generosity.
00:16:13:39 – 00:16:34:21
Michael Gewecke
These are ways I think we see sort of that built into the expectation for the covenant people of God. But I might be more specific than that. Turn here to the Book of Second Corinthians and to set that up. Yeah, I note that a Paul has a strange task as an apostle. I mean, Clint, he’s working with a variety of people.
00:16:34:30 – 00:17:04:20
Michael Gewecke
He’s working with Gentiles far outside Jerusalem. And in the second book of Corinthians, we see him collecting an offering to send to the church in Jerusalem. And that is strange because of the geography of it, collecting money from a wide variety and then sending it over to a place. But it’s also strange because of the racial makeup of that you have Gentiles collecting money for the sake of Jews, a different sort of concentration of the church in a different place.
00:17:04:20 – 00:17:29:50
Michael Gewecke
And here we see second Corinthians eight one that it’s connected directly in verse one to the grace of God. The grace of God has been granted to the churches of Macedonia. We move down here in verse two. There abundant joy, extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. It’s connecting those two things. I want to make the case for here that it starts with the grace of God.
00:17:30:23 – 00:17:57:35
Michael Gewecke
Because of the grace of God given to us, because we’ve received that grace, it will therefore inculcate within us like a seed that has been planted. If it’s been planted, if it’s been water, that it receives sunlight and it has the proper nutrients and conditions, it will grow. If we have received the grace of God and the spirit of God is alive, network in our hearts, then we will become generous people.
00:17:57:48 – 00:18:24:16
Michael Gewecke
How could we not? How could we not live on the receiving side of the creator of the universe and not in some fundamental character way be impacted by it? Generosity and open handedness, I would argue, is a necessary byproduct of this thing that we believe has been extended to us in Jesus Christ. And that is free gift, that that’s how we come to understand the word grace.
00:18:24:16 – 00:18:46:48
Michael Gewecke
It’s this thing given to us we didn’t earn or deserved. And so therefore, really, I want to make a very challenging case here. I don’t think that this is a thing that we get to resolve to do if we like. I don’t think that generosity is a thing of convenience. It is a thing that happens in those who have received God’s gracious gift.
00:18:46:48 – 00:19:15:39
Michael Gewecke
And that is, I think, maybe the challenging aspect of this resolution language here, Clint, because we like to think that we get to resolve. I’m not sure that that’s entirely accurate as it applies to generosity. We do resolve to put our best effort into it. Certainly we resolve to allow the spirit to work within us. But how could we be people who receive the grace of God and Jesus Christ and not be people growing in generosity?
00:19:15:39 – 00:19:40:10
Clint Loveall
Right. All of our Christian practices are rooted in and come from the practice of Christ. So all of our giving is a reflection of having first received God has been good to us. God has shown us love when we showed God, selfishness and sin and pride, God has shown us grace when we didn’t deserve it. And it is going back to that reality.
00:19:40:21 – 00:20:10:51
Clint Loveall
It is returning to that starting point over and over again. It is battling our pride, it is battling our selfishness. It is realizing over and over that God has given to us first when we didn’t earn and didn’t deserve. And that creates in us a willingness and openness, a desire to mimic that, to mirror the work of Christ for others.
00:20:10:51 – 00:20:40:35
Clint Loveall
And it’s it’s never done. If we give 10%, which is, you know, the historic idea of tithe, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t then have to be generous in other areas of our life if we have almost no money and we don’t have to give money, it doesn’t mean we don’t have to be generous. The generosity is bigger. The church is so often talked about stewardship only in regard to finances, and we have to move past that.
00:20:40:35 – 00:21:08:02
Clint Loveall
We have to get to this bigger idea that in following Christ, our goal is not simply to support Christian causes and churches financially, but to be Christians who live outwardly with our time, our talent, our treasure, who hold everything that God has given us with loose hands, ready and willing to share them and invest them in the lives of others.
00:21:09:21 – 00:21:23:40
Clint Loveall
That is a bigger, I think, more challenging. But most importantly, I think it is a more faithful idea of the goal of our our discipleship.
