Friday is the first day of October but it is also the first day of the “10 Day Give.”  If you are not familiar with it, the 10 Day Give is a challenge conceived by Bob over at ChristianPF.com.  Its purpose is summed up succinctly as a way to “get our minds off of ourselves and start thinking about how we can help others.”

If you read the title of the post, you know that this is the third annual 10 Day Give…so if you haven’t done it before, this is the year!  And if you have participated previously, keep the momentum going!  I was a bystander the first year but did participate last year…only I didn’t do a great job of actually helping others.  I didn’t “actively participate” all 10 days so this year I’m trying to do a better job.

So, I guess I will say that this post serves as my challenge to you (and even more so to me) to participate in this year’s event.  So what does that all mean? Well, head on over to the 10 day give site to get more info and sign up but it’s pretty much what you already think it is.  For 10 days starting October 1st, try to give something to someone each day (that’s it?  yep, that’s it…pretty simple).  It could be money but it doesn’t have to be.  It could be a gift but it doesn’t have to be.  Sure, you could buy someone a coffee or lunch but you could also give someone a gift for no reason or do something for someone or spend your time with someone.  Get creative…get inspired…get motivated…and get going (No, actually, wait until Friday…just kidding).

First stop: head over to ChristianPF and find out more information about the 10 Day Give and add your name to the list of participants.

PS: Most of this post was actually written to inspire and motivate myself…but if inspires and motivates anyone else then all the better!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“Charity” can be a loaded word that means something different to everyone. Charity can be pejorative, such as: “Those charity cases get money, sit on their backsides, and don’t work”. It can be a scornful word, meaning a break is being given because one is better than the other, for example: “Tom took the girl out on a charity date.”

It’s interesting how the word was first used, hundreds of years ago; “charity” meant “love”. It could almost be said that “charity” had a double meaning from the start. You give charity because you have charity. Charity, in its modern sense, means that we feel a kind of love when we give, even for those we may never meet.

People who need charity now, in large part, are people who never needed charity before. The ruined economy, predatory lenders, and the bank bailouts that helped no one except the banks have made a new class of poor in our country. Anyone who escaped relatively unscathed from the recent economic meltdown can thank their lucky stars by opening their wallets a little wider when it comes time to give to charity. Below are seven more very good reasons to give.

Tax Deductions

Lots of folks give to the charities of their choice for this reason. Others find it a nice reward for the charity they give. Whatever reason, give, keep the receipts, and claim it on next year’s taxes.

It Will Save You Money Long Term

This may sound in essence a bit cold, but here goes. Children who receive a good education, have someone who cares about them, and eat nutritious meals are more apt to finish school and stay out of trouble. Donate to boys and girls clubs, local schools, food banks and free lunch programs, or some other charity that helps out kids. You won’t have to pay in the future for new prisons, for one thing, and if spending for prisons isn’t throwing your money down a rat hole, what is?

You may need charity yourself one day.

Donate for research to learn the cure for cancer, HIV, MS, MD, diabetes; whichever charity speaks to you. Hopefully the cure will be found before you or someone you love is diagnosed with these illnesses.

Create a Lasting Legacy

Donate to building funds for hospitals, libraries, schools, your local church. Perhaps you aren’t rich enough to have a wing named after you, but your kids can tell your grandkids that you help build something important.

For Your Grandchildren

While we’re on the subject of grandkids, you do want them to experience clean water, fresh air, icebergs and wild animals, don’t you? Donate to environmental groups, wildlife groups, conservation groups; they’ll be glad you did.

Healthy for the Soul

It’s good to give, why else do we celebrate gift giving holidays? You don’t have to go around trumpeting how much money you give to a particular charity; you can celebrate that warm glow quietly and teach your kids to do the same. It’s only money, right? Put your money where your mouth is.

If not you, who will?

