Open Hands | Unhindered

Hey, welcome back, friends.
The Pastor Talk podcast,
as we go through our series on kind
of spiritual health and some thoughts on assessing our spiritual health,
some thoughts on thinking
through some of the themes and categories of what we mean when we talk about our spiritual
life.
And I think a fun conversation today, Michael.
This is one that I think is a challenge
for all of us,
a good goal for us to try and live into the ways in which Christians practice
generosity.
And I don’t want to mistake that with stewardship.
There is an aspect of stewardship to
this, and we’ll talk about that.
But I think far bigger the idea of just how following Christ
compels us and encourages us to be the kind of people who are good givers,
who are generous people, who have a bent toward openness and positivity,
and the kind of things that we
hope to enact in our life.
And I think there’s a lot for us here to learn,
to be challenged by,
and certainly a great goal to pursue.
Yeah, certainly a theme that we’ve come back to
a few times here in this beginning conversation.
We’ve talked a little bit about that New Year’s
goal kind of mentality,
starting fresh, thinking about our goals.
And one of the few goals that I
don’t hear very often is my goal is to give more,
is to be more open-handed,
is to be more generous
in the way that I’m engaging with the world.
And that’s really a shame.
I think it’s a reflection
of, you know, in many ways, I want to eat right,
I want to get more healthy,
I want to hit those
health goals or work goals or productivity kinds of goals.
I think those things are tempting because
they really reach out to us and they call us into what could be best for us.
In going down that road,
we inevitably miss what is one of the most compelling notes of the gospel,
that the only way
to experience a full life,
an eternal life, is actually language that we use in the Christian
faith.
But we mean in that not just a length of time,
we mean that in the breadth of experience.
If we’re going to have a full life in Jesus Christ,
we are going to have to be people who learn to give.
Because as Jesus came,
he revealed for us what it looks like to be people in the way of
God.
That is people who give up their very lives.
Jesus gave himself for us by taking on flesh,
by going to the cross,
by even going to the deepest parts of the earth we’re told in the creed.
And in doing so,
we begin to learn that the way of God is one of self-giving,
is one of letting go.
And in that process,
we discover the kind of life that we would have sought in all these other
means.
So in many ways,
this is a fundamental conversation.
In many other ways,
we’re not very quick to find it.
I think that’s a helpful word,
Michael.
When we look at the person in life of
Jesus Christ, when we examine what it is about Jesus that is moving,
that is inspirational, we see this kind of orientation toward others.
Jesus lives a kind of outwardly focused life he is giving.
He gives of himself,
ultimately on the cross.
But he heals people.
He gives of his
time.
He gives of his talent.
He gives of himself.
And we see in that a paradigm that challenges
Christians to move those directions.
And I think as we move through this conversation,
we will likely touch on lots of areas in which we can give.
Time, talent, treasure.
There are lots of ways that Christians can practice generosity.
What I think we should hear,
though, as caution is that it is very rare that a person is selectively generous.
We tend to either live
into that or live away from it.
It is very unusual that you find a person who is gracious with their
praise and their encouragement,
but selfish with their possessions,
or who is generous with their
possessions, but selfish with their time.
It tends to be kind of all-encompassing.
It tends to be that we are outwardly oriented or inwardly oriented.
And I think as we look to Jesus’ example,
we see clearly a bent toward and an affirmation of being outwardly focused and being able to give
in various ways in that direction.
Yeah,
Clint, that is a good word.
I think it is hard for most
of us because we generally live with this sense that if but I could make it to this day
or to this salary number or if I could live to my retirement point,
then suddenly the gates will
open and I’ll be able to do all these things.
And I think there’s an inherent temptation
in this story that we tell ourselves that we are being inhibited from giving because of this
barrier.
And when this barrier is removed,
everything will change.
That is, in my experience,
generally not the case.
There’s generally no barrier that exists in our life that is restricting
us from living with our hands open.
Rather,
we have come to accept that there are some things
that frustrate us or that we’re unwilling to move beyond or there’s some habits that we’re unwilling
to address or there’s aspects of our faith that we’re, quite frankly,
simply not ready yet to
really live into the full breadth of what it might mean in our personal life.
And those are somewhat
hard words.
I’m going to admit to you that there’s a level in which we enter into some self-reflective
honesty and say there are barriers to my practicing the faith as I saw it lived out in the life of Jesus Christ.
And Clint,
there’s going to be challenge in a conversation like this.
And unfortunately,
maybe our minds turn first to that word stewardship,
the idea of, you know, giving financially.
But realistically, I think we’re going to find challenge at every turn
because giving is difficult not because of its monetary nature when you think of money.
It’s difficult because it requires a letting go of control.
It requires a willingness to trust that
God is alive and active in our lives.
And faith is a simple word to use in church,
easy to think that we all understand it,
though we really don’t.
