John Stanley: Gratitude and Margin

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:17

“I really haven’t figured out how to help a person who is not generous become generous. But I have figured out how to help a person who is already generous get more clear and confident about how they want to express generosity. Then those generous lives tend to explode.

There are two qualities — two characteristics, let’s say — that I’ve seen consistently time after time after time of those people who take their lives to a very, very generous place. The first is they have a sense of gratitude, and the second is they have margin.

They have some margin in their lives of time or capacity of some kind. Margin has nothing to do with how many zeros you have in your bank account. It’s a sense that you get, and I think it’s a God-given sense that’s born out of a sense of gratitude.

You start answering the question, “Well, you know, I think I have enough.” That’s a really hard question to answer, how much is enough, right? Yes. So once you have a sense of gratitude, then you can move to this posture of, “I think I might have enough,” and all of a sudden you have margin and you can be generous.”

John Stanley, author of Connected for Good: A Gameplan for a Generous Life, in FamilyLife Today Radio Transcript entitled, “The Gift of Giving” on 12 December 2016.

As we draw closer to Holy Week, my heart is filled with gratitude for all Jesus has done for me and for the whole world. In dying on the cross for us, He made a way for all who receive Him to have life, abundant and eternal!

When we grasp what it took for Jesus to do this, we realize that God made margin for us and desires that we make margin for others! With Stanley, I agree that until we exhibit gratitude and margin, generosity will not flow richly.

As I teach in various locations throughout the Philippines this week, including a large group of ministry administrators and board members in Manila (pictured above from the CCT guest flat), I will empty myself generously because I am grateful that in Christ I have everything I need.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 1:4.

The question isn’t really “How do we pass generosity to our children?” The question is “How do we pass the life-giving gospel of Jesus to our children?” Once they grasp the gospel, they can’t help but become givers.

Through Generosity Path, I am blessed to serve wealthy Christians from all over the world. These givers ask how to disciple their children in generosity. I asked my friend Niel here in Jakarta about this. He said:

“How to pass wealth and generosity is a subset of that larger spiritual problem. The core issue is universal and ubiquitous. Every Christian generation must find a fire that burns for the gospel, a fire that burns so bright that they cannot but pour their lives and fortunes into it.”

Cameron Doolittle in “Teaching Generosity to Children” on the Ministry Fundraising Network blog post dated 3 April 2017. I read this post the day before I left and thought it was worth sharing widely. As I travel to the Philippines via Japan, I am thinking about Generosity Path and asking God to bless their global efforts.

These thoughts resonated with me because over the past two weeks, my wife and I enjoyed time with our daughter and her boyfriend in California and then with our son in Florida. They growing up, and it’s rewarding to see the life-giving gospel of Jesus at work in their lives.

This post inspires me to encourage them and their peers in the next generation to focus on the life-giving gospel. It transforms all who receive it to give their “lives and fortunes” to God’s work for His glory! Generosity will be simply a by-product of their vibrant faith.

Father in Heaven, by your Holy Spirit, make the fire of the life-giving gospel of Jesus to burn brightly in our lives, in our children, and among their peers, as a light to our neighbors and the nations for the glory of Jesus. Amen.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:3-4

“Heavenly Father, how good it is to know whom to thank for all I am and all I have. Before I knew my name, or yours, you took care of all my needs. You are so great. What you do for me you do for all the people on the earth, even those who don’t know your name or care about you in any way. For all of us you have made the wind to blow and carry the seed, the sea to move with tides pulled by the moon, the sun to shine to lighten the day and make plants grow, and the distant stars to flicker, as a constant reminder that you are so much bigger than my mind will ever imagine. Heavenly Father, how sweet your name. You are unlike the fathers of this world who are loving. Because you are Heavenly, you love perfectly. You are unlike the fathers of this world who desert and let down. You are Heavenly, forever faithful, always providing the daily necessities and pleasures of your people. I am your creature, Heavenly Father. I am your beloved child. Nothing I have done makes this so. You make it so. Thank you, Heavenly Father. Amen.”

Richard F. Bansemer in O Lord, Teach Me to Pray: A Catechetical Prayer Book for Personal Use (Delhi, NY: American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, 2002) 37-38.

Special thanks to Wayne J. Knolhoff for sharing the source of this prayer with me. He shared it at a stewardship conference I attended in Tempe last month. I saved it for today as I am flying nearly half way around the world to Manila to serve CCTA, the partner organization to ECFA in the Philippines.

When I fly over the ocean and see the sun, moon, and stars run their courses across the sky, I sit in awe in reflecting on how awesome God is and how generous is His care for the peoples of the earth and for you and me! I don’t know what you are doing today, but I pray that the message of this prayer comforts you.

I pray it also serves as a “constant reminder” to put to work the gifts and goods God has entrusted to you — all you are and all you have — to make known the greatness of our God in all the earth. For further inspiration, read Psalm 8 in its entirety.

Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11

“My soul is preoccupied with this, and anxious for what is to come, fearing that it may be shackled with enfeebling care for the body and weighed down with material possessions; fearing that if the ravaging trumpet sounds from the opened heavens, it may not be able to rise on light wings into the breezes to meet the King. It longs to fly to heaven amidst thousands of honored saints, who will with easy effort raise their feet weightlessly through the void, unencumbered by bonds of earth, to the stars aloft. They will journey on fleecy clouds, passing among the stars to worship the heavenly King amid the upper air, to unite their glorious columns with the Christ they adore.

This is the cause of my fear and toil, that the last day may not overtake me asleep in the pitch darkness of barren activity, prolonging my wasted days in empty occupations. what shall I do if Christ in flashing revelation from his heavenly citadel appears before me while I nod over languishing prayers? What if I am blinded by the sudden rays of the Lord’s coming from the opened heavens and, stupefied by the shaft of light, I make for the grim refuge of the sightless darkness? This is why I have decided by my proposed course to forestall distaster, so that doubt in the truth or love of this life (with the pleasure of possessions and the toil of responsibilities) should not confront me with such a death. I am resolved to end my worldly cares while life remains, to entrust my possessions to God against the age to come, and to await harsh death with an untroubled heart.”

St. Paulinus of Nola (354-431) is ascribed with this statement about preparing for the end times. He was a bishop and a friend of Martin of Tours, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo. Special thanks to my friend, John Stanley for sharing an excerpt of it with me, so I researched and located the full thought for this post.

In today’s psalm, David the psalm writer, calls to God to teach him to rely on God’s faithfulness. He asks for an undivided heart so that he may fear God’s name. Paulinus, in similar fashion, announces that earthly preoccupations fill us with anxiety and lead us to weigh ourselves down with material things that leave us encumbered and troubled.

Though King David lived about 3,000 years ago and Paulinus more than 1,500 years ago, both with striking relevance help us see what happens when people rely on God to sort their every worldly care: they have an undivided, unencumbered, and untroubled heart that fears God and exhibits generosity through the entrusting of possessions to the faithfulness of God.

This represents the only way to live for all those who await the glorious return of Jesus Christ. It is true for every person, everywhere in the world. Speaking of the world, today I am back in Littleton, Colorado, and hosting Gary Williams, national director for CMA Australia, at my home office. I am thankful he invites me to proclaim truths like this one to the ministry professionals he serves Down Under!

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine on us — so that Your ways may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. Psalm 67:1-2

“God promises blessing to His people because He wants them to be a blessing to the nations. Therefore we should pray for blessing on ourselves for the sake of the nations. This is not because God does not love us, or is just using us. It’s because He loves the nations and because He knows that our joy in all that God is for us increases when it expands into the lives of others. In other words, when we ask for God’s blessing on us for the sake of the nations we are also asking for our joy to be full.”

John Piper in “Let the Nations Be Glad” missions week message on 7 November 1993.

Over the last two days, I have had great meetings in Florida as part of the Pioneers Hong Kong board. Yesterday, Rick Yohn, one of my fellow board members, shared a devotional based on a message he heard years ago by John Piper. Rick challenged us to “ask for God’s blessing” for the sake of serving as conduits of blessing to the world. It was inspiring. After some digging this morning, I found the message.

Throughout the Scriptures, God makes it clear that His design for us as His people is to bless us so that can bless to the world. Psalm 67 celebrates this. If the world looks like a mess, our job is not to point fingers or complain. We are part of the solution. This Lord’s day, let’s ask God to bless us with material and spiritual blessings so that our joy is full which positions us to bless the entire world for His glory!

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

“The Bible is not just a tool. It is a ‘You’, not an ‘It’. To open it is to come into the presence of something living and transformative; something actively present. To abide with it is to recognize moreover, that it is what the contemporary French Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion might call a ‘saturated phenomenon’, one that contains more than any one reader or any one epoch can simply and completely and definitively wring out of it. Its power to affect successive new situations and to encounter new people is apparently limitless. It is a text that keeps on giving.”

Ben Quash in Abiding: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent, Book 2013 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012) 55.

Quash and Marion remind us that God’s Word represents a beautiful example of God’s “limitless” generosity toward us. “It is a text that keeps on giving.”

This week at Warner University in Florida, Jenni spoke in chapel on Tuesday and I spoke on Thursday offering a total of seven practices for growing our love for God and neighbor.

One of Jenni’s points was to “Soak in Scripture” (she starts at the 11:35 mark of this video and goes for 20 minutes). Marion would add that we all should do this because it’s a “saturated phenomenon”. Do you have a regular routine for mining the depths of the living and limitless Word of God? Even without any money, a person can be generous who receives and shares the riches of the Word of God with others!