Sad but true. There are a significant number of folks who think being a cold hearted old skinflint is a sign of good character. Give to prove them wrong.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In the wake of one of the largest earthquakes the world has ever seen, donations continue to come in by the thousands to help Haiti rebuild. While the outpouring of support has been tremendous, a tragedy like this is also an excellent opportunity for someone to take advantage. Charities continue to do excellent work in helping those that cannot afford to help themselves but for every legitimate organization, there seem to be two illegitimate ones.

Pinpointing a fraudulent charity can be difficult at times and it is certainly not an exact science, but knowing what to look for and how to handle your donations in the future, should ensure that the money you are donating goes to the people that need your help. The next time you are courted to make a donation, follow the tips below to avoid donating to scammers.

1. Never Make a Donation Over the Phone (Unless You Initiated the Call) – Legitimate charities do have a habit of cold calling for donations so many of the calls you receive could be real, however there is no way of knowing with a simple phone call if the person on the other line is who they say they are. If you are interested in their cause, ask them for the website information and offer to mail in a donation. Giving your credit card information over the phone is never a smart idea.
2. Never Make a Donation In Cash – The easiest way to lose your donation to fraud is to give them something that cannot be traced. If the organization has a booth set up, feel free to write a personal check from your online checking account. If you’re mailing in your donation, provide a money order or check written in the name of the charity. Being asked to make the donation payable to “Reggie” is an automatic no-no. For tax purposes, keeping a paper record of your donation is important. If you’re unlucky enough to donate to a scam, the IRS may audit your tax return, which is definitely something you want to avoid.
3. Never Make a Donation Through Email – Charities are fearful of being labeled as spam, so sending out mass-emails looking for donations doesn’t happen. If you ever see an email from someone stating to be a charity looking for a donation, there is an extreme amount of high-risk involved. Email is extremely un-secure and the link you click on to make your donation can take you absolutely anywhere.
4. Gather As Much Information As You Can – Before making a final decision, make sure you have gathered all of the available information there is on your charity of choice. Finding information can be easy, and doing any of the following should put your mind at ease:

Ask to see the organizations tax-exempt letter from the IRS. If they do not have one, or are unwilling to provide it, think twice about why.

Visit the charities website and look for things such as good grammar, a permanent street address, success stories, an outline of what the charities goals are, financial statements that tell you where the money goes and a board of directors. If you see that they are lacking many of the things above, it’s another sign that they might not be who they say they are.

Visit the IRS’s website and look them up. The IRS lists over 1.5 million charitable organizations that they recognize and if your charity isn’t on the list, time to move on.

If you think that you’ve been taken, you should immediately call the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and file a complaint. 1-877-FTC-HELP begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-877-FTC-HELP      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (382-4357). Hopefully though, after reading the steps above to protect yourself, you never have a need for this phone number.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Big changes

Allow me to explain…my wife gave birth to our fourth child two months ago.  Since then I’ve mentioned in multiple posts that she was going to be off work for a few months.  Now, she was only working two days a week but she is an Endocrinologist in private practice so that still represents a significant amount of money that she contributes to the household income.  We recently decided, however, that she is not going back to work next month.  For the first time, she is going to be a full-time stay at home mom (or as I like to refer to her: a trophy wife).

Of course this means significant changes around the BFN household.  Since this is a PF blog, let’s get to the financial stuff – it means a 36% decrease in gross income for our family. While our income is not quite cut in half, I think you would agree that such a sizable decrease will require some adjustment.

When we first started discussing how our budget would change, I mentioned that we would now contribute less to our church and missions and other charitable organizations.  Our percentage of giving is 12% this year so naturally we would reduce overall giving to be 12% of my salary instead of 12% of both of our salaries.  Well, she did not want to reduce the amount we give to missionaries because they personally rely on that money.  Ok, that’s valid.  “The only way we can drop our giving down to 12% then is to cut the amount we give to our local church significantly,” I told her.  Well, she didn’t want to do that either.

Our math or God’s math?

“Why don’t we just keep giving what we’ve been giving?” she asked me.  “Because we can’t,” I replied, “the numbers don’t add up.  We just can’t do that.”  Of course, I’m sure you all know what she was going to say next, “Doesn’t the Bible tell us that God will meet our needs?”  “Yes, but this is crazy.  I mean, that’s a lot of money each month!”

