Hello All! Today we have our first contribution from the 100 Day family. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can refer to my letter on day 79 called “Power of Story.” Okay, here’s the story from the city by the bay:
My name is Joshua Wang, I attended Brown University and Renaissance Church between 2012-2016, before moving back home to the San Francisco Bay Area. I still live here, working as a Systems Engineer for a company that makes robotic surgical tables.
When Lent was starting and I was thinking about how I was going to fast, I felt God was challenging me to think about areas in my life where I wasn't fully trusting him. I was about to start my new (current) job, which happened to pay significantly more than my previous one, and while thinking about finances I was struck with a thought: does investing (in stocks/IRA/real estate/etc) run counter to the idea of trusting God with your future? The overwhelming majority of Christians I know in the Bay Area would say no—but if they have investments of their own I would expect them to think this way. The idea of your money (among other things) being all from God seems difficult to accept and even more difficult to put into practice.
So I was sharing these thoughts with my brother, and he said, "Hey why don't we try something crazy and give up our paychecks for Lent?" And this has actually been an awesome experience. Admittedly, since I have money saved up previously, I am not giving away enough to hurt myself, but through this exercise I've seen what God can do when I have this mentality of "it's all yours in the first place, God." I've worked with a small local charity group to help people who have been impacted by the pandemic, from buying groceries to paying for rent, and hearing these individual stories, being able to say "God wanted to bless you in your time of need" has been absolutely worth it.
I'm rambling a bit, but I just want to say that, in challenging me to give up this area of my life to God, if only for a short time, He has shown me what He can do when I just surrender to Him. I'm tired of being satisfied with a bucket of water while the ocean is behind me, and now I know firsthand what God is capable of.
Thanks so much Josh for sharing this with us. It’s a moving testimony and packed with important ideas. You can actually see many of the things I’ve highlighted in my letters put into practice.
Josh didn’t give us too much detail about how this whole chain of events happened, but we can safely guess that it started with an openness to give up whatever the Lord wanted him to give up for Lent. I’ve noticed that the Lord doesn’t call us to give up mushrooms if we hate mushrooms. He always touches those things we hold onto a little too tightly. Josh humbly admits that money is one of those things he needs to trust the Lord with more. I’m sure many of us can relate. I can.
Conviction
One thing I love about this testimony is that Josh wasn’t just convicted but not changed. When the Spirit convicts us of something we should or shouldn’t be doing, it feels spiritual. Well, it is a spiritual thing; it’s the Spirit working in us. But the conviction is meant to lead to action.
So Josh begins to ponder about his relationship with money, and this leads to him talking with his brother about it. Now it’s out in the open. It’s dangerous to start talking about something we feel like God is saying to us; it makes us accountable. The Lord clearly stirred the heart of Josh’s brother in the moment to suggest a crazy idea. I kind of feel like this idea wouldn’t have been suggested had Josh not opened up about his thoughts regarding trusting God with money. This is a great example of the spiritual combustion that happens when two godly people get together and start dreaming out loud.
Ta-da!
So there it is. Somehow these two brothers suddenly find themselves with this crazy idea in front of them almost as if the Holy Spirit pulled a curtain back and said, “ta-da!” I’m again reading in between the lines a bit, but I think it’s obvious something deep was happening as they stared at this crazy idea. It would have been easy to slide away from it and say, “Yeah, wow, that would be crazy, I don’t know, maybe, let’s think about it.”
You get the idea that they felt like giving up their paychecks for Lent (6 weeks?) wasn’t a big sacrifice. They didn’t feel the call to do this and suddenly get forlorn that they had to give up so much. It doesn’t seem like they did it out of obligation or because, well, God is demanding it. There’s none of that. I’m not saying that it was nothing to do what they did, but it’s clear to me that the promise of spiritual rewards far outweighed the monetary loss.
True gospel
People who can’t imagine giving away large amounts of money, or sacrificing in unusual ways, simply have not learned this important spiritual discipline: the way to find life is to lose it.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39)
This is a massive theme in the Word of God and a theme emphasized by Jesus in his teachings. The more we hold onto things, the smaller our spiritual life will be. The more we let go, or as Josh said, “surrender,” the greater our spiritual life will be. There’s just no way around this principle no matter what the prosperity preachers tell us. The false American gospel says that we can have everything we want—plus Jesus. It’s kind of a “Jesus will enhance your life” message. It caters to our flesh, of course. It essentially tells us we can be successful, rich and materialistic, and have Jesus too. But this simply isn’t what the Bible teaches.
For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:11)
Come and die
As Bonhoeffer once said in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” This may mean physical death—and the German theologian did give his life—but it also means death to everything we hold dear. It’s not just sinful things but legitimate things. There’s nothing inherently evil about money, but we must die to the love of money and trusting in our wealth. Where do we draw our security, our worth and our happiness outside of God? Those are the things we must die to.
Back to Josh and his brother, the death of their paychecks for a season was cheerfully given up. Why? Because the Lord put in their hearts an excitement about the spiritual rewards promised to those who give freely. Consider the testimony of Moses.
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24-26)
All through the Bible you see this principle at work. People gave up security, status, wealth, safety, even their own lives, for the sake of the “greater wealth” of knowing God. All the great men and women of God who have left us memoirs and journals to learn from speak of this strange upside down principle: the more you give, the more you get. I don’t mean the more we give of our money the richer we will become. It doesn’t work like that. The rewards of giving are spiritual rewards.
