Luke 18:18-30

We think of generosity as a natural trait that someone either has or doesn’t have like some people are naturally more joyful than others. This is true, but generosity is also a muscle we can develop, a discipline we can choose to teach our hearts to love and trust God more than money. God knows our hearts. He knows our propensity to cling on to and put our trust and hope and even love in money. This is why from the very beginning of humanity, as soon as we left the garden of Eden we were told to bring our first fruits to God. It is a practice that reminds us who is our provider, who everything belongs to in the first place. Giving predates the law. Cain and Able each brought their offerings to God. Able brought his best with a heart that acknowledged God. Cain’s heart was not aimed at God. He gave less than his best, was just going through the motions. We see warning after warning about loving money in the Bible. We see commendations for being a cheerful giver. This tells me that we as humans have a problem with loving money too much. Our hearts turn to money. The world is telling us on a minute by minute basis that we should trust money, build wealth, envy those that have more than us, try to get ahead. Money is power. Money talks. 

This thinking is not something that we have to break one time. We have to be constantly re-forming or counter-forming our hearts from the input we have every moment of every day from the world. If we aren’t doing things to counter those messages on purpose our hearts will be formed into those ways of being.