I went away from the meeting without giving much thought to her proposal.  I even altered our automatic donations to match up with the new numbers.  Now I had always thought it would be awesome to give a much larger percentage of our income than 10% but that would be when I was making my millions and had more opportunity to give.  Then I started thinking and praying and going to Iron Sharpen Iron events, and reading The Treasure Principle.  My initial reaction when I seriously started considering keeping our giving at the same level was fright.  How in the world could we give that much money without going way over budget each month?  I mean, we hadn’t even balanced the budget in the first place since the transition and now we’d be hiking it up hundreds more each month.

Why not?

And then I started thinking things like, “Why don’t we try this?  Why don’t we try giving more than our budget says we should?” And then I got excited (really, I did).  What would God do with that?  Would he provide opportunities for us to earn more money to keep up our giving?  Would He enable us to reduce our expenses?

So last week, I changed the automatic contributions back to what they were when my wife was still working.  The current plan jumps our giving from 12% of gross main career (”real job”) income to about 18%. I’ve always given 20% of my side-work income (this blog provides a bit but the majority of that income is generated through website design, development, and maintenance) though that income has so far not amounted to more than a couple thousand dollars a year.  Now, I don’t want to overstate this; it’s not like this will cause us to not be able to put food on the table.  Neither will we be challenging Bill Gates in how much money we’re giving away (not yet, at least).

Now what?

I have no idea what God is going to do with us through this.  I do know that he promises to meet our needs, so I’m counting on our needs continuing to be met.

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:19 (NASB)

Ok, I admit I’m still scared by the idea, but not nearly as much as I was a few weeks ago.  Frankly, I consider verses such as the verse from Ephesians below and I am excited to see how He will accomplish meeting our needs.  I’m curious to see what else comes out of this as well…hopefully something awesome through which we can give glory to God!

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.  Ephesians 3:20-21 (NIV)

Only time will tell how this actually works out for us.  As of now, the budget does not balance. We’ve taken out some of the fat and reduced some savings, but the biggest area of spending now is our housing costs.  We’ve decided to continue with this plan for three months and then re-evaluate our situation.  If we’re still not making the budget work, we will have to consider more significant changes to the budget at that point – mostly focused on our housing.

Frankly, I’d love for you to join us in attempting this.  Even so, I’m inviting you to keep up with how we’re doing.  I’ll give periodic updates and I’m hoping that through this effort some others will be inspired to rely on God and attempt something similar.

You can’t outgive God

As I prepared my review of The Treasure Principle yesterday, I re-read with great interest a statement from Alcorn that I put into the review: “The more you give, the more comes back to you, because God is the greatest giver in the universe, and he won’t let you outgive Him, Go ahead and try.  See what happens.”  We’re going to go ahead and try…we’ll see what happens.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The recession in particular has had a lasting effect on many Americans, leaving some in the unexpected position of needing help versus giving help. So if you’re in a position to give, this is a great time to show that you truly know how to “Love Thy Neighbor” by offering help to those you know and love – and those you’ve never met – who are struggling through this harsh recession.

Give Money

One of the most direct and effective ways to help those in need is to give money. Whether you’re offering money to a loved one or donating to a local charity, giving cash out of your pocket makes available a number of assistance options, including buying clothes and food, paying bills and more.

Donate Clothes, Food and Even You

If you feel that you’re not in a financial position to offer money, there are plenty of other great ways to give what you already have in your home. For instance, you could:

• Donate your clothes and complimentary items:
  Organizations like the Goodwill and Salvation Army are among the many that would love to have you to donate clothes, blankets and bedding that you no longer need. After you donate, the organizations sell the items then use that money to help members of their community, making your donation well worth it.
• Donate food: If you have canned goods in your home, you could donate food to local churches or community organizations. Or you could contribute to larger organizations that contribute to community food banks, like Feeding America.
• Donate you: While you may not have money, clothes, food or other miscellaneous items, you do have blood to give. Donating blood is a simple process that could save many lives. Even more, some organizations actually pay you for your time and contribution.  It’s definitely worth the 30 minutes you may be giving up.

