What Does the Bible Say About Generous Living?
By Dr. Brandon Steenbock, Family Minister
Proverbs 11:25 – A generous person will be enriched, and the one who gives a drink of water will receive water. (CSB)
I’m writing this on Giving Tuesday, and perhaps that’s why my Bible app chose this verse of the day. Giving Tuesday is about generosity, about opening our hearts and hands to give to others for the good of all. Of course, businesses and non-profits won’t waste the opportunity to ask for their share.
It’s wearying to think of giving more when I’m already exhausted with expenses. Winter means higher energy costs. Property tax comes due in a month. Traveling means more gas. Not to mention Christmas presents and extra food for family gatherings, and giving gifts to Toys for Tots and my sponsor child and putting a few dollars into the Salvation Army bucket.
Now you set aside a day to ask for more?
A passage like this doesn’t seem to help. It feels like more pressure. Is that really what God wants me to feel – pressure?
I have to pause, back up, and try to understand this verse in the whole of God’s wisdom. Proverbs is, after all, a book about living wisely in God’s world.
Why be generous at all? Well, of course, God has been generous to me. I deserve nothing good from him. In fact, I deserve punishment because I have failed to live the way he wants me to live.
But he has given me Jesus. Jesus gave up everything for me. He poured himself out completely, emptied himself of life itself, and took the punishment for me. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9, CSB). God has been generous to me.
On top of that, all that I have comes from him. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). If I own anything, it’s not really me who owns it, but God himself. I am a steward of the blessings God has given, and he permits me to use them for my own enjoyment. Clothing, food, money, possessions, all are gifts from God. God has been generous to me.
As generous as God has been to me, don’t I want to be generous back? Shouldn’t I want to be generous just because? Why would I need the promise of Proverbs 11:29, a promise that tells me that if I’m generous, I’ll still be okay?
But that’s still the promise. That God won’t leave me destitute if I am generous. It’s not a promise that I’ll necessarily be rich; he says that if I give a drink of water, I will receive back… a drink of water. But it’s enough.
I like how Paul develops this passage: “And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work” (1 Corinthians 9:8, CSB).
Everything you need. Maybe not everything you want. Maybe not so much that you don’t know what to do with yourself. But everything you need, so that you can be generous.
It can still feel like a lot to consider. How do I give more? But that’s the wrong question. The real question is: How can I live simply, only asking for what I need, so that I can give everything else away, so that I can be like Jesus, who has given everything to me?