And incredibly difficult to live lives
filled with faith and trust in God.
And that’s what’s at stake in this question of gratitude.
Are we willing to trust that when God says,
“I will take care of you,” that God will do so?
Right.
And I do think there’s good news in that,
Michael, in that, again,
the various aspects of our life in which we can be and should be generous are connected.
And what that often means practically is that if we make some progress in one area,
we might find ourselves
better able to be generous in giving across the board.
And so it is often the case that if we can
find an area and make a concerted effort to grow into some gracious giving in that area of our life,
we might find it easier to do that across the board as well in other areas of our life.
If we become more generous with our finances,
we might find that it’s easier also to give our time.
If we become more encouraging with our words,
it may be easier to let go of money if that’s been a struggle,
make donations to things, and give charitably.
So I do think one of the benefits
of a conversation like this is that it does tend to color all of the water in our life.
When we practice generosity, it has a kind of way of lifting up all the various aspects that we want it to be involved with.
So I think maybe one note here before we move forward is just to recognize
the real breadth of generosity that Christians are called to and the breadth that we’ve seen in the church historically.
So you know maybe to just name it right at the start,
yes we are called to be
generous with our stuff,
with the physical things that we’ve been entrusted with.
The word used often
in scripture is the things that we’ve been made stewards of.
In other words,
not the things that
we possess and control,
but rather the things that we are holding for God.
The things that we
have been made the caretakers of.
These things we are called to use well in the world in which we live.
Some of us are tempted by the stuff.
Some of us are controlled by what the stuff makes possible
for us.
Some of us are tempted by what this stuff means when other people see it.
There’s lots of ways in which the stuff itself becomes a fixation for us.
But really the call of scripture is beyond all of that.
The scriptures don’t really care that much about our stuff.
I mean Jesus teaches about
how we should store up our treasure where the moth and rust destroy.
Where the physical nature
of the world is ultimately going to bring everything to naught.
But what Jesus does
say matters is that we store up in those things that do matter.
So there’s a realigning of really
transformational sort of understanding that it’s not the stuff itself that’s good or bad.
There’s not a kind of moralism related to the things of the world,
but rather a recognizing that we’re
called to do something with those things.
That those should exist for a greater purpose.
Which is now speaking to this idea of open hands.
Everyone knows the difference between a hammer
that gets used to build a house and a hammer that gets used destructively.
It’s not the tool,
it’s the way in which it is used.
And for each of us we have an account to give.
With the things that we’ve been given,
whatever they are, regardless of what we would like to think about them,
how they are being used is a question that needs asked.
And as we reflect upon that, upon our stuff,
it opens the gateway like you were saying Clint,
to other conversations beyond the stuff itself.
Right.
I want to say this on the front end.
I don’t think you can have a realistic conversation
in the faith about generosity,
graciousness, and giving,
and not talk money.
Having said that,
I think the church has often been guilty of primarily talking about money and not branching
out into that larger discourse about how generosity colors all of our lives.
How does generosity, how does graciousness affect how we speak toward others,
how we manage our time,
how we support agencies and organizations.
In other words, the church sometimes in the pursuit of
stewardship has really been guilty of painting a picture in which stewardship is primarily
almost exclusively at sometimes financial giving.
And we just want to recognize on the
outset that that has happened,
but that’s not a complete picture.
That’s not a good summary
of graciousness, of generosity.
We mean far more than that.
Yes, that is a part of that,
an inescapable part of that.
That has to be in the mix somewhere.
But what we want to do in this
conversation is really have a larger talk about how else should Christians practice generosity,
and how is it a struggle in other areas rather than simply financial for us to be giving and generous people.
Right, so we discover that in lots of different places.
Of course, how we use our time is a reflection of what we’ve made decisions about in terms of prioritizing
what things in our life matter most.
And I want to be careful here.
There’s a little bit of like a
cultural stereotype maybe here, right?
Like family and friends,
and we put these things on our wall
and decorations, and there’s kind of a popular sentiment to it.
I don’t mean that kind of like
good feeling kind of thing.
I mean,
really giving an account for our time.
How often do we literally
throw time away?
We actually say I’ve been wasting away my afternoon.
How often do Christians find
themselves taking a resource that’s been given to them time and using that for something that has
no earthly good, right?
And fundamentally, it’s okay.
I’m not anti-entertainment or anything like that.
But the ancient Christians had language to talk about wastefulness and the ways in which
we get tempted by just essentially falling into the sin of self-gratification.
And we begin to
lose a sense for the importance for making time count,
making decisions about how we’ll use it.
Some of that looks like setting within our day moments and pillars and anchors that for us become
reminders of the spiritual truth around us.
Maybe that’s prayers in the morning.
Maybe that’s prayers in the afternoon or reading a devotional at a certain time of day.
Maybe that’s setting an alarm so that thing happens.
