Ep #22: Stop asking "How much should I give?" Ask this instead...

Episode Transcript

Spencer
One of my seminary professors was fond of saying there's no right answer to the wrong question. And one of the questions that we get so often is how much should I be giving? And we want to turn that question around and say the starting point is how much should I keep?

Austin
We are going be talking about the question “How much should I give?” And that's really the million-dollar question that nobody has an answer to. And it's just like the question of how much is enough? I think we regularly wrestle with that because there's not a clear answer, just like we talked about in episode seven, about how much is enough.
God doesn't say in Leviticus, Thou shalt keep $10,000 per month for yourself. Like there's no place in Scripture that lays it out clearly. And I think when there's ambiguity, people try to find either or this is my minimum standard or this is my maximum standard. And if I toe the line on either of those, I think when we start off with the question of how much should I give, we're starting in the wrong place.
What we really need to do is start with the place of God as the provider. He has given us everything that we will ever need. Whether it's whatever I want. His presence is what I need. And so, I need to be constantly focused on Am I looking to him? Is my light and my aim and my telos focused towards God, towards eternity.
And then I start to start asking the question, How much does God want me to keep for myself, for my family, and not just how much, can I shave just a little bit off for him? You know, I think about this and we've been reading Prince Caspian and all the Narnia books to our kids recently, And in Prince Caspian, Lucy sees Aslan and she says, Aslan, you're bigger.
And his response is just so sweet. He says, No, I'm not bigger child, but every year you grow, you find me bigger. And it's as Lucy gets bigger and as she experiences Aslan more and more, his presence looks bigger. And I think as we interact with the Lord, that should be the same thing. Our vision of him grows bigger and it becomes less and less—our giving becomes less and less—about, well, what's the number? And more about my response in joy to God is provider. So, Spencer, as we think about, you know, how much is enough? What should I be giving? What are some of the cultural places that the church goes to say This is how much you should be giving?

Spencer
Well, church usually goes one of two directions. One is some kind of a 10% baseline for giving. And not that we have a complete objection to that, but we have to know where it's situated and how it's routed. And really, if we go back to the Old Testament where people think that 10% was established. We've got three tithes, the careful biblical scholars among them will tell you probably a 10% tithe to the Levites, 10% tithe to the central sanctuary.
And then every third year, a 10% tithe to the poor. So, for those of us keeping math at home, it's 23.3% on average over three years or, 20%, 20%, and then that 30%. So even there, it's a little bit murky in terms of how that played out in Israel over time and how the tithes were taken.
So, when we go back to that 10%, it's that that guidance is based on Old Testament, and it's also based on not counting all of those pieces together. Now, the second direction sometimes that we'll see churches leaders go is a direction that basically says, well, we're led by the spirit. So, you know, just reflect on it and give whatever you want, which really isn't much guidance there.
Oftentimes there's just a desire not to be pushy, not to really surface the conversation. Oftentimes we can see our idols most clearly by the conversations that nobody wants to have. And people are not sharing very openly about their finances, about their questions, about their concerns. And so, we look at that, and it's the same way within the church.
We don't want to give guidance. We don't want to presume on anyone there. So, neither one of those approaches is not great because it's not situated in who we are as stewards of God.

Austin
And, you know, as I think about it as well, in the U.S., it's really hard for us to realize how much God has provided for us. And we live in a society of abundance and we both come from a place of we have privilege, we have what we need. We know neighbors that don't have what they need, but still, we still live in a culture of abundance. Where I can help and I can give money to an impoverished friend and they don't have to go searching for where they're going to go find food.
That's not true in all places. And so I think as we come to this question about giving and this question of where, where does God want me to give? How much does he want me to give? We need to come back again and be reminded that God has provided incredibly, abundantly for us. And it's about my response to the Lord.
And that's what we want to keep coming back to over and over and over again. And this question of giving is, am I willing to listen to God and not just willing to listen? Am I willing to obey what he says? And we think about a previous episode that we talked about not feeling joy or pleasure and giving.
Again, we have to come back and say, Where is my aim? Is my aim towards getting more of God and receiving more of God and experiencing Him as Lucy did and saying, God, you're bigger this year. Or are we just trying to check a box? Because we're just trying to check a box, Then no number will ever satisfy us.

