Would you like to be a generous person?
Today I want to share with you a key idea to achieve this.
I believe that if you adopt it for yourself, it will change your perspective completely, and help you share more with others.
To introduce the theme, I would like to invite you to read with me the following Bible quote:
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
|1 John 3:17-18
In this text, the apostle John presents us with several key ideas regarding generosity, the first being the love of God.
Walk with God and love him
Generosity is an expression of love in our hearts.
Love is the central axis of life when we walk with God.
Therefore, walking with God and loving Him has a direct impact on our interpersonal relationships.
Understand you are a steward of God
I would like today to focus on the second idea that this text proposes: the systematic practice of generosity in our lives and how to achieve it.
In general, to be a truly generous person, we need to understand a very important concept in spiritual life.
Christian stewardship.
This concept refers in part to the fact of correctly administering the material goods that God put in our hands.
This does not mean managing those assets to multiply them for the sole purpose of raising our standard of living.
It really involves managing them with wisdom, faithfulness, compassion, and generosity.
True generosity, in terms of economic resources, requires first recognizing God’s ownership of our goods.
Understand that the goods I possess are not mine, but are of the Lord.
When we open our eyes and our hearts to this reality, generosity takes on another perspective.
It’s no longer about sharing what’s mine in fear of being left with nothing for me, it’s about sharing the portion God gave me to bless others, so that He can trust me more.
Being a generous person implies being willing to redirect some of the resources entrusted to me, to those who need them more than I do.
Share them with whomever God wants, or with the cause god needs.
This is not to say that you should stop providing for your basic needs and those of your family and simply give everything you have to others.
This was not something Jesus taught that way.
Be systematic in your generosity
However, regardless of what our income level is, we should all allocate a portion to share with others.
To be generous we need to stop seeing ourselves as the ultimate owners and put God in that place.
If we do not, as we look at our hearts, we will find that we have placed our trust in material goods rather than in the one who provides them.
What ends up happening is that when a brother needs our help, instead of sharing how God would like us to do it, we think only of our own need, comfort, and even our needs of the future.
We cannot see our brother’s present need because we only see our desires and expectations.
What this reveals is that in the human heart lies selfishness, that we struggle with a mentality that thinks first of all about the earthly and that we often lack faith.
To be generous, let us help our brothers as often as possible in the way we can.
Jesus Himself taught:
Give to everyone who asks you (…)
| Luck 6:30
The way we can be truly generous is by putting our trust in the Lord before material goods.
It is by giving up the ownership of all that we have to Him, to use those blessings for His glory, rather than our own comfort and security on this earth.
What do you think? Would you like to be generous? Share in the comments.