00:21:23:56 – 00:21:47:06
Michael Gewecke
You know, Clint, I anticipate there might be somebody joining us for this conversation and thinking to themselves, okay, I get that the idea of grace has come to me. I should be a person who practices generosity. Nice idea. And if that’s you, I think that’s a fair point. I think this conversation leads us down the road, but it doesn’t bring us to a destination.
00:21:47:06 – 00:22:13:58
Michael Gewecke
And I think that we have to at some point admit that we must begin taking steps of openness, of gratitude, of giving, of generosity if we’re going to continue to grow in the gift of it. And so I think it’s worth spending a little bit of time not providing an exhaustive dictionary by any means of what generosity and practices of generosity might look like in our life.
00:22:13:58 – 00:22:39:43
Michael Gewecke
But I do think putting some concrete ideas out there about ways that we can be more open in our lives, the way that we can practice generosity, I think, can be helpful that, you know, I’ll start us off there. I think that we do often think of generosity so much through a financial lens that think like you’ve already mentioned, of, you know, going to the restaurant and leaving a generous tip.
00:22:39:43 – 00:23:10:19
Michael Gewecke
The idea that I’m going to leave a lot of money on the table may mislead us from a far more practical Christian practice of being generous with the person who served. You know, I’ve been in moments where I’ve spoken with a variety of people who serve in restaurants, whether they be kids or adults. And I’ve heard about how some of the times and this is a challenging thought, some of the most difficult times in their experience to serve.
00:23:10:19 – 00:23:44:58
Michael Gewecke
We’re immediately following church gatherings, whether that be church conferences or Sunday services and as a pastor, as pretty convicting the thought that folks are leaving our sanctuaries, going to places of fellowship, sitting around table where their immediate response to the gracious proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ is inflexibility with the waiter is being harsh, is using difficult language, is walking away, in some cases even not leaving a generous financial tip.
00:23:44:58 – 00:24:03:19
Michael Gewecke
And I don’t mean to be critical. I don’t I don’t mean to, you know, bring a harsh lens to that client. But if we believe that generosity is all about money, we’re going to fail to see that we failed to be generous with another human being in that encounter. When we’re call this Christians to be generous in that moment, in that interaction.
00:24:03:55 – 00:24:37:30
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a lot of danger in tying the concept of Christian generosity to only our billfold, to only our wallet. You know, one could back up and ask as we made our way to the restaurant, have we ever thought about how many times do I need to go to it? What would it look like to sacrifice one of those trips a week or a month and invest it somewhere else to give it to someone?
00:24:37:30 – 00:25:22:26
Clint Loveall
To give it to an organization? What would it what would it look like to be conscious of the sort of general pattern? But to your point, Michael Yes. If we think that leaving $10 on the table means that how I acted while I was there doesn’t matter. Of course we’ve gotten it wrong. Of course we’ve been shortsighted, you know, in the same way that I used to serve a church that had a long term practice of if you made a financial contribution, you stayed on the rules of the church, I think for generations.
00:25:22:26 – 00:25:54:01
Clint Loveall
That was not unusual. The idea that you could sort of maintain a place on the active role of the church by making a financial contribution. Well, certainly those churches are grateful for those financial converts contributions. But let’s not I mean, let’s be honest, those people aren’t active members or giving giving a check once a year does not make you an active member of a church in any real sense, whether they keep you on the rolls or not.
00:25:54:18 – 00:26:21:03
Clint Loveall
That’s that’s simply not the same. And so, yeah, how how can we move toward a generosity that is bigger than one specific expression of it? And if we start financially, since that’s the most commonplace, it means intentionality. It means looking at our finances, saying, what could I shift? What could I do that would allow me to be more generous?
00:26:21:18 – 00:26:46:53
Clint Loveall
Is there a is there a is there an organization? Is there a cause that gets my attention in this season? Is there something that God might be showing me that I could invest in and maybe make a difference? Are there people I know who are trying but just aren’t catching up? They’re sort of falling behind the curve? And is there a way that I could invest in helping them?