Spencer
And I love what you said about the gifts that we've been given, you know, economically, where we sit right now, we can always look at someone else and say, well, they have more than I do. One of the schools that I went to growing up had kids that came from a family that they were billionaires.
So, we could always say, well, they've got more than we have, you know, over here materially. But when we look at the scope of human history, when we look also at our current moment, as you said, even folks that knock on our door who are homeless, they have more access to health care, they have more access to food, they have more access to all kinds of different things.
Then a significant portion of the world, you know, even now. So, as we look at how much we keep, I think that we need to reframe all that we're given to help us look at that more accurately and actually have a level of gratitude that would be appropriate right?
So today, our text, we're going to get into Hebrews 13:5-6, and we think about the context there. Author of Hebrews has gone through Chapter 11. So, we've got the heroes of the faith that are enumerated, and then we get into chapter 12. And basically, the call is to endure to move through the difficulties, the hardships, to be faithful in the midst of that, because God is treating is children in such a way that he's disciplining them and preparing them for the future.
So, we dive into chapter 13 and the author is giving us some succinct instructions and this can relate to marital fidelity. This can relate to, you know, other aspects, different spheres of life, like being hospitable to strangers. But we shift over in verses five and six to deal with how we look at money. So, if you read us that text.
Hebrews 13:5-6, “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me.’” You know, this text is really simple. We can either love money or we can keep our life free from the love of money and be content with God providing what we have and saying, The Lord is my helper.
Who shall I fear? What shall I fear? God has provided. Am I going to trust in that or am I going to trust in my love of money? And, you know, the command springs from us understanding that we have to be content with the Lord. If we're not content with the Lord, then we're going to try to seek contentment somewhere else.
And this is throughout Scripture. It's not just in Hebrews. It's always, you know, Jeremiah I think about regularly, you've turned from the fountain of living water to go to cisterns that don't hold any water and that are broken and then don't give you life and you know, we were watching a video recently and Tim Keller posed this question to a group of people.
He says, “Where does your money flow effortlessly?” And I think as we come back and look at this verse of Hebrews, well, my love of money is going to be where my money flows effortlessly. And as I think about giving in particular, my money doesn't often flow effortlessly to giving. And sometimes it does. Sometimes I am so compelled and God is.
I shared recently about some friends that are going to work with trafficking victims. And that was a time where I was like, I want to give there. I want to help end human slavery. And these are friends that are going to do it. That was a joy. And the money just went effortlessly. It's not always like that for me.
I think there's times in my life where I think about, okay, my trust in God is provider. Am I trusting myself as a provider? I'll I am will often put money faster into my health savings account, my IRAs, any sort of retirement savings vehicle saving account faster than I will put money anywhere else. I think there's an innate fear within me that what if God doesn't provide?
Now I can look back on ten years of ministry and say, Praise the Lord. I never received a short paycheck. He always provided the salary that we needed. But in the back of my mind, there's always that, “What if? Well, what if he doesn't this time?” And it's so much easier to not trust the Lord as my provider, and it's so much easier to trust my own fears, my own uncertainty and anxiety about what the future will hold.
And so my money flows effortlessly to quell my fear rather than effortlessly back to the Lord who has so generously given. What are some things that maybe stick out to you from either that question from Keller or the passage?

Spencer
Well, just what you were saying there, I can relate to that. And I think on some level, all of us can, because in the fall, the world became dangerous. We no longer had God as our protector, as the one who would walk with us through the garden. And since that point, we have an understandable fear about what goes on. So, we want to seek control. And one of the ways that we can control things is by amassing material goods, by amassing money, by buffering ourselves from the environment.
And so I think, you know, some of us might use money to assuage some of that visceral fear. You know, we're distracting ourselves. We're medicating ourselves in some way. Some of us just want to put those resources and maybe have more of a tendency to hoard those resources to be able to buffer, you know, what might happen around us.

But it all comes back to what you were talking about, God being provider. And one of the things that has really struck me here of late as we've been going through this is just there's a bit of a paradigm shift in terms of the business with me as I look at God as provider, as I look at him owning it all.
There's a freedom that I have with the business that I really didn't have, say, three or four years ago in that I still a steward. I still am focused on doing well and working. But I also know that I can't control the outcome so I can be faithful, but I leave the outcome to the Lord, and that is really freeing in many ways because I can say this is what I can do and this is what I have to rely on God, who is our provider to do for us.
And that has allowed me to rest more. There were times when things would become dicey, say, in the midst of the COVID lockdown, where I felt a tremendous weight there. And not that that weight isn't there in some ways, but it's entirely different. If we say, my job as a steward, the Lord knew that the COVID lockdown was going to happen, that we were going to have a pandemic.
Whatever I do here, he's looking at this in light of what my option said is, you know, and that my going to be faithful, am I going to be obedient with what he's given me in this circumstance? Because I you know, I didn't cause the pandemic. I didn't call I didn't make the decision, you know, to get us to that point.
So it's much more freeing to be able to say, okay, here's where I'm at or you know, this and walk through it with much more open hands, saying, he's my provider.

