Archives by: Gary Hoag

Praise the Lord. Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in His commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes. They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor, their righteousness endures forever; their horn will be lifted high in honor. The wicked will see and be vexed, they will gnash their teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing. Psalm 112

“General conformity to the standards of the covenant and in particular generosity as the corollary of God’s gift of wealth. The God who gives expects the recipient to be godlike in his [or her] giving. As a consequence, he [or she] will know success in his [or her] life and command the respect of others. The picture of prosperity as the reward of virtue is enhanced by the final reference to the frustrated chagrin of the “wicked” who see none of their ambitions come true.”

Leslie C. Allen in Psalms 101-150 (WBC; Waco; Word, 1983) 97.

Would people say you are “godlike” in your giving following the pattern of God in this psalm?

The psalmist depicts those who use God’s material gifts rightly as gracious and compassionate. They are generous and lend freely and conduct their affairs with justice. The world has a different definition of justice and fairness than God does.

When it reads that “He scatters his gifts to the poor” (cf. 2 Corinthians 9:9), that term for poor used here does not mean “destitute” but the “working class.” This implies that those who work hard daily and make an income are part of the cycle of generosity.

They are blessed to be a blessing. For too many, the blessing stops with them.

What is God’s desire and design for ordinary people like you and me? Be gracious, generous, and compassionate. Make us into such people, Father, by your Holy Spirit, for your glory, so that we show your love and justice and kindness in a broken world. Amen.

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Matthew 7:15-20

“Ever since the missionary era, Christianity has had a positive impact on the socio-cultural arena throughout Africa. In addition to involvement in evangelism and discipleship, a variety of Christian communities were behind the founding and growth of primary, secondary, and tertiary educational institutions, health facilities, poverty alleviation projects, children’s homes, and even civic initiatives. As a result, not only does Christianity continue to grow across much of the continent, but it has also achieved significant public acceptance as a force of social good.

Now, however, there is a worrying sense that certain practices are chipping away at its historic moral credibility and public strength. From an ecclesiological and theological perspective, the core of the problem lies with the rapid rise and media visibility of ‘dodgy’ (ie dubious) pastors, who are the false prophets of our day. Among the many self-proclaimed ‘men of God’ or ‘servants of God’, the values that have traditionally distinguished Christian ministry are increasingly absent: Values such as humility, compassion, selfless service, and servant leadership are now increasingly replaced by a preoccupation with image consciousness, self-aggrandizement, and enlargement of personal ministry influence at whatever cost.

Previously, values such as generosity and charity, accompanied by frugal lifestyle, were self-evident markers of good church leaders, pastors, clergy, and any kinds of church workers such as evangelists or catechists. In the face of difficulty, a poor Christian could expect to get temporal help even from a materially impoverished pastor who would share the little they have. These values of previous generations of Christian workers are increasingly replaced by what seems to be an indiscriminate emphasis on material blessedness as a marker of a genuine relationship with God.”

Moses Owojaiye in “The Problem of False Prophets in Africa: Strengthening the Church in the Face of a Troublesome Trend” in Lausanne Global Analysis: November 2019. Volume 8 / Issue 6.

False prophets infiltrated the church in the first century and have done so since then in every generation. Watch out.  When people inspect your fruit, do you appear “dodgy” or do you exhibit distinguished Christian values?

Some Christian workers in Africa and around the world today exhibit certain practice. They have abandoned humility for hubris, selfless service for self-aggrandizement, and compassionate generosity for material blessedness.

Let’s live simply and give charitably with a frugal lifestyle before an audience of one (God) and a watching world. What’s at stake? Our witness is in jeopardy along with our ability to be a force for gospel and social good.

Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead. Hebrews 11:19

“Abraham envinced a growing faith in God, which he himself cultivated, and now he came to learn in a new way the truth of God’s all-sufficiency. Hence His reply to Isaac’s question as to the animal for sacrifice. “The Lord will see to it that there is a lamb for the burnt offering.” Even if he had to plunge his knife into Isaac, Abraham believed that God was able to raise his son from the dead. His faith was willing to go to the limit for he knew that “The Lord will see to it.”

Herbert Lockyer in All the Divine Names and Titles in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975) 22.

Are you willing to go to the limit with your giving?

Growing in generosity, being willing to sacrifice anything God asks of us, only comes from cultivating a deep faith in God. If we want to grow in the grace of giving, we must cultivate our relationship with God.

How are you cultivating your relationship with God during COVID?

By growing in our knowledge of God and living out of that knowledge, we learn by experience the all-sufficiency of God actually means all. God is able and can see to our needs just He did for Abraham.

But will we go to the limit like Abraham did?

As I lean into the “divine” aspects of generosity, I am realizing daily that it’s all about trust. Hard times reveal where we place our trust and they show the limits to which we are willing to go.

