My Journey Towards Generosity
MY JOURNEY TOWARDS GENEROSITY
NOVEMBER 21, 2013 TREYMCCLAIN LEAVE A COMMENT EDIT
Post by Natalie Jaranowski. Natalie serves as the Executive Director for the One Life Network. Follow Natalie on Twitter.
Being the Executive Director doesn’t always feels so executive. Sometimes it involves doing things I would rather stick a fork through my eye than to do. Today would be one of those days.
Last week our Lead Pastor, Bret Nicholson, sent out a call to action. He asked everyone who attends One Life regularly to make a MOVE, and to declare that move by filling out a commitment card. Well, apparently One Lifers listen to Bret because I now have a boatload of cards on my desk to sort. As I was doing all of the sorting, shuffling, and categorizing, it’s reminded me of the journey towards generosity that my husband and I have taken.
I remember when my husband and I were deep in debt. We definitely needed to make a move to financial freedom. We would have loved to give to church. We also would have loved to order pizza on a Friday night. The fact was, we were so far in debt that just making our monthly bills was a big stretch. We stumbled upon Dave Ramsey one day on the radio, and began to follow his plan. We listened to him and slowly started eliminating our debt, and eventually crawled out of the hole we had dug for ourselves.
I also distinctly remember the first time we decided to give at what we considered our church home. It wasn’t based on a biblical concept of tithing; it was really just based in guilt. We were showing up on a regular basis, we should cover our costs. Light bills have to get paid, right? I would love to say I was super-spiritual and that it was because Jesus called me to do it, but I can’t. It was really more of a practical thing. I pitched in $20.
Later, we decided to make the move to giving systematically. This was a move that was based purely on conviction. I was reading the Bible, in the book of Malachi (which, by the way, lest I sound too spiritual, I was reading because it bore the same name as a character from the movie “Children of the Corn”), and I came upon this passage:
“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’
“In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. “ Malachi 3:8-10
By this point in my spiritual development I had come to the point where I crossed the line of faith. I believed wholeheartedly that the Bible is absolutely God-breathed, the word of God. And this passage scared the crap out of me. I knew the ten commandments (and have had marginal success at keeping them), and I knew “thou shalt not steal”. Put that bad boy together with stealing from God, the creator of the entire universe?!? It was crazy convicting to me to come to the realization that by not tithing, I was really and truly stealing from God what belonged to Him. I set up regular online tithing at that point and have continued. It hasn’t always been easy. I haven’t been perfect. Through giving systematically though I have seen my motivations change from being terrified to tick God off to really truly wanting to honor him with everything in my life, including my finances.
To be honest though, God has continued to push us in this area of generosity more and more every day. I distinctly remember the first time I felt punched in the face with my own selfishness with my wealth. I watched a Hillsong film called “I Heart”. It outlined the various degrees of poverty that exist throughout the world. I was not right for weeks after that. It affected me in a way that can clearly only be God’s work churning around inside me. I went home crying that night, unable to get the images of those starving, diseased, abused children out of my head, and finally after tossing and turning for hours, I went online and signed up to sponsor an orphan through Uncharted International. It was such a tiny, small thing to do, but I could not rest until I did something. Little did I know that God was growing in me a passion for a country that He continues to call me to greater levels of generosity each day.
That’s my story, and it’s not over. Through this journey towards greater and greater levels of generosity, I believe my husband and I have grown in ways that I don’t think anything else would have. God continues to work on me and shape me and mold me, and I am grateful for the tiny part he allowed me to play along the way in church planting, supporting my local church, and giving globally.