Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

I believe God desires for you to live a blessed life. To be blessed means having supernatural power working for you. By contrast, being cursed means having supernatural power working against you.

There is truth in this series that will change your life. It will change your family, and your health. It will change your relationships, your job its about a blessed life not necessarily a blessed pocketbook or wallet. I think your going to discover through these messages that God did not create giving for His sake, but for your sake.

Quick question. Is the word money in any of those two verses? No. Judge not and you will not be judged. With the measure you use it will be measured back to you.

If you have grown up like me most of the time when you hear Luke 6:38
you think of money and receiving the tithe or an offering. Yet, when we read these two passages money is not mentioned anywhere.

Not only that but when we hear the word give we think about money. It is not wrong to associate the word give with money, but we must understand that giving must not be reduced to money.

If we talk about Salvation or grace we talk about giving because God so loved the world that He gave. If we talk about marriage we talk about giving because a marriage will not work if your not givers. Marriage needs mutual giving to one another to work.

Giving applies to every area of our life because giving ultimately is about the heart. The title of this message is “its all about the heart.”

How do you develop a heart of generosity?
In Deuteronomy 15. God tells us four things that we need to do, and it is all about the heart.

So often I hear from people that the church is only after your money.

I would like to make something clear the Church is not after your money, but God is. Why? giving deals with the heart. God is after it because your heart follows your treasure.

In the passages we read Jesus is talking about judgement, condemnation, and forgiveness. Don’t judge or you will be judged, don’t condemn or you will be condemned, then he says forgive and you will be forgiven. Then He says, give and it will be given to you.

What he saying is give judgement and it will be given back to you. What he is saying is that what you give you will receive good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will men give judgment back to you. For with the same measure you give judgment you will get judgement back.

The context of these verses are judgement, condemnation, and forgiveness. Yet, you can apply the principle to other areas because of the spiritual laws of sowing and reaping. When you sow a seed you don’t get back one seed you get back a tree or a plant with many seeds, and thats the way God is.

So if you give and your going to get back wouldn’t is be better to give good things rather than bad things? Because you are going to get more back of whatever it is you sowed whether good or bad.

God had a system in that time where every seventh year was the Lord’s release. Every creditor who had lent anything to his neighbor was to release it and not require it of his neighbor.

So God said, if your brother comes to you in need open your heart to him and give. Open your hand and willingly lend to him, and don’t let there be a selfish thought in you that says this is the year debts will be cancelled. If I lend the money and they can’t pay me back this year I will have to forgive the loan.

Essentially what God is addressing in this is selfishness. The idea that I am not going to be generous because I might not get it back. God says, don’t do that. He wanted them to learn to be like Him. God is generous and He wanted them to learn to be the same.

Notice selfishness is wickedness in God’s eyes and it becomes sin.

Here is a question: Why did God create or invent giving?

Do you really think that God needs your money to support His work? Is the light bill in heaven to big for God? Are they running out of gold to pave the streets. Are they out cattle on a thousand hills?

God did not create giving for His sake. He created giving for your sake. Giving more than any other activity for a believer works selfishness and greed out of our lives.

Most preaching on giving is give and you will get. This message actually works selfishness and greed back into your life. We shared a few years ago in the series Small God that we are not to look at God like a genie in the sky that gives me what I want when I want.

I wonder how God see’s that? Do you think he is excited all the people getting the revelation of getting? certainly not. We need to catch the revelation of giving.

If you learn to give from a right heart God will bless you in everything you do. This is a heart issue. Selfishness attacks us before we give, and grief attacks us after we give.

Have you ever given or made a commitment for a large amount and then right after something breaks? And the enemy comes immediately and says see you shouldn’t have done that, and grief comes because we gave.

The reason that we grieve after we give is because we thought it was ours, and the word tells us that earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. When we understand that we give back to God what is already His, we don’t grieve over it.

3. Develop a generous heart.

4. Develop a grateful heart.

God wants us to be generous but we were born selfish. We are born again generous. We just have to renew our minds with the word. I believe we really do want to be generous in our lives. What God is doing through giving is dealing with the heart.

What is it that we have to teach our children that is often so hard?
To share.

Toy has been sitting on the ground for weeks, and a friend or sibling comes over and picks it up what does the child do? Runs over… I was playing with that. Kid sets that toy down and grabs another and your kid runs over and says, I was playing with that too!

Do you realize what God is saying to all of His children?

When are you going to grow up? When are you going to become like your father? That so loved the world that He gave.

Have you ever looked at the toys your child has and thought lets bless someone else with some of these toys? Is it not the truth that if they are helping you that they will make sure to only give away the things they don’t like?

Most don’t mind giving away what they don’t like, but at some point we have to grow up. At some point you say Lord what do you want me to give? Whatever He says to do your response to Him is that’s great that is what I will do.

Do you know what He is saying here? God is saying I command you to be generous. With what authority is God saying that? He is reminding them that everything they have came from Him. He is reminding them that they were slaves.

When you think back to where God has brought you from and the life you now have you have the opportunity to be grateful. You were a slave to sin. You were dead in your trespass, but now you are redeemed and no longer a slave but a son or daughter of God.

Generosity comes from a heart of gratitude. When you think about what the Lord has done for you. Generosity is not a difficult thing.

Don’t let the devil mess with your mind, and tell you your not a giver. When the Holy Spirit leads you to give in church, to a missionary, a guest minister, or someone in need. Give as God leads you. You won’t regret it.