There are many ways to do it.
But to think that time is a
precious resource that Christians must give an account of how we use it.
And sometimes I think we’re tempted,
Michael, to think particularly in the way of generosity that giving should always
feel good and that those good feelings are a sort of indicator that we’re doing it right.
And the truth is that generosity,
like any spiritual practice, is a discipline.
It is at times a thing
that we push ourselves to do.
You know, those who know me know that I’m a cyclist.
And there have been many, many days I didn’t feel like going on a bike ride,
but I can’t remember a day I was ever
sorry that I went.
And the same might be true in regards to our stewardship, our giving.
We may think, oh, I could make this donation,
but I’d really rather buy a book or go out to eat or
whatever.
But I set this goal for myself.
So I’m going to do that.
Oh, my neighbor called and they
could use some help at their house.
Their yard needs mowed and they’re laid up.
I don’t really want to go do it.
Sometimes that’s a thing that we have to live into.
And again,
I think we will
often find on the backside of it that we’re glad that we did, that we benefited,
and that it felt
good to help someone and to give of ourselves and our time and our talent and our treasure
in a way that benefited another.
But it’s not always,
the path there is not always
because I want to.
And I think that’s important.
This is work.
All spiritual growth at some point
is going to take a little effort on our part and giving something we might not want initially to
give is going to be a part of the process sooner or later.
We can all imagine.
Now we would confess
that this doesn’t happen very often,
but we can at least imagine the idea of giving to another
person who we know has need,
who’s a good person and we like,
or at least what we’re fine with, right?
But the challenge goes far deeper,
right? Jesus didn’t just say love those who look like,
act like, and vote like you, right?
Jesus calls us to love even our enemies.
And fundamentally,
giving is a very progressive spiritual gift,
right?
When you think you start to get better
at one stage, you discover there’s an infinite number of stages far ahead of you.
And it gets even more complicated as we work our way into situations where we realize we’re called to give, yes,
even to fill in the blank,
whoever that person is.
I can’t name them for you,
but if there’s a
person who comes to mind,
that’s the person who you’re called to love and in some measure to give.
Now,
obviously we have to be realistic about this and you don’t give to an addict something or
someone who’s going to be a problem,
right?
We don’t put people in positions where they’re
going to hurt themselves.
Let’s be realistic here.
But fundamentally,
we find some really
complicated and in some ways even laughable sort of mind games that convince us,
well, I don’t need to give to that cause or to this person because of this or this or this or what
if this happened or what this happened.
We as Christians have to ultimately come to grips with.
We’ve been called to give because of the one who gave to us.
The gift given to us was grace.
It was free.
We didn’t earn it.
Jesus didn’t come and set a 10-part plan that we followed perfectly
and then we earned the gift that he gave us.
No,
Jesus gave ahead of everything else.
And that is the kind of spiritual practice that is behind our faulting,
our sort of stutter step human practicing
that we do with gratitude.
We’re not going to hit that bar.
We’re not going to give as Jesus gave,
but that is the thing that animates our spiritual and physical practices.
We seek to be generous as he was.
And that means that we need to also practice being gracious as he was.
There’s a wonderful story of a pastor who went on to be really well known and whatever “successful”
means as a pastor,
but in his first church,
they had an account that was labeled “discretionary” and
it had $100 in it.
And as he told the story,
he asked about it and they told him,
“Pastor, that’s for anybody who has need,
but the need cannot be because of mismanagement,
moral mistakes,
bad choices,
or bad mistakes.” And then as he told the story, he said,
“As far as I know,
they still have that $100.” And giving will ask some of those choices of us.
So let’s talk about the assessment,
Michael.
And I think this is going to be one of the
sessions where it may be helpful to literally have this in front of you as we go through this.
So if you haven’t downloaded that yet,
if you don’t have access to it,
we’ll give you a moment,
maybe pause the video, find it online, if you can print it out,
or if there’s any way you can have this as
we work through this,
I think it may be helpful for you.
But there are some questions here and
the idea is that they’ll sort of help us flesh out how are we doing in some of the various ways
that we can practice generosity?
Yeah, so let’s just start right at the top here.
You’re going to see
that we have a once again scale of one to five here.
And we’re asking really questions about our
own temperament.
So it starts here,
do you consider yourself generally pretty optimistic?
And then we asked one would be,
“Yeah, I’m optimistic all the time.” And five would be,
“Yeah, no, not really.” And we’re asking you to reflect on,
you know,
not a kind of interplay here really honestly between,
you know, “Well, I’m a glass half full kind of person and the world’s always rosy.” But rather
more of your constitutional temperament,
rather, you know, like when you look at a situation,
is your bias generally to negativity?
Is your bias generally to opportunity?
When you see other people,
do you generally see a problem and not the gift of another being made in the image of God?
That’s the kind of first note that we have here, Claire.
