Living on the Edge

Certainly, here is the clean verbatim transcript of the episode:

Dave Druey: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram... Did you know that the happiest, healthiest, and most fulfilled people in the world all have one thing in common? Today we're going to learn what that is and how we can make it a part of our lives.

Welcome to Living on the Edge. I'm Dave Druey. Most of us were never taught to think of generosity as a spiritual journey, let alone one with measurable rewards. Chip Ingram is here to make the case that living generously may be the single most logical, most rewarding way to arrange your entire life.

From the science of what generosity does to your brain, to what Moses asked God to show him on the mountain, today's lesson will challenge everything you thought you knew about giving. Later, Chip will share something important about our midyear match. You don't want to miss it. But first, here's Chip Ingram with his message titled Understanding the Journey.

Chip Ingram: I was a brand-new pastor, super nervous. It was my first Easter, and we knew the little church of 35 would probably mushroom to 50 people. I was beside myself. I couldn't sleep all night. I'd worked on the message and it still wasn't very good. I went into the office about 4:00 AM.

Around 5:30 or so, the sun was coming up. Probably wasn't a really good plan, but I so wanted to do a good job. Across the street was a small African American church where we've made some friends. I heard a car door slam and I thought, "It's dawn, I wonder what's going on." I saw a bright yellow Cadillac pull up. Then I saw a man that I recognized, who was the chairman of our board. He's a guy who came to Christ late. His name was John.

I watched he and his wife get out in the pre-dawn hours. All along, there were all these steps, probably 25 steps, and they put baskets of fruit and all kinds of different things all across. A little bit later, those people came to church. They said, "Who brought this? Did you do this, sister?" They can't figure out what's going on.

I just watched it grow and grow and grow. People came over and said, "Did you all do this? Where did this come from?" People were just so excited and blessed. Pretty soon, they're picking it up and sharing it with one another. I never dared say a word, and of course, I never told John I saw who did it. Generosity, going out of our way to love people, is at the heart of worship.

Jesus said it was more blessed to give than to receive. I don't think you turn on a faucet and you become generous overnight. I want to ask and answer five questions. What I realized when I grew up, if you would have asked me, "Am I generous?" I think I would have said yes. And yet, when I look back, I don't think I was generous at all because I didn't understand it.

First, let's ask question number one: what's it mean to be generous? This is Webster's definition: showing a readiness to freely give or share money or other valuable things. Notice, providing more than the amount needed or normal. It's giving in abundance, ample, showing kindness and concern for others.

Sometimes when you get a definition, I like to ask, "What are some synonyms?" People that are generous are liberal, lavish, magnanimous, open-handed, free-handed, bountiful, unselfish, ungrudging, benevolent, charitable, big-hearted, free, noble, honorable, good. I don't know about you, I would love to have some people drinking coffee and talking about me and using just some of those words, wouldn't you?

Aren't those the kind of words you would just long for someone to say? "She's so big-hearted." "They're so magnanimous." "They're so generous." "They're so unselfish." Another way to get your arms around a concept is to ask, "What's the opposite antonyms?" The opposite of being generous is mean, stingy, selfish, meager, miserly, unwilling to share, cheap, greedy, tight, unkind, thrift, and self-seeking.

Now, you don't need to raise your hand. Anybody like that to be how people would characterize you? That is ugly. Here's what I want you to get. We all have thoughts and words and time and stuff and money and influence to share with others. You don't have to be rich to be generous. In fact, the research tells us that the poorest people are far more generous than the wealthiest people.

We all have words, we all have positive thoughts, we all have time, we all have some level of money, we all have some influence. To be generous is to be ready and willing to share, to be kind, to be concerned for others. I'm going to do something that's really dangerous for me. I'm going to give you 10 specific reasons, both biblically and one scientific fact, of why being generous is so absolutely important.

It's important for your relationships, it's important for your eternity, it's important for your relationship with God, it's important about your money, it's important about your friendships. I want you to step back and see that the Bible says a lot about being generous. In fact, common sense says a lot about it. Why is it so important to live generously?

