This post is for our TPCC family specifically.  Anyone is welcome to read, but know the points of challenge are for our church friends.  If you are interested in learning more about Humble & Hungry, check out http://www.tpcc.org/humble-and-hungry/.

If you were at church last weekend, you had the pleasure of seeing Jason and I jumbo size, sharing our story about tithing.  With commitment weekend happening this weekend, I feel a burden to share our the rest of our story.  It’s really not even ours, it’s God’s story, and if we wouldn’t have trusted him, I wouldn’t be able to tell it.

Three years ago our church launched the “Generous Giants” campaign.  Generous Giants was the plan to add additional children’s space, build a school in Kenya, and do various other improvements to the church facility.  At that time, we really weren’t in a place to give any more than we already were.  Tithing was already a lot of money, right?  Ethan was a baby, I was working part time, and there were plenty of dreams and goals we had for ourselves.  But God had been opening our eyes to how the rest of the world lives.  That even though it’s easy to compare ourselves to our neighbors and friends and feel as though we are way behind in lifestyle, that we are truly blessed, and living in excess, compared to the rest of the world.  My heart for orphan care taught me that many people were abandoning children because they had a medical condition they did not have the money to pay for, or sold a child to buy food for the rest of their family.  We had clean drinking water, plenty of food, and a roof over our heads, which immediately put us in the category of “rich.”  Though the world around us was screaming that we needed more—bigger house, nicer car, cuter clothes for our kids—we knew God was calling us to something else.

The number God called us to with Generous Giants was scary.  It was more money than we could come up with on paper.  It meant we had to sacrifice, change our lifestyle, and change our expectations about what our life would look like.  We knew it meant we would have to cancel our cable, stop eating out so much, and stay in our townhouse longer than we hoped.  But that was okay, because we knew God’s plan was better than ours.

Three years later, to say that our life looks different would be an understatement.  We had another baby.  I paid off my massive student loan debt.  I stopped working in order to stay at home full time.  We moved to our dream house, which was a process we knew God had under control all the way through.  All the things we thought we were giving up, God provided, in a better way than we ever could have imagined.  And we are quite confident that if we had not been generous with our money, our life would not be what it is today.

But our story doesn’t really end with “we gave and God blessed us,” because that is not at all what we believe.  We are not entitled to any blessing when we obey.  I think the reason God blessed us with what he did was so that we could care for and minister to others through our blessings.  Because we trusted him with our finances, he’s allowing us to do His work through Safe Families.  Like the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, God is entrusting His resources to us until his return.  What will we do with the financial resources God gives?  More importantly, what will we do with the Gospel?  Putting God’s resources to use for His kingdom by following what He has called you to do with your life is the best feeling in the world—better than anything money can buy.

If you are hesitant to be generous, I challenge you to refocus your vision on what is eternal.  If God is calling you to something scary, trust Him to see you through it.  There is a good chance you will find yourself living a life that is completely different from, yet at the same time better than, what you had imagined.