Yeah, if we were going to use
theological language for optimism and pessimism,
we might use words like hopefulness and fearfulness.
You know, in other words,
what do you expect in a given situation?
Do you expect that things may go well?
Or do you expect that they won’t?
And the reason that I think that matters,
there’s probably nothing inherently right or wrong about that bit.
You may be a person who is a little more cautious.
But I do think it has an impact on a conversation like generosity.
I think if we find ourselves
to live on the more pessimistic side of the scale,
it may then be harder to practice a kind of
open-handedness in terms of giving time and talent, encouragement,
praise.
It just may mean
that that’s a little bit more of a struggle than for those who tend to live on the positive side of the fence.
Yeah, it’s a interesting conversation to have,
you know, when your neighbor comes over,
knocks on the door,
is your first assumption,
they ran out of flour again,
or that they’re bringing you cookies, right?
It’s a very different orientation to the world when we expect negative
to come out of places.
Because if we’re going to live open-handedly,
then we need to be willing to
not only trust God who’s going to work,
but trust God to work that in real human relationships.
And we’ve all been let down by people,
right?
There’s a kind of realism to living in the world.
It’s okay to be realistic,
but if we’re going to be generous,
it’s going to require some willingness
to live outside of our own control.
And that means even expecting good of others,
even in circumstances where that may not necessarily fit.
I’m always very impressed by the people in my life
who, where I see interruptions,
they see opportunities,
and I aspire to learn from them.
And I think this helps us maybe get some sense of focus on where we might fall on that scale.
So, as does the next question,
again, a kind of orientation question.
I catch myself worrying often.
In other words,
am I an anxious person?
Am I a person that’s prone to worry about things
that may or may not necessarily be accurate,
may or may not be actually going to happen,
but where do I live on that scale?
So one would be,
I worry a great deal.
I spend a lot of time worrying,
and five would be not so much.
And again,
there are, I’m sure,
anxious people who are generous,
but as a rule,
those things often don’t go together.
They tend, they tend to be opposed to
one another, in my experience.
Yeah, I want to emphasize that,
that it is very difficult to live
with an anxious heart and to embody the kind of gratitude and generosity that all of us as Christians
would aspire to have.
It is very hard to be motivated in a world where anxiety is the first
turn to be willing to recognize the abundance of your own life.
And no one who believes that
there’s not enough food will share food with someone else.
That would be an unreasonable thing.
Humans, we’re built with this desire to continue to outlast,
to survive, to sort of make our own fences.
It’s amazing how quickly we make fences in our own yards,
right?
To make boundaries, to create territory.
And the reality is,
if we’re going to be the kind of people who
live in the way of Jesus,
we have to,
in the very vein of Matthew 6,
be willing to trust the God who
takes care of the flowers of the field,
the God who cares for the burdens of the air,
who aren’t even named,
aren’t even seen most of the time,
that God will also care for us.
That anxiety for us would reveal a place where we could spend some time as we’re engaging with our life of faith,
seeking to trust God more.
Because if we have high anxiety,
the odds are it’s going to be
paired with a low willingness to give generously.
In fact, Michael, and I’m not sure if you disagree
with this, let me know.
But I think I might say if you are a one, if you identify,
I spend a lot
of time being anxious,
I would encourage you to listen to the rest of this conversation, certainly.
But working on generosity might not be the place to start for you,
though I think learning to give
will be a part of the growth.
But I think really,
in that case,
you’re not trying to grow in terms of giving.
I think a prior commitment for you would be to think about and wrestle with anxiety,
to think about things like joy,
to think about things like security and confidence.
And I think in some ways,
while you can benefit from this conversation,
if you tell me you are a very
anxious person, I don’t think this is the place you start.
I think that is a prior struggle
that is going to need some attention before you’re really ready to move into this aspect
of gratitude and giving.
I feel like the anxiety conversation may need to happen first.
Yeah, I think it’s really well said,
Clint.
I think it does in many ways jump into our next statement here.
I’m very good at expressing thanks and gratitude.
And so what I find
interesting about this is it’s explicitly labeled at expressing.
And expression is most often words, not always.
Clearly, we have ways of expressing gratitude that don’t use words.
But I have a
daughter who I love very much,
who is very good at words.
She speaks all of the time.
And what’s striking to me about having her in my life is in many ways,
it’s pretty easy to catch what is on
her mind, sort of the state of her little heart.
Because if she had a great day at school,
it’s a thousand words like a machine gun about unicorns and rainbows and happy and snacks.
And I can’t wait to do the next thing.
And my friends are so great.
And on the day that’s been hard,
and things with the teacher didn’t go well,
and friends didn’t go like she had wanted at recess,
it’s all negative.
It’s no one loves me.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in my life.
My family never wants to do stuff with me.
It’s exaggerated to the other end.
The same number of words,
but just exactly opposite in their expression.