00:26:46:53 – 00:27:25:40
Clint Loveall
I mean, I think opportunities to be generous are not in short supply. We can find them anywhere and part of that means being knowledgeable of our own ability. Part of it, I think, means to be intentional, to be cautious, to be, you know, again, growth takes some work. And if we are going to think, if, if in hearing this conversation, one of the convictions you might be hearing is I feel like I could be financially more generous then take a path that would help you get there.
00:27:26:58 – 00:27:44:45
Clint Loveall
Look at where your money is going, Look at where you’d like to be going and build a bridge between those two things for some amount of it. And you know, there are lots of ways you could get there. The main thing is that you would want to and that you would be intentional about making some of those steps.
00:27:44:45 – 00:28:10:28
Michael Gewecke
I don’t think that this is going to be too surprising, but and correct me if I if you disagree with this, but my experience has been that the Christmas season in culture, of course, but also in the church, is a season of extravagant generosity of folks will be coming in and they’ll donate an entire meal that could go to a needy family or they’ll go collect families that they can buy Christmas presents for them.
00:28:10:35 – 00:28:32:52
Michael Gewecke
There’s a lot of expressions of giving throughout the month of December, to be quite honest with you. What’s striking about this conversation is it’s not happening in December, it’s happening in January, and you’re not going to be surprised to learn that need hasn’t disappeared in the course of the last couple of weeks, that there are families who desperately need help, families who are trying really, really hard.
00:28:32:52 – 00:28:51:12
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, sometimes we feel like we can’t be generous and not that we can’t be generous. We struggle to find generosity because we don’t know where to turn or I don’t know what organization to help. I don’t know where to find those families. I don’t run across them every day. Yeah, and if that’s the case, call the church our contact information.
00:28:51:12 – 00:29:10:19
Michael Gewecke
It’s easily findable. The website is at PC Spirit dot org. You know, we can direct you to places in our own local community that do that work really, really well. There’s really no excuse for not being able to invest in people who are working and doing the very best that they can with the resources that they’ve been given.
00:29:10:44 – 00:29:37:18
Michael Gewecke
But the point is that we shouldn’t time lock the idea of generosity to a particular season. In fact, there may be no better season in the moment of resolutions. People thinking about things like health. Maybe it’s time to knock out that coffee run every day. Maybe you don’t need that $6 cup and maybe that $6 you can give daily to a cause that matters and you can do that for 12 months.
00:29:37:18 – 00:30:06:30
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the the only concrete step that you take. That is a practice of reorienting your life. So it goes away from your own benefit to the benefit of someone else. That that’s the fundamental sort of muscle of generosity is inverting our lives away from the things that benefit us to seeking to benefit others. Because once again, or connect that to the higher value, that’s what happens when people have received grace.
00:30:07:28 – 00:30:20:52
Michael Gewecke
It has to happen. You receive this gift that you did not deserve or even understand. Now we are compelled by our faith and the receiving of that gift to find new ways to do that for the sake of others.
00:30:20:52 – 00:30:49:10
Clint Loveall
Yeah, well, the true gift of generosity, Michael, is not just for those who receive it, but that for those who give it, it takes the focus off of self. When when I am generous, when I am consciously and purposefully generous with time, talent, treasure with talk, I take myself out of the center and I put the attention and focus on someone else I give to someone else.
00:30:49:28 – 00:31:20:49
Clint Loveall
I support. I encourage someone else. And the the gift in that for me as the giver is that I get to push back against my natural human instinct to put myself first all the time. And you know that that’s a wonderful practice. That becomes a spiritual practice. I think, You know, Paul comfortably talks about spirituality, generosity as a spiritual practice, and I think we can live into that.
00:31:20:49 – 00:31:47:07
Clint Loveall
So we’ve talked a little bit about finances. I think maybe as challenging as that can be, I think a more difficult one would be our language. Michael You know, I think we find ourselves, most of us, if we’re if for being honest, significantly convicted when we get to the idea of being generous with our words. And I don’t mean talking a lot.
