Giving
Tom Shrader explains that God is not broke and doesn't need our money - He wants our hearts first. Teaching from Romans 12, he emphasizes that biblical Christianity is about believing the right thing (grace through faith) which then transforms how we live, including our relationship with money. He addresses practical questions about how much and where to give, emphasizing systematic, sacrificial giving as an act of worship.
“God wants your heart, or He doesn't want your money.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Financial Foundations
Recorded: March 02, 2006
Duration: 38 min
Themes: money, giving, heart, worship, sacrifice, stewardship, generosity, priorities, struggling with finances, new to giving, wondering about tithing, questioning stewardship, parent teaching money, young adult finances, church member, stewardship committee
Scripture: Romans 12:1-2, Malachi 3, Galatians 6:6, James 1:2, Mark 12
Theological Themes: grace through faith, sanctification, biblical stewardship, worship, sacrificial giving, heart transformation, romans twelve, spiritual maturity
Full Transcript
We are in week five of an eight-week series. Let me give you that schedule again. I am going to be here next week. I never announce when I'm not going to be here, but I'm going to miss probably three or four weeks, and Frank is going to teach. I've got surgery two weeks from today. I had my final test on Monday. Let me just tell you, Jack Bauer could not have passed this test that I went through, but I survived it, and so I'm all set. Two weeks from today is the surgery and should be perfect because recovery time spills over into the Masters.
Frank is going to be here and I really encourage you to come. Frank is working his tail off. Frank is one of the busiest guys we have on our staff and to add these three studies to it is a lot, so I ask you to really honor him by being here. He's going to teach on the only book in the Bible that doesn't mention God, so that'll be interesting.
We are in a series called Financial Foundations and we are obviously talking about money. It's not a how-to. If you're somebody who's here for the first time or haven't been around for a while, you picked a potentially odd day to be here because we're going to talk about money, we're going to talk about giving. So you're already faking a heart attack trying to figure out how to get out of this thing. I get it, I understand.
A Word About Previous Weeks
I'll give you a piece of advice. On the way out, grab the CDs from the last week, the first week. I'm going to guess 20 minutes of that is absolutely, this is not hyperbole, absolutely game-changing stuff. There are three points in there on ownership and on borrowing and on investing that if you get those three points, it'll change your life.
When we talk about money, of all the criticisms I get, the one that I get amazingly frequently is that I don't talk enough about money. I used to get that at church all the time. I get it in PL. There are several of you in this room right now who are hoping I go down to giving and how it relates to PL and all that, and I won't. I mean, it's obvious, one would think, that this doesn't exist if you don't participate financially, but that's not what this is about.
Why Money Matters in Scripture
The discussion on money flows from a proliferation in the scripture of the topic. There's something like more than 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, 2,000 verses on money in the Bible. It's not that God is hung up on money. Key point here: it's that you are. Where your dough goes is where your heart goes.
If I want a real indicator of what's important to you, I look at your schedule, and I look at your disposition of funds. It's one of the things that always gets me about the presidential candidates. They all want to give away my money, but rarely do these guys hit what we would call the floor in giving at 10%. I mean, it's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
On giving, I have never had anyone ask me, should I give? I have had people say, and we'll talk about it, how much should I give and where should I give? Those are the questions. Your frustration level is going to grow as we go on, because I'm not going to give you a singular answer to that, but I'm going to give you some principles.
God Wants Your Heart, Not Your Money
God cares how you earn your money, how you save your money, how you invest your money. Here's the first point in the outline: God wants your heart, or He doesn't want your money. God's not broke. I'm not broke. I'm not going to come in here today and say, you know, Sandy's really, really sick, and if she doesn't have a surgery by tonight at seven, she's not going to live, and we don't have the money for it, so let's pool our resource. God's not broke.
I understand the natural flinch. "God's trying to separate me from my cash." No. God wants your heart.
The Difference Between Religion and Christianity
There was a presidential candidate on television yesterday morning. If I say who, it clouds the issue, so I'm not going to give you his name. It's likely he's the only socialist in the race, although having said that, I'm not sure that's true either. He seems like a very grumpy guy. Saturday Night Live said, "I'm reaching all age groups, 19 years old, 18 years old, all age groups." What he said, he was talking about religion, so they're all in trouble when they get to this. He said this: when you take these religions and boil them down, it's all basically the same. It's the golden rule, doing to others what you'd have them doing to you.