Number one: generosity is commanded by God. The Apostle Paul will write, "Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy." In other words, he's saying, instruct people that are wealthy.

And by the way, in the context historically, if you had enough food for both today and tomorrow, you were wealthy. Most people would go to work and then that's why if you didn't pay people their wages, they wouldn't eat that night. Notice he goes on. He says instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, to be ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so they can take hold of the life which is life indeed, or literally the words "so they can take hold of the life that is truly life."

If for no other reason, God commands us to be generous so we invest in what's going to count, so we can take hold of life and we can store up treasure for ourselves. Second: generosity is the antidote to idolatry. In your notes, it says Luke 1 through 15. It's the story of the unrighteous steward, and at the end of it, Jesus said you can't serve God and mammon, God and money.

He tells them generosity can break idolatry in our lives. Third: generosity today determines the harvest for tomorrow. All through Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, the Proverbs, there's this picture of sowing and reaping. It's an agricultural picture. Jesus would say in Luke 6:38, "Give and it will be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, back into your lap.

For whatever size measure that you give, it will be given back into you." Paul would say in 2 Corinthians, "Now this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap also bountifully. Each one must do as purposed in his heart, not grudgingly, for God loves a cheerful giver." All I want you to know is think of your time and your words and your money and your influence like seeds.

If you plant a lot of them, there's a harvest. If you plant good ones, there's a harvest. If you plant just a few, you get a few back. There's this law of reciprocity in Scripture that your future relationships, your future connection, your future positivity, if you will, there's a law of sowing and reaping with your time, your energy, your words, and your money. As you sow, the Bible's really clear, there's a harvest.

Fourth: generosity expresses God's love and kindness to others. "Let your light so shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." The young girl or the child that gets pulled out of the sex trade, the kindness at work, the school that gets remodeled, generosity is how you express God's love.

Fifth: generosity results in joy to the giver. Sixth: generosity results in praise and thanksgiving to God by the recipients. 2 Corinthians says, "You will be enriched in every way and generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service, speaking of giving, is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but also overflowing in thanksgiving to God."

There's this weird thing that happens. When you're generous, there's a joy that you experience. As you're generous to this person, thank you, Lord. John got the joy of giving, but they thanked and praised God, and that's what happens. Reason number seven: generosity is God's method to fund his kingdom work.

1 Corinthians 16 says that on the first day of the week, each Christian should set aside money, whether it's a little or a lot, depending on what God gave you, to support God's kingdom work. Number eight: generosity requires us to put our finances and our priorities in order. It's interesting.

If you give God the first and the best instead of what's left over, then sometimes you've got to get on a budget. Sometimes you have to figure out, wait a second, we're going to offer ourselves first to God. Here's his promise: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things," and in the context it's food, shelter, clothes, whatever you need, "will be given to you."

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. We'll have more in just a moment. This month, Living on the Edge is participating in a special midyear match. Every dollar given in June is being matched one-for-one by a group of generous partners who want to see this ministry go further.

Your gift doesn't just help, it's doubled the moment it arrives. You can get all the details at livingontheedge.org. Stick around, Chip will share more about it before we're done today. Right now, back to the message.

Chip Ingram: The ninth reason generosity's important: it grows our faith and develops our intimacy with Christ. As you study the Sermon on the Mount, it's so interesting as he talks about walking with God, and then he talks about giving and giving privately, and praying and praying in private.

He gives us radical thought: when your Father sees what you do in secret, he will reward you. Generosity is one of the ways your heart and God's heart, because he's generous and when you become the conduit, he actually draws you to himself. Number nine: generosity grows our faith and develops our intimacy with Christ.

And then number 10: generosity is a prerequisite to claiming God's promise to meet all our needs. That promise is for people who are generous with their resources. Those are just 10 reasons just from Scripture. A Dr. Stephen Post did a longitudinal study. He picked it up from a group that had started the study in 1920.