00:31:48:41 – 00:32:25:06
Clint Loveall
I mean I mean saying things well, saying positive things, saying encouraging things and building the discipline not to add to the noise and negativity that is so prevalent and so easy to join. I think to be generous with one’s voice, with with one’s words is a particularly in our current season, a monumental challenge.
00:32:25:37 – 00:32:42:28
Michael Gewecke
So there used to be in popular Christian culture these bracelets that said WW Jedi and that stood for what would Jesus do. I’ve always thought that a very helpful bracelet would be WW J asks, What would Jesus say?
00:32:42:28 – 00:32:43:35
Clint Loveall
Or maybe what wouldn’t.
00:32:43:48 – 00:32:45:23
Michael Gewecke
Jesus Yeah, well, and that’s.
00:32:45:34 – 00:32:45:57
Clint Loveall
Either way.
00:32:45:59 – 00:33:07:28
Michael Gewecke
That’s where I was going to actually go clean is because there’s a practice I’ve heard of that I have not done myself personally, but it has resonated with me is the idea of getting some kind of thing. And it really doesn’t matter that you put on your wrist and every time you catch yourself saying something that’s not generous, you shift the thing from one risk to the other.
00:33:07:28 – 00:33:32:38
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, it’s a little bit of a simple practice, but the idea is awareness. Being aware and looking for Wait, did I just say something that was dark, something that was unnecessarily destructive, something that was not rooted in a generous spirit towards another, but rather may be in my own brokenness? If that’s the case, then that becomes a practice for you of measuring your words, of being careful about what you say.
00:33:33:10 – 00:34:02:40
Michael Gewecke
There is inherent value, and whether you do that with a thing on your wrist or at the end of the day, you just simply take into account a short journal of what was the fruit of my language today. Looking back at your conversations, did I give into Fill in the blank however you do it. Generous speech is unbelievably challenging in a moment in which speech to us culturally feels free that I get to say whatever I want to say.
00:34:02:40 – 00:34:34:28
Michael Gewecke
And as much of it as I want to say, right? I mean, any person with access to the Internet and a device can get can go and say words all day long, yet that is not by definition, measured, thoughtful, generous speech. Just because there’s a large quantity does not mean that it came from a centered Christlike heart. And I do think that there is substantial Christian tradition around reframing our words.
00:34:34:28 – 00:35:07:10
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, this is not in vogue today, but the historic practice of the church, learning to speak in wholesome, open, generous ways has been to pray and speak the Psalms. I mean, it’s literally been to turn to words of Scripture and to make that the fruit of our spirit in our soul. So, you know, maybe that is your practice of generosity, is to bring the scripture inside your life, in your heart, in a new, consistent, resolved way so that that might flow out of you into the coming year.
00:35:07:22 – 00:35:16:42
Michael Gewecke
There are many ways to frame that spiritual practice. I think the matter is to identify what resonates where the spirit might lead you and then commit to do.
00:35:17:29 – 00:35:42:55
Clint Loveall
This is an interesting one, Michael, because part of what it means to be generous with words will often lead us to not say something. Yeah, not join in criticism to be the place where gossip ends, to not pass along the juicy tidbit to to refuse. Use the opportunity to say something negative or to talk about someone behind their back or to pass on that.
00:35:42:55 – 00:36:13:30
Clint Loveall
That thing that you heard. That part of generosity in regard to our language is not only what we say and how we say it, but what we don’t say, what we refuse to say. And if you’ve ever if you’ve ever had the experience of trying to complain to a gracious person, to a generous person, it’s maddening because you you so desperately want them to join you on the dark side and they and they won’t do it, you know, Oh, that person.
00:36:13:30 – 00:36:25:03
Clint Loveall
And they say, well, yeah, that person’s had a hard life. Yeah. But they did, you know that they did. Well, no, I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but I know that they’ve done some really good things, you know, and they and you just so much want to.
00:36:25:03 – 00:36:26:54
Michael Gewecke
Grab them, come playing with me.
