“The Generosity Practice is orienting our hearts to the abundance mentality of Jesus.
It is said that there are 500 verses on faith in the Bible. 500 verses on prayer. But, over 2,000 verses on Godʻs heart for The Poor. I believe this alone speaks volumes of what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus.
Once again, we turn to Luke 12. This time, in verses 13-21 Jesus shares the Parable of the Rich Fool. The context of this parable is that it starts with siblings fighting over their inheritance. Does this sound familiar in our world? Jesus aims to elevate the secular vision of what is the Good Life through this parable.
The parable starts with a rich fool whoʻs definition of the Good Life is to retire young and take it easy. Iʻm guessing that if there were golf courses in Jesusʻ day, that would be this rich manʻs aspiration of how to spend his time, playing golf! So you see, this value to retire young and take life easy has been around for centuries. This is not just an American phenomenon. The fact that Jesus calls this rich man in the parable out as a “fool” should be a bit shocking because the very fool is what we call the Americal cultural hero.
Jesus goes on to show that a big motivation behind wealth accumulation is in fact more than dreams of living comfortably, but fear. And so he says to “sell your possessions and give to those in need” in Luke 12:33.
And guess what, in Acts 2:45 we see that the early church did exactly what Jesus said, “They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need.”
And so the early church began a counter-cultural movement that put the Roman government to shame because almost all of the social work to care for the poor and redistribute wealth was done by the church. So much so, that generously giving the the poor became a defining characteristic of followers of Jesus.
I love this quote from Dr. Richard Halverson, presbyterian minister:
“A Christian is a person who goes through three conversions.
A conversion of the head.
A conversion of the heart.
A conversion of the pocketbook.”
This exemplifies when Generosity becomes a Spiritual Practice. Itʻs when the act of Generosity reflects our spiritual formation into Christlikeness.”