There are other ways to donate as well, including offering tools and supplies to Habitat for Humanity, which helps rebuild communities by restoring or building new homes from the ground up.

Educate Your Neighbors

Another great way to give to those in need during the recession is through education. Whether you’re good filing taxes, managing money or writing resumes, there’s someone who could benefit from your expertise.

Here are some particularly interesting ways that you could volunteer your time to people right in your neighborhood:

• Help find employment: You may know someone who is not very Internet savvy but needs to find work. If you’re knowledgeable in this area, you could help locate job opportunities by connecting them to online unemployment resources, including job boards, social networking sites and great career advice blogs. Simply setting up online accounts could make the difference in finding a job, so why not offer your expertise to give a neighbor another shot at employment?
• Teach personal finance: It’s more than possible to save money during the recession. If you believe this and are doing it yourself then you could help a friend or neighbor do the same. By teaching personal finance budgeting, you could offer an invaluable resource that would be useful, not just during the recession, but for years to come.

There are plenty of other ways to offer your personal expertise, including providing knowledge on credit reports, helping to fill out mortgage applications, or even teaching how to invest. However, if you’re looking to volunteer with organizations, this volunteer website is a great place to help you match your interests to various organizations’ needs.

The satisfaction of helping your neighbor is one that you should not overlook. By giving to someone in need during this recession, you are indeed fulfilling the greater purpose of serving your fellow man and making this world a better place.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today is the kick off of the 10 Day Give – proposed and spearheaded by Bob of Christianpf.com. I believe this is the 2nd annual version of this event. I didn’t really participate last year but I am going to try hard to take part this time around.  I invite you to join in as well!

There are a few posts on Christianpf.com that provide more info about this event –   check out the kickoff post or the FAQ to get more details.  There is also a sign-up page for it (maybe if you actually sign-up for it, it will keep you motivated to continue throughout the 10 days).

So, I just signed up and I’m going to read more of the info on Bob’s site to get some ideas on how to reach out and give to those around me.  Remember, this is not necessarily giving money – it’s just giving (of your time, expertise, whatever).  And it’s only 10 days.  Again, I urge you to sign up and give and then see what happens for those around you and for you!

Warning – upcoming glimpse into the mind of an engineer – not for the faint of heart

As I mentioned, I just signed up right now but I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and I actually started yesterday in a tiny, tiny way.  My parents have been visiting for a few days as a stopover on their way to Florida.  Last night I drove with my Dad to fill up the tank with gas for the rest of their trip.  And I knew that I had a 10 cents per gallon credit at the gas station so I decided to give it to him as a tiny “give.”  Man, I can’t tell you how hard that was to do….I mean, it would have been nothing to give my parents $1.30 or whatever it came out to be, but the engineer inside of me reared his ugly head because their gas tank was half full!! Whenever I use these credits, I only use them on our van and only when it is empty.  I know, it’s insane – but I can’t help it!  Anyway, I forced myself to do it and was glad that I did something that was (although admittedly stupid) kinda hard for me to do.

I’m sure that’s much more than you ever wanted to know about me, but I’m trying to be honest here.  And I suggest that you take the opportunity of the 10 Day Give to try to push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit.  Maybe you’ll end up expanding that comfort zone and making yourself a better person as a result.  Good luck!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If you remember, I actually made a New Year’s Resolution this year .  The main focus of the resolution was to internalize the quality of being more generous as a person.  Ever since my wife and I got married, we have given a set percentage of our income to our local church, various missionaries, and other ministries.  But even with doing that, I am not a naturally generous person.  I find myself having to remind myself that it is a good thing to be generous with my time and money.  So, now I am on a quest to try to smooth off my rough edges in this area.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my first tangible effort to start smoothing….a 40 day devotional I was going to try .   I signed up and I started receiving the emails and now I have already completed the entire 40 days of learning.  S0, it is time to debrief the program and my experience.

