Encountering God in Our Finances
Session 2: The One Who Rewards Generosity
I.Partnering with the Generous One:
We want to begin to reprogram the way our minds think about giving and money in order to be in alignment with all that the Word of God has to say about the subject. It’s far too easy for us to allow our perspective to be formed by the world around us and our experiences, or perhaps lack of experiencing God in our finances but these can lie to us about who God is where the Bible never will. He actually wants us to give Him back our money. As we discussed in our first session, we saw that God is the one who gives us the power to make wealth; that which we produce only comes from the power that the Lord gives us. He loves this backwards economic system; it’s His invention and He delights in giving us the capacity to make money so that we can be provided for and that we can partner with Him in all the purposes of His heart.
- Faithfulness with Our Finances:
The Lord calls us to be faithful with the worldly wealth that He bestows to us in order that we may prove worthy of true authority and riches. Our use of money is therefore God’s barometer for what He can entrust us with in this life and the age to come.
“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own (Lk. 16:9-12)?”
- Purpose of Wealth:
Wealth and giving are directly related in God’s Kingdom, the purpose of the wealth that God gives us is to build His Kingdom. Historically He gives to His people so that they in turn can finance His work, this is His system. God’s primary objective is not our personal prosperity, though He will prosper us along the way and He really delights in seeing our hearts respond to Him with thanksgiving for blessings that He gives this is not the main intention for the provisions He gives. He gives to us so that we may partner with Him to do His objectives.
- Given Relative to Our Capacities:
The Lord gives you power to make wealth according to your unique capacities; things like your ability to manage money and your experience, as well as your individual life circumstances, influence and relationships. For some that means the ability to make thousands and for others it might be millions or even more. He apportions in perfect wisdom.
- He Responds to Our Character:
While it is the Lord who decides our life circumstances, birth lineage and our innate abilities we can still have a significant role over the course of our life regarding how much financial power He will entrust us with. He responds to the way that we respond to Him with our money, how we steward the money that we have and how we carry our hearts before Him.
- Fueling Our Faith:
As you gain some personal testimonies it will really fuel your faith not only for your own life but as a means to minister to others. Building a personal history in this will thrust you into believing for even bigger ministry testimonies.
II.Stirring Up Faith Through the Word:
I want to stir up your faith like mine was in my early days. I was marked early on by the radical things that the Bible had to say on this subject and so I began to believe it might be real. As I took Him at His word I began to encounter Him in exciting and powerful ways that made His reality, nearness, personality and love become ever so real to me. This session will be full of personal stories that greatly impacted the way I began to see the Lord, the Kingdom of God and life as a whole.
- Started Off as a Test in the Financial Realm:
For me the journey of God in my finances began as a very unfamiliar arena of life as I had never received any teaching on it one way or the other. But because of how much the Bible had to say on the subject it seemed to me like a safe test to see how real God was.
“Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine (Pr. 3:9-10).”
- Finding Abundant Permission:
I kept finding new Bible verses to support the crazy experiment I was conducting. I would even find Bible verses unrelated to money specifically that seemed to be giving me permission to conduct these tests. Knowing that God is real in the financial realm empowers us with faith to believe for other areas of God to be real as well. Seeing Him move powerfully on my behalf in my finances opened up the rest of the Bible and a world of other ways to encounter God because I reasoned that if this was true about God then what else does the Bible say that must be true.
“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed (Pr. 16:3).”
- The Promised Return:
Jesus promised us that we could count on there being a response from Heaven when we give. He said that we should expect that when we sow it will be richly rewarded according to the measure that we use.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you (Lk. 6:38).”
- With the Measure We Use:
Paul tells us that the Lord is paying attention not only to whether or not we are giving but He measures the degree of our generosity. He promised to measure back to us in proportion to just how lavishly we give.
“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously…for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work…he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 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 (2Co. 9:6-11).”
- Generosity Rewarded:
The Lord told wrote in this same principle into the Old Testament Law so that the people of God would come to see this cause and affect relationship between generosity, not giving merely, and God’s abundant breakthrough on personal finances.
“Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to (Dt. 15:10).”
- Goodness Promised to the Generous:
He promises to pour out His good and prosperous hand on those who enter into the spirit of generosity. This means making sacrifices to be able to sow, it means giving more than what would be expected, it means being very intentional to be generous with our money.
“Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice (Ps. 112:5).”
III.One Very Crazy Faith Season:
One very crazy season I felt the Lord tell me to quit my job and that I would be getting hired on at Lennar Homes making significantly more than I ever had in my life. Part of this transition was that he told me He would provide supernaturally for all my needs even without a job or me ever asking people for money. With nothing in the bank I prayed for months for that job before I got it, and for most of the time it didn’t look promising. God has promised not only to give us fun stories but to provide for us in very real and powerful ways.