He did a study to find out what was the impact of generous people. The impact of generous people habitually were generous: they are happier, they have deeper relationships, and they literally live longer. Isn't that amazing? I guess it's not. If God designed us and wired us and if his kingdom practices and purposes, because he's generous, is he wants us to be generous and it gives us life when we're generous, it only makes sense that when we're miserly and living the opposite of the way God wants, it would have negative impact.

It has positive impact. In fact, the research now is when we're generous and when we give, the same endorphins that go off when you're working out really hard or like when you eat food or when you have sex, the same things are happening in your brain when you're a giver. God literally has wired us to be generous people.

Here's the amazing thing. That may be true, but it doesn't come naturally, does it? Whether it's two little kids or two older people, left to ourselves, if there's only one of something and there's two people, sometimes we're polite about it, but your human nature and my human nature is I want that for me.

I want more time, I want things for me. All I want you to know, it's a journey in generosity. Logically, if all these things are true, and I think they are, they're true practically, they're true scientifically, they're certainly true biblically, here's the summary: living generously is the most logical, wise, and rewarding way to arrange our lives and resources.

Pause. I'm done with my quick run through the Bible. Living generously is the most logical, wisest, rewarding way to arrange your life and resources. At least intellectually, would you sign off on that? Your relationships would be better, idols come down, you're arranging your finances.

As you give away friendship, you get friends. When you give love, you get love back. When you give away money, God multiplies it. If generosity is this good, it's designed by God and it's even commanded, why are so few Christians generous? Do you know of all the Christians in America that 50% of all Christians give nothing to their church, give nothing to any charitable cause?

Of all the Christians in America, only 3% to 5% give what's called a tithe or 10% of their income. Think of that. Long before there was a law, Abraham gives to Melchizedek 10% just as an offering to say thank you. Then that was a part of the Mosaic Law when the harvest would come in.

When the first grapes came or the first wheat, they'd just take the first 10% as an offering to say thank you. Then later, at the very end of the harvest, they would bring 10% when it's all full to say thank you. It was just a personal offering. I did a little research once. This is a completely unscientific, anecdotal, but it's been repeatable.

I've done this a couple times. I go to like a mall and try not to act too weird, and I just have a little clipboard and I act like I'm taking a survey and I've gone and I've just asked people, "Excuse me, sir, would you consider yourself to be a generous person? Yes or no? Excuse me, ma'am, would you consider yourself to be a generous person? Yes or no?"

You know what it comes out every time? 80%. I don't know whether people were Christians or non-Christians, but I can tell you that 80% of all the people that you ever meet, probably including the person sitting in your seat, we think we're generous. We do.

That presents a problem because if we think we're generous, but we're really not, then we're not asking God to help us be more generous or learning how to be generous. Correct? We're going to go on a journey of generosity. Some of you, lighten up. There's no big ask coming, there's no big project coming.

You know what I want you to get? I want you to experience the joy of generosity. I want the kindness and the love of God to start trickling in your families. I want your neighborhoods to say, "What happened to Joe? What happened to Mary?" I want people at your work going, "What in the world are you learning at that church?

You're bringing us coffee here, you signed up for extra work here, you took care of me here. How come you're being nice to me now? You've forgiven me over there." Because generous people change the world. The most generous person in the world was Jesus. He gave his life.

Actually, he's the second most generous person as difficult as that one was, the Father gave his son. The Holy Spirit and the Godhead together came and just said, "We love you all." If you want to learn to be generous, this is if you're expecting a guilt trip and a lot of statistics, "get with the program and why don't you give more," sorry.

At best, I can pump you up for two weeks and you'll fall right back to your old way of thinking. I want you to learn how to experience generosity and it just gets birthed inside your heart where you'll get so excited, you'll start saying, "Are we going overboard on this?" And what you'll learn is you can't go overboard.

How? How do you become more generous? Here's our first steps toward living a generous life. Number one: recognize it's a journey. If you wanted to be a classical guitar player, a great athlete, no one went from putting on the skates to doing one of those dances. No one just put on some skis and then went 7 million miles up in the air and landed.

