I need to tell you a story that I think will inspire you as you step into the new year. It’s a story about how a big God is all about the little things. I learned this on Christmas morning, but the story actually began many months before then.

One of the opportunities I had been offered during 2019 was to take part in a coaching network that was offered within an hour of my home and at no cost other than the time to travel to the church once a month for the coaching sessions. Of course, this didn’t feel like a cost at all because I was able to sit for 2-3 hours every month with other pastors from around the region and receive the kind of training that made me wonder why I wasn’t paying for it. After all, most of the time when something is free you actually get what you pay for. But not this time. It was without a doubt one of the most beneficial things I did all year long and all of it was free (shout out to Pastor Jay Stewart and The Refuge!!).

Toward the end of the year, Pastor Jay made a simple remark: would we consider suggesting some other leaders who may benefit from the same coaching we’d received and would we be willing to give back so that the same training could be offered to other pastors? He suggested that we take a month to pray about it, but I sensed the Holy Spirit nudging me the minute the words came out of his mouth:

“Give your AirPod money.”

Without giving you more information than you care to read, part of our family budget (which we maintain through an awesome program called YNAB – You Need a Budget) is what we call Mad Money – an amount that we can do anything we want with, no questions asked. It’s a VERY modest amount – the B99 and I both get $40 each – and I had decided toward the beginning of 2019 that I would save half of my Mad Money each month toward getting some AirPods.

It had taken me 8 months, but I had just saved what I needed the month before the Holy Spirit nudged me. I gave it without hesitation and knew that somehow God would honor it. Either He was going to give me AirPods or take away any desire for them. It was the second.

He so completely took away the desire for them that when I opened my family’s gift to me on Christmas morning and found BRAND NEW AIRPODS inside the box, I didn’t immediately make the connection. But later that day I remembered that I had given all my Air Pod money away and still gotten AirPods!!

The point isn’t that God gives us what we want, but that God wants to be the gift we want. He wants us to be so in love with Him, so in tune with His voice, that we hear Him when He speaks to us and that we obey Him without hesitation or regret.

I’m not there completely – and I’d imagine you aren’t, either. But one thing I know: the big things that we all hope to see God do this year will almost always come in response to the small, consistent steps of obedience we can take daily.

I’m sure other pastors gave bigger gifts that day, and I’m sure that I could have found a way to give more, too. But the God who does big things was only concerned with my willingness to trust and obey Him with whatever He asked of me.

This year, be faithful in the small things. Do it without comparison or compromise. Do it knowing that obedience is never small.

I promise you that by the end of the year, you’ll be surprised at the big things that God will have done with it.

Reading Time: 4 minutesI know. Everyone is asking for money this time of year, and it can be so easy to feel like all people want from you is a dollar (or twenty!). But there’s one YUGE (sorry, Donald) reason that you and I can’t afford to simply shrug our shoulders and walk away from “generosity opportunities” this time of year (or any time, for that matter):

God blesses the generous.

Now, before you whip out your cash and get ready to invest in God’s great pyramid scheme, let’s qualify that statement just a bit, and then I’ll give you some insight from our church’s own 2016 case study to back it up.

God does indeed bless the generous, because He said He would in Proverbs 11:25. It reads “A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” The key question, of course, is what does He mean by prosper?

The Hebrew word means “to be made fat,” which is weird because so many of us are trying to do anything BUT be made fat! But the point is that God makes sure that generous people always have plenty, and He does that for one very simple reason: God can give generous people more because He knows they’ll use it to find more ways to be generous!

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In 2 Corinthians 9:11, God makes it clear that His purpose in giving TO us is so that He can give THROUGH us. “You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” (emphasis added)

Add to that the promise of 3 John 1:2 and we see that our prosperity is always tied to the condition of our souls. People who are prospering in their relationship with Jesus tend to always find ways to be generous. Their bonus becomes a way to bless another family. Their gifts include gifts for another. Their new car allows them to give away the older car instead of parking it in the driveway “in case we need it later.”

Generosity isn’t at the mercy of our situations; it comes from God’s mercy in our situations. That’s why it’s NEVER a good time to throttle back on generosity, because our souls are prospering independent of our circumstances. Let me share a story to show how God continues to bless us if we continue to show generosity, even in tough times.

2016 has been a tough year at The Gathering, the church that we planted in 2011. Don’t get me wrong, people are still coming and Jesus is still very much alive in our services. But this year we experienced the move of God by, well, moving. What we thought would be a short skip and a jump from one location to another has turned into a longer stay in the “in between” place. Waiting is hard, and when the waiting is tied to the renovation of an old 14,000 square foot building, it can cause one to want to keep all the money in reserve “in case we need it later.” Sounds a lot like that old car parked in the driveway, doesn’t it?

In the first 4 years of our church’s existence, we’ve been able to give away anywhere from 16-21% of our annual income to missions both at home and around the world, and this year – even while facing the unknown of a future building renovation, even as we brought on our 2nd full-time staff member, and even while we faced a “yet to be determined” lengthy transition – we decided that we couldn’t afford to NOT continue being generous.

The result? We’ll give more to mission this year than in any previous year, and it’s not even close. When the ball drops on 2016, our church will have given close to 27% of our income away, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!

And how did God show Himself to be the faithful God who promised to refresh us if we were generous? We’ve had the funds for a down payment on our “new to us” building as well as being able to self-fund the initial demo and drawings needed to prepare for the up fit.

And there are no lottery winners in our church. Just generous people who believe that God gives to us so that He can give through us, and then He gives to us again so we can repeat the cycle.

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Tomorrow, our church will have our 4th annual BIG GIVE, and even though it’s tempting to take up an offering just for us, we know that when we take 100% of this offering and give it away to non-profits in our area, that God will keep His promise to refresh us.

Souls set free, addictions broken, a city finding hope in Jesus. All of these and more refresh us, and we expect that God will give all of them in full measure to us as we give what we can to Him.

Perhaps you’d like to be a part of THE BIG GIVE? Simply click the link to learn more about it and give securely online.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Small, but challenging.

After finishing my review of Soulprint (read it here), I was eligible to request another book from the Blogging for Books program at Water Brook Multnomah and so I had them send me a complimentary copy of The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn.

When I ordered it, I knew it sounded familiar, and I was right. Seems I already had a copy, but like a lot of the books on my shelf, I’d only read a few pages of it, and that was a looonnnggggg time ago. I knew the copy being UPS’ed to me was an updated copy, but I went ahead and read what I had, and even though this one is short (under 100 pages), it took the week to read it because of how thought-provoking it was.

The Treasure Principle is a book about money, and more specifically, our money.  Alcorn shares what he calls the treasure principle, which is: You can’t take it with you- but you can send it on ahead. It is a lesson he learned the hard way, after a pro-life demonstration at an abortion clinic went wrong and he found himself on the bad side of a $8.4 million judgement that would have his church salary garnisheed and given to the clinic. Not willing to have his pay go to support what he opposed, Alcorn chose to resign his position and work for minimum wage so his salary wouldn’t support abortions.  I’m sure you can learn more with a Google search, but my purpose in sharing it here is just to give some background about how the author came to view possessions the way he did. Continue reading