And what we say,
and how we express ourselves to other people,
catching that moment in which we find ourselves turn,
and we say something that is really dark,
or really sad, or we were reflecting on a situation we think, oh my goodness,
I guess I didn’t feel that strongly
about this until I heard myself say it.
Those are really instructive moments.
So if you find yourself
expressing thanks and gratitude,
if you say, yeah, that happens quite a bit,
that’s a one for me.
That’s a helpful sign.
If you’re on the other side of that equation,
say, I haven’t expressed much gratitude.
I haven’t expressed thanks for much recently.
That’s a very good spiritual marker
of a place where we may need to do some self-care, some self-work.
I like that the word expressing
connects the inner and outer conversation.
We may feel grateful,
but it is in learning to share it
with others, I think, that we really have an opportunity to grow.
You know, I have a former
coworker that I used to work with in Texas,
and she is, for me, the epitome of graciousness.
She would invite us over to her home.
She would cook dinner,
wonderful dinner.
She was incredible at practicing hospitality.
We would have a beautiful,
wonderful meal.
She would make dessert.
We would go home,
and within a few days,
we would get a card from her thanking us for our time and
coming over to her house.
And it was just,
it was almost crushing, like, well,
how kind can you be?
I mean, but for her, it was just this natural connection to what she felt and what she did,
what she said, what she’s expressed.
I live on the other side of that fence where
we’re constantly having the conversation of, oh,
we should have sent a card.
Oh,
I wish we had done this.
And so one of my constant practices in trying to improve
is the expressing part.
I think I often feel it.
I think I often recognize it,
but learning to put it into action is an important step.
And again, the more that we do that,
the more we provide a blessing for others,
and I think the more that we live into our
own gratitude as well.
So the next question here is actually very practical,
and this is maybe one
of the most common sort of touch points for lots of folks,
and I think it’s helpful in that.
I tend to be a generous giver and tipper.
And the first giver,
I think, could be very broad.
We could think about that while I give to my church.
I give to Kiwanis.
I give to the local nonprofit.
I give to the local ministry.
We might think of lots of ways in which we give.
But to also think
of that giving as an extension of what you do after you ate at the restaurant.
Did you tip the person who served you?
This gets very practical very quickly,
and maybe for some
of us a little uncomfortable.
Unfortunately,
Clint,
is a little bit of a reputation surrounding
Christians, and it’s not always very good as it relates to our generosity.
I know many, many people in the food industry who I think are trustworthy people,
and they often tell me that when they have worked during conferences that were specifically Christian,
they find that Christians are not good tippers,
that they often feel sort of shorted by people.
Sometimes people who will not even tip at all but write a note about
praying for you instead or something along those lines.
And I like to think that’s the
exception rather than the rule.
But when it comes to that most practical and common
form of giving,
Christians often don’t have a very good reputation.
Yeah, I mean, it is striking that we might even have that associated with Christians in our
gatherings, that that would go together should bring some cause for trouble for,
I think, all of us.
Because ultimately,
remember,
we see this all throughout scripture,
Jesus calls us how you treat the least matters.
And no one believes that the food service industry,
that the waitress is at
the highest end of the pay scale,
right.
So to whatever extent,
we as Christians can make real
and meaningful generous contributions.
I mean, that matters.
And it matters not just for what
it might look like to other people.
It matters because that’s a reflection and opportunity for
us to show others that we are not only grateful for their time and services,
it’s a service and a giving exchange.
But it’s also an opportunity for us to practice once again,
living open-handedly that if we have the resources to go out,
then we by far,
and that’s an enriching experience for us,
then for sure we have the resource to give to this individual who was there to do the work.
And that is a beautiful kind of synergy and opportunity to regularly practice this thing that we’re talking
about.
Yeah, it’s a small thing.
And we certainly wouldn’t want to make it more than that.
But it is a place where we have an opportunity to sort of land on the generous side of the fence.
And I think hopefully we take advantage of that sometimes.
That sort of points us towards our next question here, Michael.
I’m concerned about money often.
Now,
many of us have probably had an experience
of living through a season of,
or more than one season of our lives,
where we struggled to have
enough to meet our obligations.
And those are very stressful times.
And there are times when
our practicing of stewardship looks like paying our bills and taking care of our debt and doing those things.
However,
I think any person who has endeavored to grow spiritually will tell us
that if we spend an inordinate amount of our time and energy on our concern over physical possessions and money,
we are likely not headed in a direction of generosity.
Worrying about money,
obsessing over money is not a path to gracious giving for the vast majority of us.
And I might even say for none of us.
Yeah, I agree completely.
And that leads us to our last question here.
I prefer or expect to…
Hold on here, Clint.
I’ve got a typo.
I prefer to expect less and be surprised
rather than get my hopes up.
And I think, again, Michael, this is kind of an orientation
question.
