Tag: Generosity

Digging in Deeper: 1 Timothy 6:10

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“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Fridays on here are fun, but they’re also a challenge. They’re fun because I take time to write about things that are purely interests for me—thus you get lots of reviews of superhero movies and series. It’s also a challenge, though, because unlike the other four days of the week, I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to write about very far ahead of time. I have more than once gotten to Thursday evening actively still wondering what was going to be on tap for the next day. That was the case this week, in fact. At least it was until my sports fanatic son sent me a note about a sports betting ring involving a bunch of college basketball players being broken up this week. We talked about sports betting a few weeks ago, but here we are again because this was one I just couldn’t ignore.

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 12:13

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“Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things the church offers the world that really isn’t found anywhere else in the same way or at the same level is community. The community available in the church is good. Really good. In a world where multiple governments have declared loneliness an epidemic, the church offers a real solution to this problem. But as good as community in the church is (or at least can be), it’s not easy. It’s not easy for a variety of reasons, mostly connected to sin. We need help to get it right. As Paul continues offering bullet point commands for kingdom living, these next several commands all speak to getting community right. Let’s take a look.

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How to Be Rich

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Everyone wants to be rich. Unfortunately, most people aren’t very good at it. We make the assumption of consumption with frightening ease, and things gradually fall apart from there. Things don’t have to be this way, though. In his first letter to his protege Timothy, Paul offered some counsel on how to be good at being rich. As we wrap up our teaching series, How Big Is Your World, we are talking today about the secret to keeping the world-shrinking assumption of consumption at bay, and living fully in the big world God has for those who trust in Him.

How to Be Rich

If you are someone who still watches major network TV series, we’re in that awkward, in-between season. All of the shows that run on the normal fall/spring cycle have been done for a couple of months now. But it’s not time for the new seasons to start just yet. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing except there aren’t really any sports to watch right now either. Football season hasn’t started. There isn’t any basketball to speak of. And baseball hasn’t gotten in the mid-September playoff chase excitement. Making things even worse is that these days when the competition is exceedingly high among the various networks and streaming services to attract and retain viewers in order to get the advertising revenue that is their lifeblood, while most series wrap up a plotline or two at the end of the season, they’ll also leave the viewers with a cliffhanger of some sort in hopes of drawing them back to find out what happens next. 

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The Assumption of Consumption

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When you get some stuff, what is your first thought about it? Do you start planning how you can use it? Save it? Give it? Where does your mind go? How we think about our stuff says a lot about us and where we are in our relationship with Jesus. It can also have a big impact on the size of the world we live in. During His ministry, Jesus was confronted with one particular man’s attitude during a teaching episode and chose to address it directly. Let’s see what Jesus had to say to Him and what it might have to do with us.

The Assumption of Consumption

Kids crack me up. If I think about it, though, kids make me a little sad too. Let me explain. Kids, and especially little kids, offer us the clearest picture we have of what people look like in our rawest form. If you have ever wondered what people are really like, spend some time watching kids. Now, this doesn’t hold universally true because some kids get messed up by their circumstances really early on, but for kids in even relatively healthy situations, they offer a window into the human soul. The reason for this is that kids really don’t have a filter. Whatever they are currently feeling is what comes out. And social conventions don’t mean a thing to them. 

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Big Living

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Living in God’s big world requires us to be generous. But what does that actually look like? Today, as we continue our series, How Big Is Your World?, we are talking about the secret to living as big as we possibly can. The key here is found in a practice that often seems like little more than a religious exercise, but has the potential to be much, much more than that if we get it right. Read on to find out what it is and how to do it.

Big Living

When I was in high school, I was in the marching band. Now, at some schools, the marching band is where all the band nerds hang out, and everybody else pretty much ignores them because they’re all really weird. At my school this was kind of the case, but not entirely. I say “not entirely” because there were 250 of us, and 250 people out of a total school population of around 2,000 is pretty hard to ignore. There were band nerds everywhere. I mean, everywhere. We came from every class and group in the school too. There were jocks, cheerleaders, traditional nerds, Goth kids, pretty kids, Christians, atheists, math nerds, the weird scholar’s bowl kids (I was one of those too), drama kids, choir kids, debaters, rednecks, preppy kids, the kids who didn’t really fit into a single category because they tended to be all over the place, and so on and so forth. The band was really the melting pot of the school, and we all got along pretty well. It didn’t hurt that my sophomore year we went to Hawaii. Things got pretty popular after that. 

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