GiveWithJoy.org’s 40 Day e-devotional focused on generosity

So it turned out that this program was basically a review of finances from a Biblical perspective.  Well, it wasn’t just about finances.  To give you a flavor for the myriad topics touched upon, here are some examples:

• God is the owner of everything
• Don’t trust in your riches, trust in God
• Don’t live for this life, but for your heavenly home
• Beware of greed, hoarding, or selfishness in your life
• God blesses you financially so that you can be a blessing to others
• God will reward you for your faithful generosity and diligent labors
• Realize that God can use anyone and any resources to provide for His work
• When you help the poor and needy, don’t do it for public recognition

Obviously, these are but a few of the topics covered (there are 40 days after all)

There was a lot of good stuff in there

I’m not sure which I found most useful each day – the numerous verses related to the topic of the day or the inspiring stories from people who saw awesome things happen in their lives as a result of adopting God’s view on generosity and giving.  The site also included a daily cartoon…but frankly I didn’t think those were all that funny most of the time!

For me personally, however, it was a little off the mark from what I was expecting.  This devotional was geared more towards generosity in relation to giving to your church and other ministries.  I was hoping it would be more focused on increasing my interpersonal generosity (is that a phrase?).

That being said, it was still very useful and I enjoyed reading through it.  Now, some of it was review after reading Your Money Counts but there were many new verses that were great ones to read and reflect upon.  And the daily anecdotes were quite inspiring as well to see how God works in people’s lives when they trust Him fully.

If you are looking to investigate how God views money and giving and trusting Him and numerous other topics, then I would recommend that you sign up at GiveWithJoy.org .  You’ll get an email each morning for the next 40 days that links to a page on the website.  I’m sure that you will learn quite a bit from the Bible and hopefully you will be inspired to get serious about your giving and your generosity in general.

To answer the question posed in the title – I’m definitely not finished with this journey yet.  As I mentioned, this didn’t really scratch my personal generosity itch.  I am better off for doing the 40 days of study, but me as a naturally generous person: that is still a work in progress unfortunately (I’ll keep trying, I promise!)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I feel like I’ve actually started to experience a bit of success increasing my generosity.  I do feel that I have been more generous lately, but unfortunately I still need to make a concerted effort to do so.  I’d really like to internalize this characteristic and make it a more natural expression of who I am rather than something I have to force myself to do.

So I have finally found a method that I hope will start moving me in the right direction.  I heard on the local Christian radio station to which I sometimes listen (when I’m not listening to my fancy new iPhone) an ad for the "40 Day Journey to Generosity."  My first reaction was, "hmmm, that’s interesting."  That was quickly followed by, "Hey!  Wait a second!  They said ‘generosity’ – I need to check that site out."

So, I did and I signed up for GiveWithJoy.org’s 40 Day Journey to Generosity.  It is a daily devotional (sorry, "eDevotional") that is mailed out to you via email.  Today was day 1 – so I’m on my way to generosity!  The devotional lists a number of scripture references as well as some key takeaways, a 1 minute true story, a cartoon-of-the-day, and some additional aricles and worksheets.

I can’t really endorse this thing yet as I’ve just started it this morning and I don’t really know much about the site or its owner (Dr. Brian Kluth).  But if you’d like to take the journey with me, sign up at the website and send me an email if you want to discuss anything that you’ve read on any particular day.  If I find out this is some kooky thing, then I’ll be sure to disclose that in a future post!

The focus of today was "God is the Owner of everything."  The purpose is to get back to basics and ground yourself in the fact that everything we "have" is actually owned by God and has been given to us by Him.  One of the takeaways: "When we give to God, we are just taking our hands off what already belongs to Him."  Good truth to remember there…so far so good!