Am I the kind of person who is generous in my expectation of others,
or am I kind of a
minimalist and I expect the worst until proven otherwise?
It maybe ties with that optimistic,
pessimistic thing a little bit,
but I think this is specifically in relationship to what are my
expectations of others and how do I manage them?
Right. Yeah.
So here we go.
Those are our six
one through five questions.
Now, I’m not going to say this is a breeze through section.
This isn’t going to be quick for us as we reflect upon this personally.
I think it may have a little bit
less conversation.
I mean, some of this is going to be very generative as we’re honest with ourselves,
but it’s not incredibly complicated.
Things like,
do you volunteer regularly?
Well,
I do,
or I don’t.
Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle.
Maybe you’d be closer to the line there and you
say, “Ah, somewhat.” But realistically,
generally,
we either feel pretty good about the time we’ve
been able to invest in giving or we feel like our volunteerism has been where it should be.
And other times we say,
“Yeah, I’ve just not quite hit the mark.” So do you volunteer regularly when
you consider your schedule,
have you set aside time to serve others?
Right.
And this is a kind
of stewardship question that doesn’t have to do with money.
When you look at all the hours you have available,
do you spend some of them for other people?
Whether that be through an organization or
tutoring a neighbor kid or mowing a yard,
whatever that would look like,
do you invest some of your
time pointed at the needs or the opportunities of the people around you?
That then leads us to what
I think is a sort of important follow-up question.
Do you feel the need to get credit or recognition
when helping,
giving,
or volunteering?
Because it is one thing to give,
to volunteer,
to put your time and energy into a task which is worthwhile.
But it is also very,
very easy to find ourselves in doing that,
to be pointing the finger back to ourselves,
to be seeking some kind of external validation,
to be seeking others praise,
to be sort of trying to raise our own status,
whatever we think that might mean for other people.
So the first question is,
are we volunteering in some meaningful way?
The follow-up is,
are we pursuing ends other than the giving unto itself?
And if we are,
then that’s another place of reflection and a potential place to grow.
Yeah, I think it’s natural,
even important that at some point we all would like some recognition and some affirmation.
But if that’s the reason we do something,
I have been a part of organizations
that have received gifts in which the people said,
“We just hope it helps.
Use it however you want.”
And I’ve been a part of other receiving of gifts where it’s,
“I want my name on something.
I want this.
I want you to do this thing and I want credit for it.” And good gets done in both
cases, but they’re very different scenarios.
When you give,
do you often expect or feel
that the people who you’ve helped owe you something in return?
This is very, very tricky because the
gift itself becomes contingent.
And when a gift is contingent,
it fails to be a gift.
It is no longer a thing that has been given to another person wholly.
It’s been given to that person
with an expectation that they may or may not know.
Some of us are more tempted by this than others.
When we give a thing,
we expect it’s going to be worn,
or we expect it’s going to be used,
or we expect it’s going to be appreciated in a particular way.
If you find yourself
to be particularly drawn to that,
then that’s going to be a place for spiritual growth and
enrichment, a place where you can learn to give graciously as Christ gave to us.
That’s easy to say and very difficult to do,
but I think that this is an important question helping us to really put
a real point on a map if that’s where we are.
Yeah, the very word “grace” means “undeserved,”
and so when we practice scorekeeping,
tying what people owe us based on what we’ve done for them,
there’s really no—linguistically, we can no longer call that grace.
We can call that bartering,
we can call that manipulating,
we could call that something else,
but it’s certainly not grace when
we expect it to come back to us.
I think the next question is—it’s a little sharp,
I’m going to be
“do you keep track?” I’ll tell you why I think this question is important.
This is a sharp question, I admit that,
is that if you find you are keeping track—and most of us,
most of us do not have a
notebook with names and things we’ve given and things we expect in return,
right?
Let’s not go ad nauseam.
What we mean by this is when you give a gift,
can you two weeks,
a month, a year later, remember that gift and still reflect upon the fact,
“Oh, well, they never wrote a thank you,
Carla.
They never replied in kind.” Or,
“Yeah, I never heard anything from that after it happened.”
If your memory is such where those things get tucked away,
that becomes for you a burden that
builds over time that now you will find to be a barrier to practice future generosity,
not just to that person, but by extension to others,
because now you have all of these sorts of
disappointments that you carry and say, “Oh, man,
another reason why I might be pessimistic,
or why I might not trust this person or this situation or God to be present in my life.” However it works,
this is a sharp question,
but an important one.
And I don’t want to cut against the grain here,
Michael, but I do want to inject
just a small word of caution.
We certainly understand that there is inequity in relationships.
And so if you find yourself constantly on the giving end and nothing changes,
if you’re trying to help someone and you’re giving and giving and giving,
and they aren’t making any changes,
they aren’t making any progress,
if you’re part of an organization that is wasting people’s time and money,
then all of that at some point demands some thoughtful questioning of whether
that’s the best use of your resources.