00:36:26:56 – 00:37:07:22
Clint Loveall
Bring them over and and they, they refuse. They have built a kind of shield. Yeah. That protects them from that. And I, I aspire to that. I’m, I’m motivated by that. I’m moved by that. I’m not always very good at it, but I, I find it I find it terribly sometimes maddeningly encouraging and inspiring to, to, to interact with Christians who have built that kind of discipline and that kind of gentle prosody in how they do and don’t speak.
00:37:07:22 – 00:37:10:29
Clint Loveall
And I think there’s a great lesson in that for the rest of us.
00:37:10:30 – 00:37:31:57
Michael Gewecke
Agree completely. I think one of the dangers of talking about generosity is that we choose the forms of generosity that our comfortable for us, you know, say like, I’d love to give more money a cause. And that just so happens to get published in the newspaper. I’d love to be, you know, more generous of my word so that people are happy with me or whatever it might be.
00:37:32:09 – 00:37:59:22
Michael Gewecke
I’ve got another moment or place where generosity might work on us as Christians. I’m going to admit to you, I think for most of us, it’s a pretty challenging place. We could practice in the coming year being generous and patient people. It is very hard to be generous with patients and the reality is that we live in a quick culture.
00:37:59:22 – 00:38:26:25
Michael Gewecke
We live in fast moving times. We all know that we don’t need to talk about it. But one of the Christian practices of having a large amount of flexibility and openness and ability to hold other people’s difficulty and their brokenness and their struggles, quite frankly, I patients with others includes empathy, the ability to say, Yeah, I don’t know why they did that or said that.
00:38:26:25 – 00:38:45:28
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know why. This person radically different from me is saying these things, but yet, you know, Jesus has been patient with me. I need to be patient with others. I need to be slow to speak in the circumstance that I need to be willing to slow down and to let the thing play out before I make judgments or I say the thing.
00:38:46:10 – 00:39:00:41
Michael Gewecke
If we were people who walked into the season and said, you know, I should have the kind of quantity of patients in my spirit that I can be generous with, with others, or that’s going to take more than a year to resolve to do.
00:39:00:43 – 00:39:34:08
Clint Loveall
Clint Yeah, patience. At some level, Michael, is a willingness not to have things my own way, or at least a willingness to wait for things to possibly be the way that I want them to be. And it again, is, is it is a discipline of moving self out of the center and allowing the grace of Christ to be in the middle of who we are trying to and aspiring to be.
00:39:34:08 – 00:40:02:52
Clint Loveall
And it is exceedingly difficult for many of us there. There are those wonderfully blessed people who are right almost by nature, patient. They’re they’re gracious. Now, I don’t want to say that that’s genetic because that undervalues the work that it took and the experience it took for them to get there. But there are people, I think, for whom patience is a kind of natural language.
00:40:02:52 – 00:40:40:24
Clint Loveall
It’s a home base in a way, either through training or through nature. For the rest of us, it’s like trying to wrestle a greased pig on a boat in the middle of a hurricane, and we so often get ahead of ourselves, we so often get ahead of others. We live at about 90% frustrated and just can can snap over and easily on the on the littlest things.
00:40:40:24 – 00:41:14:20
Clint Loveall
And so how is it that we can become more generous with our patients? How is it that we can be more accepting of people in our difference and our opinions and their mistakes, more tolerant of the ways in which we bump into each other? I think, you know, that is that is a monumental challenge for Christians and we often fail at it.
00:41:15:21 – 00:42:05:58
Clint Loveall
When we fail, unfortunately, it usually hurts our witness when Christians witness snap, when Christians become publicly impatient, when when Christians attack other people or other Christians, it never helps us communicate the grace of Jesus Christ. And so there is, I think, a huge challenge for us to spend some time and thought and prayer as to how might I let the grace of Christ lengthen my fuze and temper my impatience in a way that has a real affect not only for me internally, but then because it affects me internally, it affects other people as well.
00:42:06:09 – 00:42:27:27
Michael Gewecke
And you know what’s different as we try to practice being people who are generous with our patients, but other people, what’s different is you don’t really need to resolve to give your money differently or to do something differently because the reality of patients is we are each by definition of life, giving opportunities to practice patients every single day.