Has anyone out there heard of this site or its owner?  Is anyone else on the Journey to Generosity?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’m sure we’ve all heard numerous times regarding the importance of giving.  Everyone from your pastor to various bloggers have discussed it.  I’ve even talked about the importance of giving in the past.  ChristianPF is preparing to run a 10 Day Give challenge to inspire others to make it a priority as well.  For Christians, the most basic impetus is that God tells us to give and to help others.  But all people (ok, most) have a sense that giving to help others is a good thing to do – it’s good for those you are helping obviously, it’s good for the world as a whole, and it’s good for yourself as well.  So, we’ve talked about "why" we should give, I’m curious "how" people give.

Large or Small?

Do you give small amounts freely whenever you get the chance?  Like dropping $5 at Cold Stone for their Make-A-Wish donations or giving a few bucks for Alex’s Lemonade Stand donations at Rita’s? (we apparently spend a lot of time at dessert type restaurants)  Or do you save it up to give only larger donations?  If so, is this because you feel there is a greater impact giving significant amounts?  Or is it for tax deduction purposes?  We tend to do both – more of an emphasis is on larger donations, but we also occasionally give small donations at random times (like at Cold Stone last night) (if using Twitter and Plurk is considered "microblogging", would that be called "micro-donating?")

Directly or through Charitable Orgnizations?

Do you only give to established charities or through organizations?  Or do you like to target your giving directly to the people in need?  The former seems a lot easier to do and maybe you feel like you can be assured that it will go to better use (as long as you’re comfortable that most of the money is actually getting into the hands of people who need it and not being used for administrative costs).  I personally don’t have a lot of experience giving money directly.

Scheduled or Spontaneous?

Do you schedule your giving so that you ensure it gets accomplished?  I mentioned earlier that I like to automate as much as possible in my finances and also that I actually have a a special tithe fund to make sure I do not lose track of any money we’ve decided to give.  My wife feels that this is somewhat sterile.  She thinks there is too much regimentation and process and not enough heartfelt giving.  She would like to do more spontaneous giving whether or not we have money allocated in our tithe account to do so.  How about you?  Do you like to schedule and automate it or just give as you are lead to give?  Do you keep close track of how much you give or just give when the opportunity arises?

Why Types of Charitable Organization?

If you do give to charitable organizations, do you typically give to a certain type of organization?  For instance, if you are a spiritual person, do you give only (or mostly) to related charities or do you give to secular ones as well.  Or, if you are an atheist or agnostic, do you give only to secular charities or do you also give to religious ones that you feel are doing worthwhile work?  For our scheduled giving, we typically give to Christian organizations but for our micro-donations we give to all organizations.  In the book I’m currently reading, Your Money Counts , the author suggests that Christians should give mostly to Christian organizations.  His rationale is that all people give to secular charities while only Christians give to Christian ones.  I’m curious if that is true…it probably is.

So what does this all mean?

I’m not really sure what it all means.  I’m just curious to see where everyone stands on this.  I imagine that most people dabble in a mix of the few options I discussed.  Maybe not, maybe I’m the loner who worries about making sure I donate all the money I "said" I would.

I do think we will all agree that helping and giving are two very good things that we can do for each other.  And though this post was written in the context of giving financially, giving doesn’t necessarily have to be solely about money.  Maybe that should have been another question – do you typically give financially or otherwise?  For instance, in the process of starting up this blog, I have been blessed with much help from established bloggers and have learned a great deal and made some new friends.  And that certainly was good for the one being helped (me!).

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Well, I’m going to have to disagree with those who would say that…let me tell you why. (you might be thinking about now, "uh oh, here comes more of that church and Bible stuff," and, if you are thinking that then you are correct. Even if you’re not interested in using Biblical principles to guide your life, please stick around. At the bottom of the post, I’ll provide a few secular reasons to give)

Why should I give before any of the other personal finance stuff?