Austin
I think is we come back to the question of how much should I give him? Again, if we're looking at that as that's the question to ask, it's not the right question. Because we really need to ask, who is my provider? Am I trusting God as my provider? But it also doesn't free us from saying, well, if God is my provider, then he's everybody's provider. Therefore I don't have to give. If it's both like I do need to be asking how much should I be giving? But it shouldn't be the primary question.
It should come after. Am I seeing God as provider? Am I keeping a right amount or am I spending lavishly on a lifestyle that I don't need. You know, and I think that's a harder question to say, is to open yourself before the Lord and say, God, I'm living in overly extravagant and overly lavish lifestyle. Am I taking too much for myself so that I can be removed from pain or so that I can not have to enter maybe some discomfort of should I buy this or that?
And, you know, I think this quote from C.S. Lewis is really helpful and pretty jarring, too. I believe it's from “Mere Christianity”, but I may be wrong in that. So Lewis says, “I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. If our giving habits do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we want to do but cannot do because our giving expenditures exclude them.” That's really jarring. That's really hard because I think about the things that I want and I think about vacations for my kids or giving them opportunity to play sports or things along those lines, music lessons. Most of the things that we want, we can do.
And if I look at this and I say, okay, where is the truth in what Lewis is saying is he was abundantly generous, as we've talked about before. He experienced the grace of the Lord in such a way that he gave and gave and gave. And he trusted the Lord. And the Lord provided.
Am I willing to be that radical in my generosity? Am I willing to be that radical in my lifestyle? Where I say maybe we can't do some of these things that we've always wanted to do, but it's because I trust God, and he will always lead us into good things.

Spencer
Well, and I think that one of the ways that he helps lead us into those good things is he also connects us with people. So if we try to just do this alone, it's much more difficult. But if part of those connections are people around the world who say, okay, I know these people and I know how they live and I see the joy, you know, in their lives. Believers that may be in a part of the world that they're persecuted for their faith or they're impoverished.
If we actually have relationships with those folks that can, I think, help get our center of gravity back to where it needs to be to say, oh, actually this expenditure is something that's that I need to reflect on as a steward. Is this what God would have me do rather than just looking to people who are right around us?
Maybe in a world that is fairly affluent and say, well, they can do it and they can do it. And so, you know, surely I can do this as a steward as well. When we can when we can allow the Lord to speak in through dear friends and those around the world as well, I think that that can help us move in that direction that you're talking about, where we say, okay, I can surrender this piece because I know someone who can the Lord can use these resources, you know, for.

Austin
I think there's also this tension. And as of saying, this doesn't mean you have to become an ascetic. And live off pennies. But it is to say, are we even questioning our spending? Are we questioning how much we're keeping? And yeah, I still want to give my kids good experiences. I still want to offer them those things, but I don't want to offer them at the expense of I'm just not questioning and taking it befor the Lord.

And I think that's where we need to start, is are we taking all of these things before the Lord? Are we allowing others to speak, and are we willing to maybe into those hard places of our money?

Spencer
Well, and every time we pull out the credit card or the debit card or the checkbook or cash, are we asking are we listening to the Holy Spirit? You know, every time that, you know, we're ordering something, you know, online, are we asking God, okay, do I need this? That's been something for me that I'm much more focused on here over the last six months is just listening. Okay, Lord, are you leading me in this process? And sometimes I've felt rebuked and said no. feel the Holy Spirit saying no, you don't need to be going in that direction.
This is not something that you need. It's just going to be for purposes that aren't needed.

Austin
So, yeah, well, let's finish off and say, you know, God loves us. He is abundantly generous. The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. His righteousness to children's children. We don't want to forget that.

Spencer And I think we go back to Hebrews 13:6. We can confidently say, The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? I mean, you see the same thing in Romans 8, You know, if God is for us, who can be against us? And we know that the Lord loves his children and has a good things for us and some of those things we just need to pay attention to, you know, as we listen.

Austin
We hope you really enjoy this episode. Feel free to share with a friend. Talk about with a friend, maybe even take your budget before a friend. It's really helpful to talk about these things in community because if I'm alone, I'm going to tend back towards my own postures of fear, back towards my own postures of control.
It's when I get before the Lord, when I get before the Lord with my friends, that I can really start being challenged. So, I hope you enjoy it and we will see you again next time.