Devotions Inspired By Beyond BlessedSample

TWO LEGS REQUIRED
by Robert Morris  

Several years ago, I preached a series at Gateway on The Blessed Life, which is all about living a life of generosity. After the series was finished, I noticed a couple in our church who became extremely generous with their finances. I could tell the message of The Blessed Life had really impacted their lives, as it had many others before, including my own. Their generosity was a blessing to many people around them, but then one day it just stopped. Later they came to me and said that while they loved being generous with their finances, they weren’t managing them in a way that allowed them to continue a lifestyle of generosity. 

Let me say this a different way. They weren’t stewarding their finances well. They were buried in credit card debt and were living well beyond their means. As they described their situation, I thought, How can you give what you don’t have? 

This came as a surprise to me because when I wrote The Blessed Life, I assumed everyone would know they had to first manage their finances in a way that would allow them to be lavishly generous. However, as I began to see more and more people faced with the same situation, I realized The Blessed Life was actually part two of a message about generosity. Part one, covered in my book Beyond Blessed, sets the foundation of stewardship. 

You see, a life of blessing walks on two legs—one is generosity and the other is financial stewardship. If you try to walk on the generosity leg without using the stewardship leg, you’ll be walking in circles. The Bible clearly charges us to be stewards of all God has given us. In Genesis 2:15, God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to “tend and keep it,” even going as far to tell Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it,” in Genesis 1:28. And the truth is, the stewardship leg is the vital first leg you need to have in place, so you have the ability to live a life of generosity. 

Here’s wonderful news: the ability to wisely manage wealth and material possessions is not a talent with which you’re gifted at birth. It’s a skill. This means it can be taught and learned. It is a form of wisdom, and the book of Proverbs wouldn’t encourage us to “get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:7) if it weren’t available to everyone with enough humility to receive it. 

This may mean you need to look at your finances and find ways you can cut back, so you can have more discretionary funds with which to be generous. Or maybe it means working as hard as you can to eliminate consumer debt or other bad debt from your life, so you can live a lifestyle of blessing others. 

When you look at your life, do you see the leg of generosity stronger than the leg of stewardship? Do you find yourself walking in circles? If so, ask the Holy Spirit to show you how you can become a better steward of your finances and then obey what He says. It’s then you can truly live beyond blessed.

PRAYER
Lord, thank You for Your generosity toward me and for the opportunity to be generous to others. Please show me how to become a better steward of my finances, so I can give more generously wherever You lead me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

MEMORY VERSE  
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” MATTHEW 6:33 (NLT)