When we get right down to the core of things, generosity really isn’t about our money. Generosity is all about our heart. Whether or not we are generous has so much more to do with the level of surrender we are living in than the amount of money in our bank account. God isn’t after our money…but He is pursuing our heart.
Of course, because money is such an important part of our lives, it’s not surprising that God often takes us on a journey through our money to get to our hearts. We live in a world that runs on money or the lack of it. We need money to pay for housing and food and to take care of our families…much of our time is spent working to make money.
There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with money or with making money though. In fact, throughout the Bible, we find very wealthy individuals who lived lives of faithfulness before God. The problem arises when we allow money to become an idol in our lives, keeping us from that which God has invited us into.
In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul wrote, “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10a NIV) Paul doesn’t say money is the root of all kinds of evil, but the love of money is. Because when we love money, we can’t fully love Jesus with our hearts fully surrendered.
Jesus said, “You can’t worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can’t worship God and Money both.” (Matthew 6:24 MSG) Those are strong words, but they get to the root of the issue; how we handle our money is a key measure of what we truly worship.
So often our finances are the final frontier of our surrender to Jesus. We might be willing to trust Him for our destiny but live in fear that we won’t be able to pay for it. We may surrender our relationships to Jesus, but cling to our wallets because we fear being penniless more than we fear being alone.
These are tough issues but we have an awesome Father God. His heart for us is always set on favour for our lives. He invites us into a journey of generosity in all areas of our lives, including our money. The wonderful thing about this is when we surrender our money to God, fully embracing the truth that everything we have is His, we experience freedom from fear and new levels of breakthrough in our lives around all things, not just our money!
God will always pour favour on any area we surrender, leading us into new breakthroughs in our lives. But what we won’t surrender, He can’t bless. If we surrender our worship, we’ll experience new intimacy with Jesus. If we surrender our future, we’ll experience greater destiny on our lives. If we surrender our relationships, we’ll see greater levels of restoration and love as we walk in holiness with others. But if we withhold our surrender around our money, we’ll never break through into the fullness of God’s good future for our lives and for our families.
Our breakthrough will only go as far as our surrender. If we long for greater freedom, greater breakthrough in every area of our lives, we need to be people of full surrender, including our money. When we’re fully surrendered, we can have money without money having our hearts. We can embrace astonishing generosity that reshapes the future because our hearts have been reshaped by full surrender to the Father who holds our future.
God invites us all to go deeper, to be more surrendered, so we can embrace His good future for us and for our city as we journey into generosity together. On the other side of this journey of surrender, breakthrough awaits us.