Gratitude And Giving Series

Gratitude and Giving

Series: Growing in Gratitude

December 3, 2017 – Brad Bailey

INTRO

Let me begin with a simple premise someone stated…

“What consumes your mind….controls your life. Practice gratitude.”

I think most of us find that what consumes our mind most is often fear...worry…comparison...and these can control us. How different of gratitude consumed our minds. Why?

Gratitude is about connection.

Gratitude is the connection between every good in life… and your personal life.

If someone walked up to you this afternoon and handed you one million dollars… just a gift to bless you… most of us can imagine we would be filled with gratitude… wow… I can’t believe how blessed I am. It is life giving…and I am not the source.

We’d like to think we would not only be grateful…but become grateful in a lasting way.

Yet the power of realizing life’s blessings can become quenched by familiarity and fear and comparison. The connection can be cut off.

An amazing source of light and warmth arose above us today called the sun…I’d say it’s an amazing good in life…and it revealed an amazing planet… beauty that’s astonishing… food that is amazing. Most of us probably woke up without a lot of wow.

The point is that gratitude is a switch that can connect us to the blessings.

My life is filled with goodness regardless of whether I realize it or not… I can have no sense of it’s goodness… or I can realize what a blessing it is… be FILLED with gratitude.

Gratitude is that realization…it connects what is good to being experienced as good.

So we are in the midst of a few weeks focused on growing in gratefulness.

Today… let’s open up the relationship between gratitude and generosity.

NOTE: Now in case anyone is wondering… if by talking about giving…that I am speaking about giving financial support to the ministry we share here… let me say openly… no but yes.

No…it’s not the focus…but yes …I do want to note a critical need for us to grow as a community in our financial support.

Gratitude and generosity… I want to acknowledge my gratefulness for the generosity of so many.

This current year began with a significant loss of financial resources as some long-term contributors lost employment and others retired and moved away. This has led to a 20% to 25% loss in contributions…which many may have seen in the weekly bulletin as a growing deficit between contributions and ministry expenses.

Some may think that such a deficit is not a problem because you have not seen any large changes this year. During prior years we have built up a reserve – savings – for emergencies or future needs. We have been blessed through drawing on our savings to overcome any immediate crisis. However, without increases in financial support, we will need to begin making substantial changes in staffing in the new year. Our Board of Governing Elders is currently preparing a plan to make changes as needed.

So I want to truly express how grateful I am for the commitment and contribution of so many… be a living body of Christ today… never so needed…

I also want to affirm a principle that the Bible, Jesus and the Apostle Paul were very clear on …that…

"The worker is worthy of his wages." (Luke 10:7; 1 Corinthians 9:14; 1 Timothy 5:18)

And I know those who serve this ministry full time…and how much they give their whole lives… to serve you and this community. Each one is both really gifted and really given to what they do.

So I want to ask you to take that to heart.

I am going to send you a letter this week…perhaps a parallel email form. My challenge to you is to read and consider that.

BUT…today I want us to hear what lies in the heart of giving…and particularly the significant relationship between gratitude and generosity.

These are two qualities that we sense are life giving… lift us… we feel more alive…more like we should be. [1] But while we want to be grateful and generous… we often correlate each of those more to something we SHOULD do. As children, we may have been told how ungrateful we were,…and how we “should” be more grateful. So we feel the sense of obligation….and duty. And then we think about worship in that light…as simply something we owe to God…not something good…as much as something deserved. We want to be generous… but the call to give elicits more a sense of obligation that opportunity… duty more than desire.

God wants us to understand… gratitude and generosity are actually about discovering the reality of how blessed we are. Listen to how the apostle Paul speaks of giving in the Bible…

2 Corinthians 9:6-11 (TEV)