That's not biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity is grace. That's what separates us from everything else. This is really, really important.
We're raised, by and large, although it's fading away now, but in our day, most of us were raised in a religious kind of country. You had the idea of God. You had a Cub Scout model that had it. You had a Pledge of Allegiance. The idea there was that a Christian, a religious man, a good man, a good woman is somebody who does the right thing. That's not biblical Christianity. Christianity is someone who believes the right thing.
What Makes a Christian
We're coming up on my favorite time of the calendar. I love Good Friday. I love Easter morning. I love the fact that tomb's empty. That's what separates Christianity from everything else. Not the way I behave, but how I believe.
Have you met Bob? "No, I haven't met Bob." "Oh, he's a great Christian man." They always say, "He's a strong Christian man." I go, "What, he bench presses 280, 290? What does that mean? He's a strong Christian man." "Oh, he's a fabulous guy. You know, he's at St. Mary's, and he's building homes for Habitat, and he's doing..." Hindus do that. Buddhists do that. Atheists do that. That's not what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is that you understand you've
Your sin has separated you from God, and you're at war with Him. The only way to reconcile that is through Jesus' death. That's why Jesus died. He died, so if you believe in Him, and that God raised Him from the dead, you are now a Christian. Now, as a result of that, how we live begins to matter. God wants your heart. God wants you.
Romans 12: The Pivot Point
Romans chapter 12 is a pivot point in the book of Romans. Romans, like the book of Ephesians, has in it a section of heavy doctrine and then application. Romans 1 through 11 is everything I just talked about. Now, he says in chapter 12, "Therefore, because that's true, because your life's been transformed, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
Now it's time to worship. Now it's time to live a life that's been transformed. So He gives you in verse 2, "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Some of the paraphrases will say, "Don't copy the behavior of the world. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold."
Eugene Peterson's Perspective
Let me read you Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of verse 1 of chapter 12: "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you, take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around, and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God has done for you is the best thing you can do for Him."
Verse 2 says: "Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking." There's a massive discussion going on about whether our politics are affecting our decision or our theology is. Most of you have an immigration view that's shaped by Rush and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly more than it is by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I ought to be thinking this thing through.
The Challenge of Cultural Conformity
That's what this verse is saying: I become so adjusted to the world around me that I fit in, I line up, I'm just like everyone else. As Barna and different groups survey Christians, they find their attitude on most things are essentially the same as the world.
Now we're talking about giving today. The average American's charitable giving is 2.4%. The average Christian is 2.6%. That's not much different. The views on divorce are the same. More and more views on social issues and lifestyle issues are the same.
Three Foundations for Transformation
I want to grind these into you because they're a basis for what we do: I want a transformed heart and an informed mind and it leads to a radical life.
### Transformed Heart
It was 36 years ago, on the 6th of this month, that God changed my heart. He changed it from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. He changed me from somebody who hated Him to somebody who loved Him. He changed my destination from hell to heaven.
Here's a big one: He changed my designation from sinner to saint. Now I'm His kid. Aren't we all His kids? No. Jesus looks at the Pharisees and says you're of your father the devil. I'm now in this right relationship and what the Bible says is I should look like it.
Living Out the Transformation
I taught Sunday down at New City Church in the urban core downtown. They have an amazing mission statement: "We're a community in the urban core of Phoenix committed to taking the message of Jesus to where we live, work, study, and play." I love that. My life is transformed and now I want to be an instrument God uses to touch other people's lives.
### Informed Mind
How does that happen? Well, He informs my mind. "Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of my mind." I start to see things differently. My relationships change. My values change and clearly my relationship with my stuff begins to change.
So before we ever start talking about should I give, where should I give, how much should I give, God wants your heart. He wants you and I will tell you, it's been my experience, it just starts to happen. You just start to change. You need discipline and you need some stuff around you but all of a sudden your desires change.
out and just put Tom's not what he should be but he said, you know, it would not hurt you to lose a little weight before we do this. That's two weeks with corned beef and cabbage tonight. I mean, this is not a good way to start this on National Ice Cream Day and National Donut Day. I'm a patriot so I participate.
Here's what I figured out. Sandy's taught me this. I have to be intrinsically motivated, not extrinsically motivated. I do not respond well to people yelling at me, telling me what to do. Once this finger goes up and you start with "you ought to," I don't want to hear you. I need to be intrinsically motivated and that's what this verse is saying—God changes your heart.