It's a journey. So what I want you to really think about is what would it look like for you personally to say, wherever you're at on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, if I'm here, what would it look like to move toward becoming more generous? You might even at this moment whisper, "God, I'd like to be more generous. Would you help me be more generous?"

Second: reevaluate your view of God. This is where it all really begins. In Exodus 32, after all God's grace, deliverance, Moses goes up to get the Ten Commandments, and they get Aaron to build a golden calf and they're worshipping a golden calf. Moses comes down, takes care of the situation.

Then in chapter 33, he has this personal talk with God and says, "If we're going to keep going, you've got to go with me. If you're not going to go with me, I don't want to go." He stands in the gap for the Israelites and they're forgiven. And then he's seen God's power. He's seen the Red Sea, he's seen the fire at night and the cloud by day, he's seen manna come out.

He's seen all these miracles, but his big prayer is, "Show me your glory. I want to know you as you really are." And in chapter 33, God says, "No man can see my face and live. But here's what I'm going to do: I'll pass by and I'll let you get a glimpse. I'll let all my goodness pass before you."

It's a very interesting Hebrew word, and J.I. Packer has a great observation. He says, "Within the cluster of God's moral perfections, there is one in particular to which the term goodness points, the quality which God especially singled out from the whole when proclaiming all his goodness to Moses. He spoke of himself as abundant in goodness and truth."

This is the quality of generosity. Packer says that generosity expresses the simple wish that others would have what they need to make them happy. Could you even for a moment fathom what would happen if when you thought about God, you thought he's generous and he would like you to have what would make you happy?

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram and a message titled Understanding the Journey, part of our series called The Jesus Revolution: Join the Movement. Chip has a personal word coming right up, so stay close.

10 reasons, that's how many Chip gave us today for why generosity is not optional, not peripheral, not just about money. It's the antidote to idolatry and it's the seed of a future harvest. It's the very quality J.I. Packer says God chose to highlight when he revealed himself to Moses.

And perhaps most striking of all, the research says generous people are literally healthier, happier, and live longer because God wired us this way. Chip's invitation is simple: start the journey. God is not a reluctant giver. He's a blesser, and he'd like you to have what would make you truly happy.

Every message in this series and all of Chip's sermons are available on the Living on the Edge podcast. And for Chip's full-length uncut sermons, subscribe to the Chip Ingram Sermon podcast wherever you listen. We'll now hear from Chip with details about the midyear match and why your gift this month matters more than you might realize.

Chip Ingram: When I look at what God is doing through Living on the Edge, I'm genuinely, absolutely blown away. The teaching is reaching people in places we never expected. Pastors are being encouraged and challenged and trained all around the world, over half a million. Young believers are going deep for the first time.

Families are being changed. But here's what I want you to know. It's extremely challenging and expensive. There are many people that can give small gifts, but there are some of you who've given stretching, extraordinary gifts that have allowed us to go places and do things and create resources that we never imagined possible.

If you're one of those people that God has entrusted with much, could I ask you to just pause and say, "Lord, what would you have me do?" This big gift will be doubled dollar-for-dollar, and people will hear about Christ. If that's you, would you pray? Would you ask God what a large gift looks like, how you could step out possibly like never before and make a real difference in the lives of so many?

Thanks for praying, thanks for caring, thanks for joining us during June for this midyear match. It's the fuel that takes us through the next several months and allows us to plan and do the things that God is calling us to do. I invite you, join the movement and join with us.

Dave Druey: Make your choice today to not be a bystander, but instead a disciple maker. Join this midyear match today and double your impact at livingontheedge.org or call us now at 888-333-6003. Every dollar given this month is matched dollar-for-dollar.

And the deadline is tomorrow night, so don't wait. Call our team at 888-333-6003 or go online to livingontheedge.org. I'm Dave Druey. Next time, Chip takes us further in the journey of generosity, exposing the real reason so few Christians ever get there. That's next time on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.