Living Generously; Is There Any Other Way To Live?

With Jay Peckett

For some people, generosity comes easily. And for others, not so much.

I tend to relate to the latter. Being generous, especially with money, is not something that comes easily for me. And it’s something I have to actively acknowledge and work on. Luckily, I married someone (Matt) with an incredibly generous heart, and I’ve now learned that it’s best to go along with him. Even when I am feeling generous I’ll ask Matt to name an amount and I guarantee it’s double what I was thinking.

But it took a while for me to get there and here are a few key points that have helped me along my journey to live a more generous life.

Jeremiah 22:16 talks about a King of Judah and how “he defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?, declares the Lord”. This was such a revelation to me, for someone who had always thought the “religious checklist” was how I knew God. Did I attend all the church events, did I raise my hands the right way, sing loud enough, remember the right scriptures, emphasize the right words when I pray? How about the way I treated the poor and the needy? Or even, when was the last time I thought of someone else? Ouch.

That’s not to say that being generous should become another item to tick off the list. Nor just something I do to go along with my husband. It’s how I know God, and it’s because of God that I can’t live any other way.

God loves people. Period. No “but..”, no “just if..”, no “except..” God loves people, unconditionally! And Jesus was the perfect representation of this lived out on earth. He entered a broken world, and showed us that there is a better way to live - by loving people who don’t deserve it, not expecting them to earn it or pay it back. No strings attached.

He loved the very people who killed him as they killed him. If he can do that, how can I not? And why would I not? If I am loved by God, and everyone else is loved by God, how could I possibly love God and not love who He loves?

Then there’s putting generosity into practice, and it really does need practice. Like a muscle that needs exercise, you just have to start. This could be thanking your postman, being kind to your Uber driver, paying for a friend’s coffee, making that donation when you see the social post of a cause that touches your heart, listening to that small voice in your head that prompts you with an amount to give or an action to take. Trust me, try it and you’ll see that living generously is a better way to live.

Join us for a church picnic this Sunday in Parsons Green. Click here for info and to see what’s coming up this month.