Now this money issue, this life issue, these different issues—you begin to want to do what's right. You know what to do almost always. God's after your heart. There's a song we sing that He changes me from the inside out. That's what that is.
God Owns Everything
Here's the second thing. God wants you to remember who really owns what. We developed this series in 1986. We use Malachi 3. I would not use that. We've spent time on just this and so we make this point: God owns it all. So you're gonna be tired of this. I reach in, I grab this. This is God's money. He transfers possession to me but not ownership to me.
Sandy and I got something—we did our taxes the other day and I got a report from the guy who handles our money. I don't know how often it comes. Could come every day for all I know but I think it comes like once a quarter and it's how it's going. Someday God's gonna want that for me on how I handle His money. It's a big deal. He owns it all.
He doesn't want—Malachi 3, if you're a Direct TV person and you get down into 360s, into 370s, that's all the religious channels. So you can go down there almost any time day or night and you will find someone who's either ignorant or a charlatan and they'll be reading from Malachi 3: "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how do I rob you? In the tithes and offerings. You're under a curse, the whole nation. Bring in your tithes and offerings." Bring them in to the website listed below or the phone number listed below.
This is not what He's saying. Here's what He's saying: God wants you to give in conjunction with His investment strategy and He wants first place on this payment schedule. We call it first fruits. That I bring this money in on a regular basis, a systematic basis. That's difficult to do, especially if you're a commissioned person. I used to go a long time without a check, and then you get a check, and it's really hard when you haven't had a check to write a bigger check, and I may not replace that right away. God is saying, listen, you give to me in a systematic way.
When Money Gets Tight
Two illustrations. I used to do a lot of men's retreats, so it's a men's retreat for a church here in town, doesn't matter what church, and a typical schedule is you speak Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday mid-morning, Saturday night, Sunday morning. So I do Saturday night, I call home, how's it going, I said, it is not good. Something's wrong. I'm just—something's not right. I didn't study well, I didn't pray enough, I don't know, it's not good.
Well, what are you gonna do? Well, I always bring an emergency file, it's my greatest hits file, and so I'm gonna go probably about number 13 on the chart for tomorrow morning. So I get up, I drop my load, we take a break, and there's a guy, and he said, how you doing? And I said, you know, this doesn't feel like it's going very well. He said, the guys are loving it. I said, really? You know, they looked about like you look right now, is what they looked at. And I said, really? I said, man, that's—I live off this. He said, you know, I forgot to tell you, almost everybody in our church is an engineer. I said, oh, all right, then I'm really good.
So we go in for the next session, and here's what the guy says. This afternoon, we're gonna do something we hadn't planned. We're gonna meet out by the totem pole, flag pole, some pole, and we're gonna confess our sins to one another. I thought, well, I'll be there for that one, so that's gonna be a good one. So we go out, and I'm thinking, this has no chance of working.
So the first guy, you know, I don't write enough thank you notes. I mean, you're only gonna confess something—it's like every time you ask what's your greatest weakness? I'm impatient, I want what's right right away. So there's a guy there, a little guy, and he disappears all the time, and every time he comes back, he smells like smoke. Now, I don't—I like cigar smoke and pipe smoke, I don't like cigarette smoke. And if you're a cigarette smoker, you got a health issue, and you're not going to hell because you smoke cigarettes. You'll smell like you've been there, but you aren't going.
So I don't care, so this guy said, you know, I'd like to go, and I thought, another cigarette thing. And he said, I want to confess this: every time money gets tight, I quit giving. Oh, wow, you know, it's not quite pornography, I didn't think we were ever going to get there, but I don't quit giving. And so they kind of glossed over it, like, oh, anyway. I said, hey, I'm a visitor here, it's not my thing, but I'd be curious, does anybody else do that? And pretty soon, every guy in there is going, yeah, I struggle with that too. And the pastor shared with me, we're having a lot of financial problems in the church. And it's because I have this false idea of money. It's not something I add on and it's not like I'm tipping Him for a good table.
to be down front when Sinatra comes out. It's not that. It's that here I am, this is all yours, you've entrusted it to me, and I'm to give, and I'm to give as a priority.
I confess this to our church, and so I don't mind doing it. When Susan was sick, she handled all of our resources, all of our money. I don't do it. I don't, I guess I could. So I go into our executive pastor one day, and I said, "I want to increase my giving a little bit. I think I'm pretty generous." And he said, "Okay, so it's like July. All right, it's going to be easy for you because you've only given twice this year."