“So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied (Dt. 11:13-15).”
A.Provision While I Waited for the Job:
During this time I was living in a garage apartment and my rent was $595 per month. I had my rent supernaturally supplied for for several months in a row. I never told anyone that I was in need, I just prayed and it came month after month.
B.$500 and Burgers:
I was sitting around all day praying for rent money when suddenly without warning Cril shows up at my apartment door with a bag full of hamburgers and a check for $500. I was still $95 short and rent was due in just a couple of hours but I was full of faith at this point. I asked the Lord what I was supposed to do and I heard Him say the oddest thing; “Be creative,” and I had some old cell phones in my closet that I was able to negotiate the price up to $95.
C.At Lunch Tomorrow:
One month I got all the way up to the day before rent was due and still I didn’t have a dollar of it. I was journaling that night and I asked the Lord what He was going to do and I heard Him reply “Luke Frost is going to give you $600 tomorrow.” I hadn’t seen or talked to my friend Luke in a couple of years so this seemed impossible. Then I remembered that I had totally forgotten that a month beforehand I had made plans to have lunch with this guy the very next day. If the Lord hadn’t brought his name up I would have missed the appointment. I told him nothing about my circumstances but at the end of the meal out of nowhere he asked me “what do you need?” I said what do you mean? He starred through me and again with even more sobriety asked “what do you need?” I said, bro I would never have asked, and he said I know you wouldn’t, I’m asking you…what do you need? I said my rent is $600 and it’s due in a couple of hours. He said “done, I’ll write the check right now.”
D.The Day I Got Laid Off:
I eventually got the job and the Lord provided abundantly for me during that season. He gave me the job that He promised and then He continued to look out for me. One day I found out that I was being laid off and that my position with the company was being abolished company wide. That same day, a few hours later in fact my best friend’s dad who I have known and loved for 20 years calls me up without any knowledge of the situation and he offers me a job where he would paying me more money, work less hours in a far better work environment with one of my longtime friends.
IV.Having More Than Enough:
Position yourself to where you are continually sowing into His purposes because if you do then you can count on His continual provision. This isn’t about giving big into the offering that one time, it’s a philosophy of life that takes God up on His Word and makes intention to be generous at every turn. This is a healthy and fun way to live and it promises that you will always have supernatural money coming your way from Heaven. Below are some stories of ways that supernatural favor showed up in sustaining ways as apposed to many of the other stories I’ve shared so far which were points of provision just meet a specific need.
A.$500 Abundance:
During the season that I was making $111 a month and was experimenting with this crazy notion of sowing 30% of that back into the Kingdom I had a number of marking moments. I was used to the pay as you go thing where I’d have a need and then God would meet just that amount. But one time I was visiting a couple that I hadn’t seen in maybe a year or so, they were some friends from the church I got saved in. While I was with them just catching up on what I was up to they wrote me a check for $500. I instantly knew that the Lord was doing something different this time, this check was enough to pay for all my bills for months. As a result those next several months didn’t have any need for the pay as you go immediate breakthroughs.
B.$1000 After Journaling:
One time during that season where I was without a job I was journaling about how it would be nice to have a little extra and it would be nice to not have to wait until the last minute everytime. I prayed and asked the Lord to give me $1000 that day to pay for next months rent and to take car of my bills and supply me with a little breathing room. Later that same day I was given a check for exactly $1000.
C.$1600 Plane Ticket:
As I started to make preparations for it and someone donated their frequent flyer miles which brought my ticket cost down to $1600. About a month out I sold the few things I owned including my car, which I was able to get exactly $1600 for, the same price for the ticket. This meant that I had all I needed but as I went to pay for the trip I heard the Holy Spirit say “Do not use that money for the flight, I will provide it without you having to ask.” Time ticked down all the way up to the week before my flight and while I had it reserved with the frequent flyer miles I still hadn’t paid for it. No one knew that the flight wasn’t paid for but that week I was given two gifts of $300 and a $1000 check from a sophomore in high school who asked me if I had paid for my ticket yet and when I said know he said would $1000 help? I called his father to make sure he was okay with it and his dad just said “it’s his money and if that what he wants then I’m fine with it.”
D.$2000 on a Plane:
One time I was flying to a ministry trip that I was going to be unpaid for. While I was on the flight I sat next to a complete stranger who I struck up a conversation with, it turns out he loves the prayer movement and he was a wealthy businessman. Within 45 minutes of meeting him he pulls out his checkbook and he wrote me a personal check for $2000. Of course I hadn’t done anything that would have made that happen or suggest anything to this complete stranger that he should give me money.
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