Jesus and money
Jesus taught on money a lot. He told us, for example, that we cannot love both God and money. He taught that where our heart is there will be our treasure. In other words, whatever we think about a lot, and desire much, is the thing we worship (treasure). For many, it is money. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It is a great snare even in the lives of Christians.
But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:9-10)
Actually doing it
What moves me about Josh’s testimony is that he wasn’t merely inspired in his mind that all things belong to God. He didn’t just come to an intellectual understanding that “the earth is the Lord’s.” His theology moved him to action. He gave. He kissed a big pile of money good-bye. His wallet was baptized. It wasn’t just a warm fuzzy feeling that swept over him. He made a concrete decision to find a charity to give to, and then he followed through.
Maybe what I’m highlighting sounds basic but, for some reason, we really struggle to act on our convictions. Sometimes we simply procrastinate. Oh, yeah, we’re going to do the thing, but not quite yet. Soon! But soon can turn into later and later into never. Right?
Nicely blunt
Let me try to wrap this up by being as blunt as I can. Nicely blunt. We aren’t going to ascend the hill of the Lord if we hold onto our money and things. We aren’t going to enjoy a deep intimacy with the Father unless we let go of our tight grip on what we own and what is in our bank accounts.
If this idea bothers you, listen, you’ve not been to the cross. When we realize what Christ did for us on the cross in giving His life, we realize that even if we gave every dollar and every material thing we possess to God—it would be as nothing compared to what He gave us. We give freely to God when we realize the fullness of the Gift He has given to us. We aren’t generous to earn God’s favor. We are generous because we have God’s favor. Selah.
More specific
Let me get more specific, because I can say all that, and we can feel stirred and say, “yeah, yeah, amen” but then miss the practical application. Consider what you have for a moment. What do you earn each month? What do you have in savings? What is your net worth? Compared to people in the rest of the world most of us are wealthy. If you own a car you are wealthy. Here’s the million dollar question:
What do we give in light of what we have?
This is where the teachings of Jesus get very touchy. Do you remember the story of Jesus standing next to the offering bucket in the Temple? What deeply impressed the Lord was a little widow who gave two coins. Why did that impress Jesus? Because it was all she had. Our generosity is always determined by what we give in light of what we have. And what that number is for you cannot be determined simply by calculating 10% of your income.
10%
So what should we give in light of what we have? That’s the important question to answer and one Christians quarrel about. Some say that we should give a tithe. A tithe is 10% of our income. So if we make $5000 a month we give $500 to the local church we attend. The problem with this idea is that it’s more of an Old Testament concept. And, when you study the Old Testament, you actually find that the people were required to give over 20% of what they earned. But their giving was sort of a combined support of the Temple and national tax, since Jewish religion and government were all meshed together.
The New Testament is even more unclear. We can’t find any specific percentage that we are supposed to give to the work of God. So what should we do? Maybe this verse will help.
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:6-7)
Here’s the reality: many people who attend church and who seem eager to learn to pray, don’t even give a mere 10% to the local church they attend. Statistics prove this. And you don’t have to be a math genius to realize that a church of 200 that brings in only $20,000 a month cannot be a church of tithers. That would be an average of $100 per month per person, right? That means the average person is making $1000 a month? That could be true in some locations but that kind of income is severely below the poverty level.
The truth is that many people don’t even give a basic tithe to their church but then wonder why they feel far from the Lord. I’m not saying that giving is the only thing we need to do—not at all. But it is one thing and it’s a big thing.
Even more direct
Many of you receiving these daily letters are scattered around the country, and I don’t know you personally. I hope you’ll be open about what I’m saying. The verse above doesn’t tell us exactly what percentage of our money to give, but it tells us what kind of heart we should have in our giving. We should give cheerfully. In other words, we should want to give. That’s the only kind of giving that the Lord wants from us. Even if we gave 50% of our income, if we did it grudgingly—it would count for nothing! So the starting place is to surrender everything, and ask the Lord to give you the kind of excitement Josh and his brother had about giving.
What will happen when your heart is transformed in this way is that giving 10% of your income faithfully, cheerfully and secretly, to your local church, will feel like your “reasonable service.” It won’t feel like anything. So we start looking for ways to give beyond the tithe to missions or the global poor. We start blessing people we know who are in need. We give away a car. We pay someone’s tuition. We help a single mom get on her feet. We do crazy things like Josh that make absolutely no sense to most people. The more we give, the looser our grip is on everything we have. We experience the joy of giving and look for new opportunities to give. The Lord sees our generosity, and guess what He does? He abundantly prospers so that we can give more abundantly.
Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38)
A blip
My friends, we are only here for a blip. As they say, “You never see a Uhaul following a funeral procession.” We came into the world with nothing and we will exit with nothing. We can’t take our material possessions with us. We leave it all behind. The Bible teaches us that it’s wise to save. And the Father gives material gifts to us to enjoy. But let’s have a mind of crazy giving.
I’ve often wondered if it’s even possible to give too much away. Could we give away everything we have and end up homeless or starve to death? I don’t think so. A man or woman who gives extravagantly would be the recipient of the lushest provision and care from the Lord.
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:32-34)