But in general,
Christians are not to be people
who keep score.
We’re not to do what we do because it then makes people owe us or because we then
have some kind of system of,
“I’m ahead in this relationship.
I’ve done five things and they’ve
done one.” That’s not where we need to come from,
but we’re also not supposed to be unwise, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so that leads us here to our next question.
What percentage of income
do you donate or give to the church and charities?
And this is a very specific
kind of percentage question,
a numerical question, because we’re dealing with a new
miracle topic and it can be very helpful.
Maybe you say, “Well, I don’t know.
I just give this certain amount every month to these organizations.
I’ve never worked that out.”
Take some time.
I’ll pause the video here.
Do the math.
Figure out what you make versus
what you give.
And put those in conversations because it’s a very helpful metric.
As it reveals for us,
we might believe that we’re this committed to giving,
but then when we see
that percentage between what we’re using for our own lives and the sort of furtherance of them,
we discover, “Well, maybe my giving wasn’t where I thought it was.” So take the time, find that number.
That is also instructive.
Michael, we want to be careful here because,
as we would both
admit, sometimes the church has used words like percentage and tithing as kind of a club.
And the idea is not to produce guilt.
The idea is to say that if we look at our checkbook or our bank account
– not many people probably have checkbooks anymore – it does tell us something about what’s
important to us.
What we spend on is those things that tend to rise high on our scale of importance.
And so we just think this is a helpful way to say,
“Where is my generosity at in regard to the
rest of how I spend my money?” And this is a good way to examine that, I think.
Last question here – there’s really two questions combined,
I think – is maybe at
first glance a strange place to end this conversation about generosity and giving,
but hold out with us here.
Do you tend to hold people’s faults against them or remember their mistakes?
And in the same way,
do you fixate on your own faults and mistakes?
And in many ways,
I think, Clint, that this pairs sort of that initial conversation that we had – that idea
of pessimism, that idea of what’s your outlook in life – it pairs it with a later sort of movement
in this assessment that has been,
you know,
really honestly,
what are the things that we are fixating
on in our neighbor’s life and in our life?
So how have we created habits and patterns of thinking
that may restrict us from living with hands open?
If we are living in such a way where we’re always
down on ourself, we’re always beating others up because,
man, you screwed up again,
that is always going to be a blockage to you being able to have an open, honest, transparent,
generous conversation with them.
And so the same internally,
if we’re always beating ourselves up,
we can never let go
of the mistakes that we made.
We’re never going to be good receivers of generosity,
Christ’s generosity, the grace that’s come to us.
And therefore, we won’t be able to live lives marked with gratitude.
So this is all connected in this very beautiful and in some stages of life,
I think, even painful cycle because once we get caught in a cycle of negativity,
both externally and internally,
it makes it very hard to then turn that pattern into a newer and healthier stage.
It’s almost like an advanced placement course in generosity because the ultimate expression of grace is forgiveness.
And so if we hold on to grudges against other people,
it makes it very
hard for us to be gracious people.
It makes it very hard for us to practice spiritual generosity.
We may be great givers with our income,
but if we are holding on to people’s past,
holding on to their mistakes,
it impedes us from being spiritually gracious,
being spiritually generous.
And if we can
then do that for others,
we need also to be able to do that for ourselves.
We need to be able to
trust the grace of Christ and move past some of our own failures,
some of our own faults,
some of the places where we’ve dropped the ball in our own life.
I find, Michael, that many people who are very, very good at giving to others are terrible,
absolutely terrible, of receiving it from others.
We have people in the church who are the first ones to volunteer when someone needs a meal.
But if they need one,
no, no, no, I don’t want anyone to go through any trouble.
It is in some ways harder for some to be a generous receiver than a generous giver.
And I think
it’s helpful to be able to be pushed by that and to say part of being gracious is to learn to say
thank you, not to learn self-sufficiency.
Oh, no, I don’t need it.
I’m fine.
No, to be able to say
thank you for helping me, which is humbling,
but which is also freeing.
Yeah, that’s actually a helpful spiritual sign,
Clint, is if you find it so much easier to give than to receive,
one needs to go back up to that question about are you keeping track of if someone
owes you something because there begins to be the real possibility that what that giving is achieving
is not just generosity.
It’s not just gracious giving as we would like to believe,
but rather we may be receiving something in the midst of that.
And this is maybe where this conversation
turns.
We’re coming to the end here.
Someone says, wow, that’s a lot.
What is a starting point?
What’s a first turn?
Some practical things, Clint?
What could we share would be some tools for really
moving forward in generosity,
depending upon where we find ourselves here in this assessment.
Yeah, and I think some helpful guidelines may be to start small.
You don’t need to eat
this elephant in one bite.
Find an organization.
