“Share with your friends,” we tell our children to get them to loosen their grip on the toys available to them and their friends. At Christmas we take our children to buy gifts for children they do not know as part of a giving tree ministry. When the crayons come out, we encourage our children not to hoard all the colors of crayons, but instead to take only what they need at the moment, leaving some for the other artists at the table.
Generosity is a learned behavior.
I learned generosity from my parents. They were generous with their time and their resources. I remember the generosity of my father, who worked fulltime and in addition ran the family farm. But on Sundays he was incredibly gracious with his time, always playing baseball or starting a snowball fight with us I appreciate the generosity of my mother, who consistently wants to do for her kids anything she possibly can do for them! I also remember the financial generosity of my mother and father. I remember them giving money to a relative in need, demonstrating the habit of giving to God through the church, and always having the money I needed when times got tough. They were not rich. But what they were generous with what they had.
From whom did you learn generosity? What did those with influence on you teach you about financial resources? So much of our attitude and thinking about our resources comes from what others taught us.
In the next four weeks we are going to learn again, or re-learn, or learn for the first time what it means to be generous with what God has given us. We going to learn from Jesus how to develop a heart of generosity. I hope you and your family will join us on this journey as together we discover what it means to be extravagantly generous with our lives.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Becky Jo Messenbrink