Quite simply, you should give some of your money away because we are instructed to do so in the Bible. Of course, there are numerous Old Testament passages regarding tithes and offerings. And remember, these passages are directed towards all people – not just the wealthy or the ones who have managed to get out of debt. I think everyone should give what they can no matter what situation they find themselves. If you can only give a little, then give a little. If you can give more, then give more. Remember, God doesn’t ask you to give because he needs the money, so don’t worry about not having much to give. I think God instructs us to give for the following reasons, among others:

• Giving shifts our focus from the temporal to the eternal - It is quite easy for us to get caught up in our current situations and get distracted from our focus on God and the eternal. Purposefully and periodically giving money (which most of us deem important and find hard to do) shifts our focus from ourselves to God. At the same time, we trade our earthly treasures that are so dear yet so fleeting for heavenly treasures that are eternal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:20-21

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Matthew 6:24

• Giving shifts our focus from ourselves to others – As people, we are naturally selfish and self-absorbed. It requires effort to place others before ourselves. Giving causes us to look outside of ourselves and our day to day concerns. As a result, we learn about others and are exposed to the difficulties other people have in their lives. Not only does giving help out other people, but it also helps us as well by enabling us to be content with our current situation. It’s hard to complain about how much it costs to fill up your car with gas when you are giving your money to people who not only don’t have a car but don’t even have enough money for food.

• Giving typically results in material blessing and increase – This is the quite counterintuitive but it appears to be true. Check out this verse from Proverbs:

One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. Proverbs 11:24-25

This verse teaches that being generous towards others actually results in our own prosperity. I don’t think this is some guaranteed contract and I do think it only occurs if you have the correct attitude in giving. If you are begrudingly giving some money because you think you’ll get more money in return, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that probably won’t come to fruition.

On the other hand, here are some personal stories from ChristianPF and Capital Couples Finance via Gather Little By Little about how tithing affected their financial situations. My wife and I have regularly given a set percentage of our income since we got married. We continued this even while paying back huge amounts of student loans and somehow (I’m seriously not sure how it all came to pass so quickly) we have paid off all of our student loans decades before they were scheduled to be paid off.

How much should you give?

How much of your income to give is quite controversial as well. I really believe that amount is between you and God – there is no correct answer for all Christ followers. I’ll put some of my thoughts out here as a starting point to the discussion but these are only my opinions.

The most important component is your attitude.

If you are just giving money because you feel you have to, well, that’s alright because at least you are doing it to be obedient to God, but I do feel that you are still missing out on some of the associated benefits and blessings. On the other hand, if you are giving so others will tell you how great you are, then you are really missing out. You’ll get your reward, but it will be from a few people and not from God:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. Matthew 6:5

Shouldn’t I give 10%?

In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to give a tithe, or tenth, of their possessions and income. I personally do think that it directly applies as a command to Christians.

Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7

Though I do not feel bound by the tithe, I do think it is a good starting point for investigating how much of your income you feel led to give.

To whom should I give it?

Some people feel that your minimum tithe amount should be given to your home church and then whatever monies above and beyond that should be given to others in need. Personally, I don’t ascribe to this philosophy either. I believe that the Christ’s church is more than just a building with four walls; rather it is the collection of all Christ followers throughout the world. As such, I think we honor God by giving to wherever God’s work is being done.

For instance, we personally give 10% of our gross income (I don’t think that I should give less money to God when I do a better job of using tax deductions). We give the majority of this to our local church, but we also support a few organizations and directly support some missionaries.

What if you don’t believe in all this church stuff?

If you don’t believe in all this church stuff, I am really impressed that you made it this far into the post (sure, you probably just skipped ahead, but I’ll be optimistic). I still think it is important to give your money to others. Obviously, you won’t have the same reasons for giving as those described above. I do think it can be a worthwhile endeavor for a few reasons:

• Give to help others – You can make a real difference in a person’s life by giving them a helping hand when they need it.
• You can make the world a better place – direct your resources to people that need help and you improve their situation and make the world a slightly better place. Repeat this process and who knows how far you can get.
• It feels good to help others – you generally get great satisfaction from knowing you reached out to a fellow human being and made things a little brighter for them. Don’t believe me? Try it sometime and see what happens.

photo credits: Daquella manera and Phillie Casablanca

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.