What are these times revealing to you about where you place your trust?

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 2 Corinthians 9:8

“My daughter, I assure you of a permanent income on which you will live. Your duty will be to trust completely in My goodness, and My duty will be to give you all you need. I am making Myself dependent upon your trust: if your trust is great, then My generosity will be without limit.”

Helena Kowalska, known widely as Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) and as the Apostle of Divine Mercy, in Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (Stockbridge: Marian Press, 2005) 156.

I am continuing to look at books with “divine” in the title. This is another one. Long before Jesus Calling books became popular, we have the diary of St. Faustina. It’s a treasure recounting the life of an ordinary polish girl who simply desired only to be one with her Lord Jesus Christ.

In her first year at the convent, she was to determine if trusting God to care for her needs would be her way of life. She was praying about it, and today’s post recounts the words she heard from the Lord when pouring out her heart to him about her need for perpetual provision. What’s the lesson?

If we come to God in humility and trust Him for provision, His generosity will be without limit. His abundant grace and divine mercy will literally make it His duty to supply all we need. The challenge is that it requires us to have trust that is great.

When the idea of “permanent income” comes into view, most people think it is the human responsibility to sort this. In the world’s economy, that is true. But nothing could be further from the truth in God’s economy. Jesus teaches us to seek God first, and like Faustina, to trust Him to care for our needs.

If we want to live lives of rich generosity, then we must trust God for everything. When we do we experience more than permanent income. We get Him. He makes it His duty to care for those who place their trust in Him.

Sadly, most people are not willing to take this step. As G.K. Chesterton said in his classic work, What’s Wrong with the World, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Then he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.” Genesis 24:12-14

“The slave set out from his master’s house and got to Charan late that day after covering many miles. He mounted camels to make the going easier and then, bidding a long farewell to the gifts he was offered and to all the trappings of wealth, he raised his hands to heaven and begged God to make a match for the son of his master and to give him a daughter-in-law suited to his master in character.

Who but would admire the man for his piety? Or rather who could find adequate praise for his every single word? His prayer, you can see, is graced with faith, wisdom, and piety. Is it not supreme piety and wisdom to turn one’s back on everybody and depend on the providence of God for the success of one’s journey? Does it not exceed the limits of faith for him to rely on the justice of his master, to call the God of all things his God, hoping thereby to receive the answer to His prayer and to have his petition granted.”

Theodoret of Cyrus in On Divine Providence, Discourse 8, in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, ed. Walter J. Burghardt and Thomas Comerford Lawler (Mahwah: Paulist, 1988) 103.

Abraham’s slave demonstrated confidence in divine providence for success. This should cause each of us to pause and ask ourselves this question: What power do I trust in for success in my challenging endeavors? Do I depend on the trappings of wealth or leave them behind and depend on God?

Only God knows where we place our trust. Where do you place your trust?

My prayer is that He will find each of us abandoning the trappings of wealth and trusting Him to help us with what ever challenges we face and whatever needs we have. Let us trust Him as slaves of Christ like this slave of Abraham, because He is a faithful and generous God.

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ Luke 10:8-11

“As a child I lived in an area of southern Missouri where electricity was available only in the form of lightning. We had more of that then we could use. But in my senior year of high school the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) extended its lines into the area where we lived, and electrical power became available to households and farms.

When those lines came by our farm, a very different way of living presented itself. Our relationships to fundamental aspects of life—daylight and dark, hot and cold, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving it—could then be fastly changed for the better. But we still had to believe in the electricity and its arrangements, understand them, and take the practical steps involved in relying on it.

You may think the comparison rather crude, and in some respects it is. But it will help us to understand Jesus’ basic message about the kingdom of the heavens if we pause to reflect on those farmers who, in effect, heard the message: “Repent, for electricity is at hand.” Repent, or turn from their kerosene lamps and lanterns, their iceboxes and cellars, the scrub boards and rug beaters, their woman-powered sewing machines and their radios with dry-cell batteries.

The power that could make their lives far better was right there nar them where, by making relatively simple arrangements, they could utilize it. Strangely, few did not accept it. They did not enter the kingdom of electricity.” Some just did not want to change.”

Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: Harper Collins, 1998) 30-31.

Even as electricity provides “a very different way of living” for those who use it, when we live in light of the kingdom of God that has come near we tap into power, perspective, and generosity that is otherworldly.

Sadly, just like many farmers did not want to tap into the new power source, many people, though the kingdom is right in front of them, will not have anything to do with it. After all, it is “a very different way of living!”

What’s my point today? Those farmers did not want to change. The same holds true with many people. The lesson from today’s Scripture is to serve the receptive and shake the dust off related to the unreceptive.