Well, I said, "Well, that's not possible." So I went home and I said to Susan, "Here's what happened," and she started to cry. I said, "I've let you down." She said, "You haven't let me down. I mean, you can't hardly write. I've been trying to get this away. I want to do this." And she said, "I just can't, Tom, I can't do this anymore."
Making Giving a Priority
So I went in to our guy and I said, "I want to go to auto withdrawal. Give me my router number or whatever they need." And so now the money goes. Now I got a friend going, "Well, I don't think that's right. You've taken away the worship of the giving." I said, "All right, let me ask you this. Is God happier with me when I write the check and bring it in or when I skip four months and He doesn't get it at all?"
This is serious business and human nature is you're going to go away. Hey, we're living in hell here. You're going away in August. You're going to miss two or three weeks. You aren't doubling up in September. I've watched the numbers every year. It doesn't happen that way at church.
God wants that first place. God wants you to see this as an act of worship. I made the point at New City on Sunday, and it's true, it'd be true of SBC. It's true of any church. We come in for plus or minus two hours on Sunday. Some of you are there longer, some a little bit shorter. And we call it our worship time. But the challenge with that is I have another 166 hours this week.
Giving as Worship
If I go back to the paraphrase from Eugene Peterson, let me read it to you: "Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around. Place it before God as an offering." When it comes to this area of giving, it's an act of worship. Worship is not just when you're standing in there singing some song. Half of them you're complaining they picked the wrong song. Half of the time you don't like the way they did it. It's too loud, the lights are wrong. This feels like a production. Your heart is all screwed up.
When it comes to giving, it's to go, not "it's my duty to give," it's "it's my honor to give." Every year, and I know for most of you in this room, it's true, I get a stack of letters like this from people who at the end of the year understand it's tax time and they're looking for dough. And I got friends that complain every year. And I will tell you, every year I'm grateful for that stack. I don't give to any of them. I got my little thing and Sandy has the thing that we together care about. I don't give to them.
But I am stunned what God is doing. I'm stunned what God's doing around the world. And you get to be part of that, not by getting a passport, a visa and shots and going there, but by funding that. And so it gets into that idea of God wants you to give, and to give sacrificially.
The Challenge of Sacrificial Giving
I feel like a giant hypocrite here. There's a scene in Mark, I think it's Mark 12, where Jesus and the disciples are going to watch people give to the treasury. And there's rich guys who are giving, and then there's a lady with two copper coins. And Jesus said, this lady has made the biggest sacrifice.
The only time I've been out of the country, other than Vancouver and Rocky Point, was to go to India. And I'm in Calcutta at the opening of a church. It's probably a room half this size. We're on the platform, we're the honored guests. And it's time to give. There's a little rail, and these people are coming. I thought of this passage, people are coming up and dropping in. And there's this lady, she was so sheepish and shy, and it just looked like she didn't fit, but didn't feel comfortable there. And she dropped in, I could see, she dropped in a rupee. That's a penny.
So when it was over, I asked somebody about it. And they said, "Oh, she's a street gal. She comes around. She doesn't have anything." And I thought, isn't that amazing?
A Lesson in Sacrifice
I did this one year with the girls. I decided I was going to teach them sacrificial giving and vacation. And those of you that know me know vacation's a big deal to me. So I wanted to teach them, here's what we're going to do. We're not going on vacation. We're going to take the money that we'd spend on that. And we're going to pick something. We're going to give it to them.
So I said to Susan, "Here's what I'm going to do." And she said, "Great. That's a good idea." So I said to the girls in the morning, "When you get home tonight, we need to have a little conversation. I'm going to talk about something."
I'm driving home, and it occurred to me that if they didn't go on vacation, I wasn't going to go on vacation. So I came home, and I said to Susan, "We've got to come up with a new plan here for teaching them sacrificial giving. This isn't going to work."
But I don't know what that feels like, do you? So instead of going to Morton's, you're going to go to Houston's. Look at the way you've suffered. And I'm not putting that down. I'm saying that's something. I'm going to drive out a car an extra year. I don't know what that is. But I know there's something in my heart there. How do I want to give that?
**Financial Foundations 5 - God Wants Your Heart, Not Your Money**
Why is giving such a struggle? What are you afraid of? God said He's going to take care of you. It's not a license to be wasteful. It's not to be frivolous. But many of you in the room have had this exercise - you know the number. Whatever the number, you know the number. When you get to that number, you're set. You know that number. Then why are you still building over the number? Somewhere prudent planning becomes hoarding.
