WHAT IS YOUR MONEY DOING TO YOU?
On their way to church on Sunday, a mother gave her child a one-dollar bill and a quarter. "Sweetheart," the mother said, "you can place either one in the offering plate. It’s entirely up to you."
As they were driving home, the mother asked the daughter what she had decided to give. "Well, at first I was going to give the dollar," said the daughter. "But the man behind the pulpit said God loves a cheerful giver, so I felt like I would be much more cheerful if I gave the quarter instead."
Phillip Yancey tells of a friend who says the Bible asks three things of us about our relationship to money:
(1) How did you get it?
(2) What are you doing with it? and
(3) What is it doing to you?
At the heart of our ability to be generous is what our money is doing to us. Is it withering our hearts and making us stingy? Or is it making us big hearted and benevolent? The intent of the message today is to encourage us to let God give us big and benevolent hearts.
(From a sermon by Monty Newton, "Asking for Money: Biblical Principles for Generosity" 6/28/2009)