Sending your car to the mechanic’s shop is never a blissful experience but leaving it at a new repair shop overnight is even worse. Last night we left our car at a new mechanic’s shop whom we’d never met on a street we didn’t even know existed. Aside from speaking with him on the phone to arrange the repair or this morning as he rattled off the list of repairs I had never even spoken to this person or seen his work. Where did this capacity for trust come from? My trust in him was not based on personal knowledge of his work, he’d never worked for me. My trust in him wasn’t based on first hand knowledge at all! Rather, my trust in him was vicariously built upon the recommendation of his reputation from friends. He treated them right and proved his trustworthiness so it was my hope that he would do the same for us.

I’ve never thought about it before but just like a mechanic, my success as a missionary stands or falls on my reputation too. When we ask people to financially support us we’re asking them to trust us. Most of them have never seen our work, have never been to the places we’re going, and will probably never know the impact their support makes. What that means is that we are obligated to maintain our reputations no matter the cost. Whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re serving, with daily repentance and humility, cherish and nurture your reputation. At the end of the day, it’s all we have.

“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” 1 Timothy 4:16

Tags: Missionary Life, Support, Giving

On the A-Team blog this morning (Speak the truth, but do it in love fool!) David Nilsen wrote:

“I’m the sort of person who puts 5 dollars in the offering plate. This is partly because I don’t ever carry much cash on me. If I’m thinking ahead I’ll write a check for 15 or 20 dollars, but that isn’t very often. I’ve been in the “starving student” cruise control mode for 6 years now. Then last Sunday I had an eye-opening experience. I glanced over at the family sitting next to me and saw a check for 400 dollars! I had always had a vague idea that I wasn’t giving as generously as I should, but this experience brought that vague idea home in a vivid way...

Speaking as someone who definitely does not tithe as much or as often as I should (I am now a sad statistic!), I would encourage all of you to reflect on how much you give back to God.”

I wonder where the idea of giving back to God came from. Yeah, I know this is normal church talk usually mentioned at the end of communion, but something about that phrase didn’t sit well with me today. This isn’t a knock against David and I understand the principle that God has blessed us financially and we are giving back a portion to him but I read in Psalms that everything belongs to God:

“For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.” Psalm 50:10

I also read Jesus explaining that we are mere stewards of the riches of God denoting that we don’t really own anything, he simply allows us access to his giant storehouses to meet our physical needs and that he cares how we handle what we’ve been given. How can we give something back to God that was never given to us to possess in the first place? This isn’t simply semantics, I think that this type of language is contributing to the idea in our pews “I guess I can afford to throw in a few bucks this week.” As David stated in his blog, there were many weeks that he couldn’t put more than a few dollars for the contribution because money was tight. I’d like to propose a new way of thinking about money. What if we thought of our contribution, not as “giving back to God” but instead as “taking less from God” for myself in order to leave enough to pass on for use in other areas of need? Let me explain it this way:

Old Thinking - God gave me $1000 to spend this month. I took the whole $1000 for use in my own life and whatever was left over I gave the remainder back to God. Sometimes there’s not enough left over...

New Thinking - God provisioned me $1000 to use this month, I took $900 dollars to live on and the rest was left to bless others in the name of Jesus. Always some left over to be used in the kingdom...

The application of this new way of thinking is that if I use less than offered on myself, I am free to apply the top portion of my provision right back into things that glorify God and his generosity. I am never left in the position of being a bad steward because the first-fruits were set apart to God so that I never saw it to begin with. We pay our taxes and handle our investments this way, money is routed to the appropriate places before we ever see it. I am not suggesting that our giving to God is a tax but I am saying that it might help to think of our giving in the same way, as first-fruits that are offered for God’s use before we ever see the rest. Think about it, if you joyfully make a conscious decision to leave 5, 8, or 10% for use in the name of Jesus you will never find yourself at the end of the month having squandered more that you should have and given nothing.

Perhaps changing our thinking about “our” money will change our giving? I hope so. One thing I am sure about, we need to continually clarify who’s money it is in the first place.

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Tags: Giving