00:42:27:27 – 00:43:00:07
Michael Gewecke
You don’t need to go looking for those moments. They will come naturally. The question as it comes to resolving to become people who are generous in our patience and capacity to be open with other people yet through difficult, long suffering type circumstances is not that we need to seek out those situations. It’s that we need to be mindful and to see the situations that naturally come into our life and to recognize them as opportunities to practice that muscle and to grow in that capacity.
00:43:00:07 – 00:43:33:12
Michael Gewecke
And I think that is one of the reasons why patience is such a struggle, is because we don’t get to set the terms of engagement. We don’t get to define when we practice it. By definition, we’re practicing it in some of the most difficult circumstances. And so, you know, maybe Clint, this is the point of the conversation where I confess, I think that as we come to talk about resolutions from the perspective of faith, we need to make it clear that this isn’t just a conversation of willpower.
00:43:33:28 – 00:44:09:07
Michael Gewecke
It’s not just a conversation about you doing better today and tomorrow and the day after. No, this is a conversation about you having a moment of prayer and thoughtful reflection and say, God, I know I need your help today. I know that I need your eyes to see this circumstance as an opportunity and not as a struggle. I know that I need the power of your spirit working within me, transforming me, even saving me this day from my worst instinct to become a person with enough goodness that it flows over.
00:44:09:07 – 00:44:36:37
Michael Gewecke
It can be generous with those that surround me. This is where the conversation, I think, you know, coming somewhat to resolution, we find that this has never been about, Can I just give more stuff out? It’s can I become the kind of person who is overflowing cup runneth over is the scriptural language that I cannot contain the goodness so that it is generous with other that is who Jesus Christ is.
00:44:36:54 – 00:45:01:49
Michael Gewecke
Goodness incarnate, so that there is nothing but overflowing to the world around. And that is what a Christian who is overflowing with the grace of Jesus Christ will look like in the world. And however you seek to practice that muscle in this day or the coming days, you know, fundamentally, it’s not practicing doing, it’s practicing the becoming. And I think that’s essential.
00:45:01:49 – 00:45:03:12
Michael Gewecke
That’s an essential difference.
00:45:03:46 – 00:45:25:49
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And in certainly that’s not something, Michael, that we can do on our own. It’s also not something that we can do all at once. Just as the person who resolves to lose weight has to start by the tending to one meal or eating a little less on one day. The person who needs to get in shape needs to get up and go for a walk.
00:45:26:04 – 00:45:53:49
Clint Loveall
The first day. You know, there is growth that will happen. And so that that may look like, Lord, this certain person drives me insane. But today I’m not going to complain about that. I may still feel some of that frustration. I may still want to let it out. But today my goal is that that negative word is not going to escape my lip.
00:45:53:49 – 00:46:25:57
Clint Loveall
Not to them, not to anyone else, not even to no one else. I’m not going to say that today. That’s going to be my first tiny step toward getting a rain on my tongue and becoming a more generous person with my words. Maybe it’s I’m going to you mention the coffee, Michael, on one day a week, I’m going to skip the coffee run and I’m going to drop that off at Upper Des Moines or Discovery House or wherever it is where you live that might be doing good work.
00:46:25:57 – 00:46:58:55
Clint Loveall
And that’s that’s where I’m going to start. Don’t think that you have to get from where we are to st in what it doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. What can happen is that we allow Jesus to guide our steps one small halting step at a time so that hopefully we begin to make progress in this area. And I think if we could do that, I don’t know, Michael, of it as I consider Christianity as a whole.
00:46:58:55 – 00:47:44:51
Clint Loveall
And if we want to talk about Christians, the church, we could say, well, I’m not sure I can think of something that I think would make a bigger impact quicker on the world than if more of us as Christian people could be more genuinely generous. I think the affect that could have on our communities, our congregations, our homes, our businesses, our work environments, I, I think if Christians could do more of this and there there’s lots of work for Christians to do, but I think this is one that can move the needle substantially and actually fairly quickly.
