My pastor gave an interesting sermon this Sunday about investing in the kingdom. The message made me consider selling everything I own in order to help more people. But realistically, it really drove home the point that everything we are given is on loan from God and should be used for His glory.
There’s no doubt that we live in interesting times. We all know someone who’s been laid off or have experienced job loss ourselves. Millions of people are facing foreclosure or have already lost their homes. But at the same time we have to remember that as Americans, we are incredibly wealthy compared to the rest of the world. If you earn $10,000 a year you are richer than 87% of the world. If you make $50,000 a year you are among the richest 1% in the world. The next time I start feeling sorry for myself because I don’t have money to do something I know I’ll be thinking of those statistics.
But those statistics don’t really seem to match up with recent Barna Research that says that 17% of Christians say they tithe, but only 3% actually give 10% or more of their income to God’s work. So if we’re among the richest people in the world, why aren’t we giving more? Here are three possibilities:
1. Unemployed: If you’re unemployed you have no income and therefore you don’t have anything to give.
2. Debt: A recent anonymous survey of a 2,000 member church in my community found that as a whole they carried $35 million in consumer debt. This did not count mortgages. If you’re laying under the weight of debt, how can you be free to give?
3. Unwilling: We don’t trust God enough to believe that He is the ultimate provider. God never intended for us to keep everything He gives, yet often we hold on so tightly to our resources that they can’t be used for His plan. Or as author and pastor David Platt might say, we are living out a Christian spin on the American Dream, unwilling to give up what He gave us in the first place. Here is a video of Dr. Platt explaining this:











