Resources by Topic: Money and Giving

People define the good life in different ways, but everybody wants to live it. After all, what’s the alternative? Living a bad life? A pointless, guilt-ridden, or miserable life? We’d all choose the good life any day, and yet we often don’t understand how to make it happen.

When the classic Dickens story A Christmas Carol begins, we meet Ebenezer Scrooge. This wealthy miser is caustic, complaining, horrendously greedy . . . and profoundly unhappy. (His life illustrates how the word miser is connected with miserable.)

Read Randy Alcorn's complete book The Treasure Principle in Kurdish.

This Black Friday, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we are living in an era when we have more material possessions than any generation before us. Compared to Americans living in the 1950s, we have countless more conveniences, including big-screen TVs, microwaves, online shopping, smartphones, and twice as many cars. It’s easy to assume our purchases will automatically lead to greater contentment.

Perhaps you could consider leaving a set amount to your church that you feel good about, then direct the remaining funds to other ministries that God has placed on your heart.

Because we give, eternity will be different—for others and for us and our families. Giving away our money, possessions, time, and talents is a sacred opportunity to make a great and eternal difference. And it’s also our opportunity to enter into living the good life now.

Put your resources, your assets, your money and possessions, your time and talents and energies into the things of God. As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure.

There’s a time to lend, a time to give, and a time to do neither. If the need isn't legitimate, I shouldn't give or lend. If the need’s legitimate, not the result of an unwise choice in which there’s a lesson to be learned, I might give. If, on the other hand, the need is real but a gift would contribute to someone's irresponsibility or loss of dignity, lending may be best.

When we come to Scripture, it’s for comfort, not for assaults against our worldview, right? Let God talk about love and grace, thank you. Let us talk about money and possessions—then do with them whatever we please. Were we honest, that’s what many of us would say.

A life characterized by greed and stinginess is neither Spirit-filled nor Christlike. If we know Jesus and the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives, we’ll see the fruit of generosity. We will become more and more like our generous God.

Certainly, since God is all-powerful, and since He is likely to restore many good things that were taken as a result of the Curse, He’s certainly capable re-creating those things on the New Earth for our pleasure and His glory. However, He will not duplicate our idols.

There are people who reason, If I give generously, I’ll have to worry about where the money will come from to replace what I’ve given. But Jesus actually says the opposite. 

The last thing we want to do is to impose hard and fast rules on believers, or come across as legalistic. Giving is an act of obedience, and it’s also an act of joy and of grace because we know the love of Jesus.

I have a question regarding a dear Christian friend who struggles with hoarding—not in the sense of wanting to acquire wealth and build barns, but more in the sense of holding onto everything because they think there might be a future purpose to that object, and have to buy it again would waste God’s money.