00:47:44:51 – 00:48:05:06
Clint Loveall
And I think it could validate our witness to a great extent if people heard from us and saw in us the grace of Christ through our through our giving ness, our open handedness more often. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I think so.
00:48:05:06 – 00:48:33:10
Michael Gewecke
I think, though, Clint, what’s interesting about that is it’s not a weird subverted evangelistic tool. You don’t fake generosity and therefore, you know, trick people in. But I do want to say and maybe you disagree with this, you know, there could be times when you don’t feel generous and maybe the goal in that circumstance is fake it till you make it.
00:48:33:10 – 00:48:38:11
Michael Gewecke
I mean, if that’s all you’ve got today is to fake generosity, then fake it. I mean, be generous.
00:48:38:43 – 00:48:41:15
Clint Loveall
But be silent, all right? I mean, or do nothing.
00:48:41:19 – 00:48:42:27
Michael Gewecke
At the end of the day.
00:48:42:27 – 00:48:44:29
Clint Loveall
Here, instead of going down the hill.
00:48:44:29 – 00:49:15:12
Michael Gewecke
Right at the end of the day, it is God’s work in our life that will transform the heart. We don’t do that. And what we do is we wake up and we invite God by the power of the Spirit to work through our hands and feet. And so, however you find today the opportunity to practice generosity, my hope for you, as you’ll see it, number one, you’ll see it as an opportunity because that’s the first hurdle.
00:49:15:21 – 00:49:38:54
Michael Gewecke
If we make it our way through a whole day and we never see the opportunities for generosity before us, we never get to choose to do it. So I hope for you that you will. You will find ways and practices to see the moments where generosity is open and possible for you. And then my hope is that all of us will make the choice, that we will invite the spirit to work through us.
00:49:39:09 – 00:50:10:37
Michael Gewecke
That even if that in the small way of biting our tongue, to not say the word out of generosity, to practice patience with a spouse, with a child, with a coworker, with a troubled family member, whatever the case might be, if we could practice being generous with that person, if we can give today something that we own or something that we possess for the sake of someone else’s betterment, whatever it will look like, if we can resolve and then do these practices of being generous, I think you’re exactly right, Clint.
00:50:10:49 – 00:50:41:04
Michael Gewecke
What will be accomplished is both a growing sense of our identity as children of grace, but also and substance initially a confirmation of our witness that we are we are people who are who have received grace and that then can point others to the source of that grace, which is incredible, that a gift can both remake our hearts for good and it can invite another person to receive that same gift for themself.
00:50:41:11 – 00:50:54:39
Michael Gewecke
It’s literally everyone can have their cake and eat it too. It is one of those few things where it’s good upon good, but it does demand the work of resolving and doing and opening ourself to that process.
00:50:55:01 – 00:51:31:33
Clint Loveall
Absolutely. And if you’ve been listening to this and you feel challenged, you feel convicted in some area that that there are opportunities in your own life to increase in practice. This idea of Christian generosity, then we would encourage you to begin doing some of the work, begin doing some of the reflecting, some of the planning, some of the praying, look for some concrete to express this kind of this kind of intangible thing, this spirit of having received so wanting to give.
00:51:31:33 – 00:51:51:19
Clint Loveall
And I write it down if you need to, if you have questions that come out of this conversation, by all means, reach out to us, let us know, send us an email, whatever that looks like. We’d love to continue the conversation. Glad that you’re a part of this one. Hope that you can join us as we move on to another challenging topic next week.
00:51:51:36 – 00:51:54:14
Michael Gewecke
Thanks so much for staying time. We’ll see you next week.
00:51:54:14 – 00:52:15:39
Clint Loveall
Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast. We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have, lots of things you can listen to. We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing, and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.
00:52:15:55 – 00:52:34:48
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.
00:52:35:00 – 00:53:08:25
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you. If you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube.com slash AFP Spirit Lake. There you can comment and engage with us or if you would prefer to do that without going to YouTube, you can actually just click the link in the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.
00:53:08:38 – 00:53:25:39
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.