Giving Is Good_Making Change

Series: Making Change                                                    Topic: Giving is Good

35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35)

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

The decision to give is rooted in:

1. Who God is (the nature of God)
2. God dwells in us
3. Our relationship with God

How to Give:

1. Heart of obedience
2. Heart of service to God
3. Heart of gratitude, and a
4. Heart of expectation
5. Heart of obedience

1. Heart of Obedience

“he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” – Philippians 2:8

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” – John 14:15

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. – James 1:22

10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. (Malachi 3:10)

2. Heart of service 

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:28

“Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.” – Matthew 6:4

3. Heart of gratitude

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.” – Psalm 107:1

“And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony. And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.” (Revelations 12:11)

4. Heart of expectation

“Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” – Psalm 2:8

“2You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”- James 4:2-3

11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. (2 Corinthians 9:11)

Three reasons some people don’t give:

1. We don’t feel like we have enough
2. We’ve actually seen this message abused.
3. We often live with a scarcity mindset instead of an abundance mindset.

Why give:

38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.” – John 3:16