To hear part two of the message that I got to share, watch the video at this link and you will see my brother, Dr. David Hoag, president of Warner University introduce me at the 7:55 mark. In his words, it was “Hoagmania” week at Warner.

What a joy it was to teach from God’s Word together this week: “the text that keeps on giving.”

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1

“This world is so hungry. Surely someone needs what it is in your nature to offer. What do you do that causes you to lose all track of time? Where do you most often experience delight, and when do you sense God’s pleasure? Make an altar there, and climb on. You’ll love how it feels to yourself in the sacrifice of a work well done…and God will be more than pleased to accept it.”

Leigh McLeroy in The Beautiful Ache (Brenham: Lucid, 2010) 191.

Yesterday I asked readers to pray for my mother, one of my favorite givers. Thank you for your prayers. Mom made it through mitral valve heart surgery, and is stable in surgical ICU at University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. She should be there for 4-5 days.

Today, McLeroy points the way to becoming a giver of all you are and all you have. Do what you believe God wired you to do, and then, “make an altar there, and climb on.” God is pleased when we sacrifice like this in service to others. It’s His design for our generosity.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27

“We delude ourselves if we think we can be a Christian in isolation. We need the Church in everything the Church can give us: her sacraments, the proclamation and exposition of the Word of God, mutual sharing of gifts and insights, mutual support both material and spiritual. None of us can stand up alone against the forces of atheism and materialism within society. What is more, a Christian is always as one “given”, committed to others, to a community.”

Ruth Burrows in Love Unknown: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent, Book 2012 (London: Continuum, 2012) 33.

To be Christian, is to be “given” to others the the community of the body of Christ. In American, many instead exhibit independence, which may be why so many succumb to materialism or atheism, that is to say, why they leave the church and conform to the world.

A community keeps us accountable. It positions us to aid others in crisis and them to aid us. Without it, generosity is impossible because part of our growth is linked to using our gifts in service to others in the Church.

Today I am praying for my mother, Patsy Hoag, as she has heart surgery on a leaking mitral valve. She’s modeled the “given” way of living for many years. Join me in lifting up a prayer for her healing today, so that her strength to serve God is renewed. Thanks.

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24

“What we give we gain. What we gain when we give comes in many forms. First of all, when we give, we recognize, both implicitly and explicitly, that life is not a process of exchange and equivalence, but of abundance and generosity…Exchange and equivalence is a zero-sum approach, the notion that what I give I lose to your gain. It implies a closed system. Abundance and generosity implies an open system, one in which the creative power of God is ever active, so what we give we gain. Mammon wants us to believe that the books always have to balance out in the end – that whatever you have is what I can’t have and vice versa…

Mammon is good at arithmetic, and balancing the books, but very bad at divine economics. Mammon’s economy is based on the principle of ‘beggar your neighbor’. But in divine economics, where there is abundance and generosity, there is no zero-sum approach. Instead, we see an economy that facilitates mutual flourishing and the common good…Abundance exists to be given, freely and openly…We need to train ourselves to see the world in terms of abundance and generosity…Such a discipline swims against the stream of the way economy is assumed to work.”

Justin Welby in Dethroning Mammon: Making Money Serve Grace: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2017 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017) 108-109, 126.

Lent is the time to train ourselves to see the world in terms of the open system of God’s abundance and generosity which teaches us “what we give we gain.” It is not easy because the world teaches us that “what I give I lose to your gain.”

How’s your Lent going in terms of giving? Are you trying to balance the books or seeking to experience the creative power of God? This is not about making poor financial decisions; it’s about choosing to live by divine economics.

Jesus is clear: we cannot serve God and Mammon. He is not trying to ruin us financially; He is trying to help us take hold of life according to God’s economy. When we discipline ourselves to live this way, we find that it’s the only way to live!

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. 1 John 5:21

“I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition, which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen’. This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festive aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat.”

C.S. Lewis in “The Fair Beauty of the Lord” in Reflections on the Psalms as recounted in Preparing for Easter: Fifty Devotional Readings from C.S. Lewis (San Francisco: Harper One, 2017) 181-182.

God desires for each of us (and that includes our children and grandchildren), “to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festive aspect of Easter” as we grow in the Christian faith. But how do we attain, and more importantly, maintain a right perspective?

Talk about “Jesus risen” as the sweetest proclamation ever! Share how our enjoyment and generous sharing of gifts from God like chocolate eggs serve to sweeten the celebration, but warn how they can become idols if they supplant the spiritual focus of the holy day.

Is it time to reassess your traditions? With Lewis, don’t misunderstood this as a call to abandon baskets, hunts, and chocolate eggs. It’s a reminder to celebrate “Jesus risen” above all else this Easter. Perhaps share the sweetest news and a chocolate egg with your neighbor this holy day.