The Call to Generosity
Good morning, friends. It's so great to have Derek Wilson with me in the studio today. You've heard my voice enough for the last few months, and so I thought I'd get him in to teach us today. Thanks for coming, Derek.
Thank you, Luke. It's a real privilege to be sharing with you and I pray that God will bless our time.
Generous Living Matters
I want to spend just a few minutes through the week around a title of “Generous Living”, and it's based on 2 Corinthians 9:6–14, and I'll leave you to read that in your own time. Someone once rather cynically said that the last possession of ours to be converted to Christ is our purse! That may be true, but it seems to me that every time I read about giving or generosity in the Bible, it's somehow tied into lifestyle, not tied just into money.
That passage in 2 Corinthians actually says something along those lines. And I want to suggest that a giving life is a generous life. And in the Christian context, really it's one and the same thing.
Kindness in Action
The story goes about a professional clown by the name of Mr. Twister, who would go around putting money in expired parking meters. And after several warnings, Mr. Twister was ticketed for his random acts of illegal kindness. But he refused to stop doing what he considered was doing to others as he would have them do to him.
And the news media got hold of the story, and pretty soon Mr. Twister had been interviewed by CNN and nearly every news organization in the United States, and his acts of kindness actually prevailed! Declaring the law a public relations disaster, the Santa Cruz City Council took emergency action to yank the law from the books immediately. Mr. Twister said that all he ever really wanted was for people to be nice to each other and help in whatever way they can. That's all.
Reflecting God’s Love
Now, I know this word nice has been overused over the years, but in this context, it's true. All Mr. Twister wanted, and I think all God wants for us, is to be nice with each other in whatever way we can.
Isn't it amazing how a random act of kindness can become a national news story? Not because of Mr. Twister's generosity that it was so different, but because someone tried to make it illegal. And if according to Galatians 6, which is about the fruit of the Spirit, love is the key to life. If that is the key, then generosity is love's character. And I think God wants us, even sends us, to live generous, giving lives, don't you?