If you’re not giving a great deal financially
right now and you feel a little convicted by that,
find an organization you believe in.
Find somebody doing work that you support and make a reasonable donation.
Maybe try to do that monthly.
Maybe set it up on direct draft,
although I might even suggest initially there’s
something freeing and taking it to them and handing it to them.
That in some ways is a more
powerful experience than just knowing it came out of your bank account.
I think if you struggle to be positive with people,
literally make a scorecard for yourself.
I’m going to say five affirming
things today to different people.
And when you do that,
keep track.
I mean, these things are not
complicated.
They don’t need to be difficult.
They may be difficult to do,
but they don’t need to be complex.
Simply follow through on those.
If you’re a worrier,
keep track.
Every time I find myself worrying about something,
I’m going to journal it.
I’m going to write down,
why am I worrying about this?
Is it very likely?
Is there a high chance it happens?
Why is this on my mind?
Why is it occupying my thoughts?
Is there a way I can help my neighbor?
I know my neighbor went to the hospital.
I’m going to make a meal,
take it over, put it in their freezer.
I’m going to mow their yard.
I’m going to shovel their driveway.
I think it really just
comes down to identifying some aspects,
some opportunities,
and then taking some small steps in that direction.
This, I think generosity and gratitude,
one of the wonderful things about these practices,
Michael,
is that they do feel really good.
When you do them,
I think for most
of us, it’s easy to keep doing them because they really do give us a kind of spiritual warmth.
They
bless others in a real way,
in a visible way.
I think in many cases,
it’s easy to keep doing them
once we start doing them.
Yeah, I think that’s true.
I think if I was going to add a suggestion,
I think it would be on the first stage.
You said it’s an awareness and then taking a first step towards doing.
I think for me,
maybe the suggestion is on that first area of awareness.
I think so often we miss the good in our life.
Each time we miss that good,
we miss an opportunity to train
ourselves to be grateful people.
Out of gratitude naturally flows generosity,
in my experience.
There are some practices I am sure that many of you do.
Most Christians that I know have some
form of prayer tradition around the mealtime.
Do you know that the root of that is giving thanks?
The idea is we’re returning thanks for this meal put in front of us.
Now, for many, it’s become a ritual.
My encouragement for you is to turn that away from ritual back to spiritual practice so
that when you look at this food that’s been graciously prepared for you,
that you can look
at and say, “God, I’m grateful that you have supplied this meal today because this is a sign
of your love and care.” If you can do that one thing,
that awareness of what that plate represents
will be one small tiny step forward in a very long marathon and you’ll be shocked how those
tiny things add up.
You can add that every time I get in the car.
I’m going to say a word of thanks
for one good thing that’s happened preceding it today.
Or you could say,
“Every time that I go to bed,
I’m going to reflect on one good thing that’s been there.
I’m going to have a notebook by the
side of my bed.
I’m going to write one line.
This is a thing I’m grateful for.” Fill in the blank
every day.
It does not matter how you add awareness,
but my encouragement will be to find one small
tool that will help you add awareness that you could be grateful because I cannot over
tell you how big of a difference that will make in your life.
I think gratitude is a beautiful doorway to so many things.
When we are grateful,
we find it easier to help others.
We find it easier to be aware of the needs of other people
and look beyond our own.
I was recently with a group of high school students in South Texas and
as we worked with some people who are in very tough situations,
the thing that the kids said
over and over again is it makes you realize how good we have it.
When you practice that awareness, when you say,
“Yes, we are blessed,” it makes it easier to move your focus off self and think,
“How can I now share that blessing with others?” Just think gratitude lends itself so easily
into some of those other areas of spiritual practice,
spiritual awareness,
and spiritual growth.
It is a wonderful pathway for the Christian to walk.
It is striking in that example,
Clint.
It is so much easier in many ways to leave your home
and go somewhere else and in that process learn what you have.
It is so much harder to stay in
your place and to regularly,
as a practice of your faith,
continue to be renewed and reminded
of how good you have it.
That is ultimately the 401-level version of that other version.
They are both good.
It is great that students go away and have that experience,
but as adults seeking to live deeper in our faith,
we strive to do that every day.
That challenge is a very
substantial challenge, but my goodness, it makes a huge difference when we tackle it one step at a time.
I do not want to co-opt this conversation particularly late as we near the end,
but we try to do that in a culture that does not do gratitude very well, in my estimation.
From the time we are
small, our culture is always trying to get us to focus on what we do not have,
what we want, what we need,
what we want to do next.
Our culture thrives on this idea of keeping our focus off of
contentment and onto desire or materialism.
In the midst of that,
I think practicing gratitude is a wonderful,
though not easy way to swim upstream and have a different voice
in control of some of our life and I think an important one.
There is a lot there, friends.
I hope there has been something that has encouraged you and maybe
even challenged you.
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Thanks for listening.