How Much Should You Give?
So how much should you give? That's between you and God. Rule of thumb is, if He's blessed you a lot, you ought to give a lot.
Where Should You Give?
I'll give you a couple of places. You should give to the poor. That's James 1:2. If you see somebody in need, it's so hard in this culture, and I think getting harder, to understand that there are certain people who can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they don't have bootstraps. Oftentimes, here's what I do. I'll go, "Well, yeah, they don't have anything because they didn't plan like I planned. They didn't do what I did." No, they never had a shot. You walk through Calcutta, and you're overwhelmed. These people don't have a chance. That's their life. You've got people around you.
You should give to believers who are in need, especially to those who - it's an amazing statement that says Jesus says, "They'll know you're my disciples by the way you love one another." And this gets really hard. Almost every time in over 30 years, I've been engaged in a billion of these conversations. Almost every time somebody comes and needs money, it never works out well. If you help them, it wasn't enough. Oftentimes, you help them, and then they leave.
Somebody comes in and says, "I want you to help me." Here's what we do - we never say, "We're just going to give you money." We'll say, "We'll come alongside. Is there a systemic problem? We'll let you meet with a guy. Will you bring in your bills?" And we'll go through those bills. "Why do I want you to go through my bills? What do you think? You think I'm careless?" No, I think you're asking us for help. You got here somehow. But there are people in the church, people sitting around you, and they need help financially.
Giving to Your Church
You should give to the church you attend. If you can't give to the church you're going to, get out of there. Find one you can give to. There's something wrong. If you're going to church and you're going, "I just don't know..."
Two years ago, I was really instrumental in starting the church that I go to. I was on that board for a long time, way longer than I wanted to be. I got off the board. About three years ago, we went through a building program. I wasn't in any meetings. I didn't know what they were building. I would have people come to me and say, "What do you think about what they're building?" Here's what I would say: "I don't care. That's not my job. That's the elder's job. I trust those guys. I'm sure they're going to screw something up. I'm sure that the bathroom isn't going to be right. The lighting won't be right. The colors - I got it. That doesn't matter. God's not going to judge me on how the elders laid out the building. He's going to judge me on how I responded to this."
If I can't give, and you're in a church and you're not engaged financially, then something's wrong. You need to take a hard look at that. You need to give.
Supporting Biblical Instruction
This is a smidgen self-serving where you're being taught. Galatians 6:6, "Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with the instructor." If you've got something - I remember early on in my life, R.C. Sproul was instrumental in my thought process. He was the right guy at the right time in the right place. I wasn't doing this. I was still doing real estate stuff. I just started writing checks to R.C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries, not to replace the church, but to say, "This is really meaningful. God's really using it." So you need to find where those places are. If you find yourself every day going to some website or going to something, you should be engaged in that.
Supporting Gospel Proclamation
The last thing that probably is the catch umbrella for all of it is you should be giving where people are proclaiming the gospel, where people are telling people about Jesus. Now, ideally, that's happening in the instruction, in the church, and in the other things. But there are people who are out there.
I had breakfast a couple of weeks ago with three guys from Ukraine, and these guys were terrific. They were absolutely terrific. They were talking about their strategy. It was a philosophy that lines up with me. I thought, "There's somebody..." Now, I didn't give them any money, but they went on my list to go, as we sit down next year, because I kind of do it on an annual basis, as we sit down next year, we need to think about this group because they're making a difference.
The Heart of the Matter
So there you are on giving. How much? That's between you and God. You make a lot, you have a lot, you give a lot. Where? It becomes kind of self-evident. The struggle and the tension you feel, most often, is a reflection of a heart where money becomes - idol is the word we're using everywhere now - but that money becomes my security. It's not a license to be foolish, and it's not, "Well, I don't need to plan." You get it, right?
Now, for the handful of you that survived that, next week: paying taxes. Yeah, well, then I'm going to go have surgery. I'd rather have the surgery than do the taxes thing again. So that tells you how I feel. So we'll see you next week.
Father, thank You for this. You give us so much just to be here today. God, thank You for that blessing. Thank You for the men and women that are here. Use it in their lives. God, change our hearts and form our mind, and let our lives be radical. We pray that to You in Christ's name, amen.