Many will not be receptive to relying on God as their source of power, perspective, and generosity. As you enjoy the divine hours, “pause to reflect on those farmers” and ask yourself if you are one of them.

Even as life with electricity may well be 100x better than life without it, reliance upon God for provision and generosity is, in the words of Jesus, 100x better (Mark 10:29-30). Are you plugged in?

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

“When rebuilding a house, there is always a certain amount of demolition and removal that needs to take place. Structures that no longer give life or serve the purpose of the building need to be removed. So it is in the Church. In the House of God, the things that need to be cleared out can literally be structures that no longer serve the mission or that prevent the mission from being fulfilled. They can also be attitudes, ideas, or theological perspectives that hinder our ability to fulfill the missionary mandate given to us by Jesus.”

James Mallon in Divine Renovation: Bringing Your Parish from Maintenance to Mission (New London: Twenty-Third, 2014) 59.

As I pause during the divine hours, my mind has turned to all the books on my shelf with the word “divine” in the title. It’s an odd rabbit trail, but then again, I am odd or at least not a mainstream bloke by any means, so let’s see where it leads.

Today, Mallon calls us to consider the junk we need to jettison in our lives and in the local church if we, collectively speaking, are going to give life and serve the missionary mandate. What’s the mandate? Go and make disciples and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded.

Notice the word “everything” in that mandate. The most popular topic of Jesus was money. It may well be one of the only topics people do not want to discuss. Interestingly, if we get money right, we take hold of life 100x better than anything money can buy.

So why don’t people want to talk about money? Lots of reason. But the one that comes to mind related to Mallon’s post leads me to ask a question. How does your generosity create (or fail to create) structures that give life and that serve the missionary mandate?

The local church is changing. It can’t meet like it used to. But it is not a building anyway, the church is a body. If you are renovating your church activities at this time, make sure you challenge your peers to build structures that give life and serve the missionary mandate.

I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. Psalm 50:9-10

“Why make a priority of beauty in worship? Because it is what God deserves. He is of ultimate worth and deserves to receive from us as much honor as we can give. From the first, He directed His people to worship Him with gold, incense, embroidery, carved wood, vestments, “a golden bell and a pomegranate.”

Yes, He deserves it—but it’s just as true that we need to give it. God doesn’t need these costly things, for He already owns everything that is. It is we who need to offer such things, we need to keep giving Him beauty and honor, so we can understand what worship means. Beauty makes things happen within us that can’t be conveyed in words. Beauty sets the heart aright and opens it to God.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green in Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity (Brewster: Paraclete, 2015) 56. Special thanks to my dear friend, Gregg Capin, for alerting me to this book.

God calls us to give to Him not because He needs it, but because when we pause, worship Him, and make our offerings, we celebrate His beauty and give Him honor.

And we actually discover in the process more of His greatness. We become overcome with gratitude. Worship transforms us, but only when we hold nothing back.

How will your generosity proclaim God’s beauty and majesty today? What can you do to honor Him with all He has so abundantly and graciously supplied to you?

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24

“There are clearly big themes in Scripture that we need to have informing and shaping our spirituality.

So, for instance, because the New Testament revolves around the person, cross, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, so must our spirituality. Because God cares passionately about the world He created, so we too must include stewardship of creation in our understanding of spirituality.

Because He loves and yearn over His world, so must we. Because He is just and looks for justice in human societies, we must work for justice in human societies, we must work for justice too, with special care for the widows and orphans and aliens (migrants) whose number explodes today all over the world.

In a world fixated on acquiring wealth and status we will live by different values of simplicity and humility, generosity and thankfulness. In a world that sees this life as all there is and an end in itself, we will live in the light of eternity and that infinite canvas against which earthly life is painted.

In a world often obsessed with avoiding suffering and seeking comfort, we will accept that suffering is an intrinsic part of following Christ as He calls us to take up not a sofa but a cross.”

Rose Dowsett in the conclusion to “Biblical and Theological Reflections on Christian Spirituality” in Spirituality in Mission: Embracing the Lifelong Journey (Globalization of Mission; New Kensington: William Carey Library, 2018).

Special thanks to Doug Christensen for alerting me to this book.

What if Christians everywhere coming out of COVID aimed at simplicity, humility, and generosity instead of self-preservation, comfort, and the avoidance of all suffering?

People would see us denying ourselves and taking up our crosses rather than our sofas. What’s your sofa? I don’t mean your chair at home where you read or rest, I mean what comfort do you try to preserve.

If we published the balance sheets of ministries personal bank accounts of believers to the world, would they reveal we are building wealth or distributing it?

Want some inspiration to offer Hope and Help in Times of Crisis?

Click to register for a free webinar tomorrow at 5am Denver Time. I will speak with fellow author, Roger Lam, and GTP colleagues, Ereny Monir and Trevor Lui.