The Moment

Last October, I wrote a piece titled “Seasons of Need.” For obvious reasons, it feels relevant more now than ever. Violently and unexpectedly, so many people have suddenly landed in a season of need. The world feels like it’s burning all around us.

Someone in my life recently lost their job. Someone I really care about. This is someone who was trying to do all the right things, make good decisions, and build a firm financial foundation for their future family. Someone who had been working hard, had just started a newer, better, more promising job. Then we welcomed a global pandemic to the party and everything exploded.

My wife and I do all of our giving through a special checking account creatively called "Giving Account." On our printed checks (yeah those still exist!), just below our name and just above our address is a line that reads "Proverbs 3:27." I won't make you go look it up.....the scripture says "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act."

That scripture isn't a cute quote we burn into a piece of wood and hang above our doorframe. It's not even something we do. It's who we are! We are called into a life of generosity. Joyful, sacrificial, God-honoring generosity.

Since this is who I am, I did the first thing that came to mind when I learned about my friend’s sudden job loss. I Venmo'd them rent money. It wasn't even a real consideration….we simply acted. I texted my wife with the idea and within 15 seconds she responded "Yes I'm in support." 15 seconds! I love that about her. The whole process from idea to execution took no more than 90 seconds. Sarah and I aren’t heroes, and I don’t want you to think that. Please, please, please don’t think that. We are simply doing what God has asked us to do: show His love through generosity.

In a conversation that now makes me cringe, I was talking to my mentor Gary Hoag about generosity. Mind you, he wasn’t my mentor at this point…….in fact, this conversation happened less than 24 hours after I first met him. Gary asked me “do you think you’re generous?” I confidently (and perhaps arrogantly) answered “yeah, I do.” “Why?” “Because we give 12% of our income.” “What makes 12% generous?” “Because it’s more than 10%!” See, very cringey.

Gary paused for an uncomfortable period of time (or maybe it was just me who was uncomfortable), probably trying to decide how aggressive to be with this young guy he had just met. I don’t remember his exact words and it would be unfair for me to try to put words into his mouth all these years later, but the takeaways of that conversation were profound and life-changing. In short, Gary (who is one of the world’s brightest minds on Christian generosity) explained God isn’t keeping score. He’s not tallying dollars and keeping a ledger of our giving. Instead, he’s looking at our heart. When I asked Gary what it means to truly give sacrificially, he turned it back around on me with a question: “Does your giving hurt? Do you feel like you’re really giving up a lot to give what you’re giving?” It was an easy answer for me, “no.” Our 12% giving didn’t hurt. For us, it meant we saved a little less and maybe (maybe) went on one less trip per year. Thinking about it, it wasn’t a sacrifice at all. It was giving out of surplus. It may have been joyful (so very, very joyful!), but it definitely wasn’t sacrificial.

After this conversation, I talked to my wife and we agreed to immediately double our giving. Again, she’s pretty awesome in that way. That’s when our giving started to feel like a sacrifice. All sacrifice brings pain, but this is a pain I dream others have a chance to experience. The pain of working really hard, giving up something you feel is important to you, turning around to bless someone else instead, thanking God for giving you that opportunity, and trusting He will continue to meet your needs. It sounds ridiculous when I type it out and re-read it, but in practice it is the most life-giving, faith-growing, rewarding, exciting, and loving thing we can do with the money He’s blessed us with.

Back to my friend. When they unexpectedly received a Venmo notification on their phone about the gift we had just made, it led to the following text exchange:

“I can’t accept that money from you!!!”

“Of course you can!”

“At least allow me to provide something of value for you.”

“We’re in this together. All of us. We all have seasons of need. I’ve had several. This is yours.”

“I am so humbled. I don’t know what to say aside from thank you so very much.”

They were wrong on one thing…..when they asked to provide me something of value. Who says they haven’t already? Relationships matter. In fact, there is nothing more valuable than relationships. What’s not valuable in this equation is money. Money is just some paper and coins. But money is never about money……it’s always about something far greater. Given joyfully and sacrificially, God WILL use it to change the world.

The timing of this post is not a coincidence. There are a lot of hurting people right now. A lot of people experiencing a season of need. We all go through seasons of need, but if this isn’t yours, perhaps it’s time for you to get in the game. Ramp up your giving to your local church. Ramp up your giving to organizations doing amazing work. Find people around you who are hurting, and simply step in with joyful and sacrificial generosity.

“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” We live in a world full of pain, suffering, and fear right now. Each of us may not single-handedly change the world, but God can use us to change someone’s world. And if we all band together and change a few someone’s worlds, the world will most assuredly be changed. This, my friends, is the moment! Will you join me?

Seasons of Need

Photo by Kat J on Unsplash

“Someday, I want to be the one on the other side of the table. I want to be the one giving.” This – and a few different variations of it – have come out of the mouths of several people I’ve worked with over the past three months. These are people who are experiencing some tough life situations. Job losses, medical emergencies, divorces, mental illness, legal situations, you name it. Life can be brutal! When it hits us, it feels like a wild haymaker punch we didn’t even see coming. It can leave us feeling breathless, disoriented, and oftentimes helpless.

But here’s the thing: EVERYONE goes through it. Not at the same time, not in the same way, and not in the same areas of life. But we ALL go through seasons where life knocks the wind right out of us. We usually forget that, because when we’re going through our own junk, many of the people around us have it pretty good (or so it appears). As a result, it can leave us feeling even more down and even more lonely. Truth is, each one of us just went through something heavy, or are currently going through something heavy, or will soon be going through something heavy. None of us can escape it. There’s no amount of money, or title, or status, or race, or gender, or anything else that can protect us from it. In some ways, that’s a really depressing thought. On the other hand, it should tell us that we’re never alone!

When people I’m working with blurt out some variation of “someday, I want to be the one on the other side of the table”, I often respond with something like “heck yeah you will!”, or “like you were last year when you did (cool amazing thing) for (that one person)?” I sometimes laugh on the inside when people make these declarations about wanting to be the person on the other side of the table. I don’t laugh because it’s funny…..far from it. I laugh because I can immediately think about situations in the past when these very people have made profound differences in other people’s lives. They just forget about it in this moment of need. The current feeling of helplessness blinds them to the fact they’ve always been the person on the other side of the table…….until this very moment when they weren’t.

It makes me think about a situation in our own life. Many years ago, Sarah and I paid off $236,000 of debt. That’s a topic for another conversation, but it’s something cool we did. I totally recommend it. Not stupidly finding yourself in $236,000 of debt, but rather getting out of whatever debt you are in. IT. CHANGES. EVERYTHING! When we’re free from the debt and that burden isn’t weighing us down, we can actually look up and see past our own junk. When our debt was finally paid off in mid-2012, Sarah was working four 10-hour days per week at a daycare. She got Fridays off, which made for some pretty cool 3-day weekends. About five months after becoming debt free, we saw there was someone in our life that was really struggling to make childcare work financially and logistically. Sarah decided to do something pretty amazing: she volunteered to provide free childcare for this family every Friday. For 99 Fridays (nearly 2 years), Sarah volunteered her day off to provide free childcare to a family who needed it. I’m still proud of Sarah for that gesture!

Fast forward five years. Sarah and I are now parenting two infants. Sarah was staying home with the kids (our big “why” for getting out of debt, by the way), I was traveling a fair amount as my career was heating up, I was a youth group leader, I was on a handful of boards (including one internationally), and it felt like the walls of life were closing in. We were flat-out struggling to figure it all out. Sarah comes home one day and said to me “there’s a lady at church who wants to watch our kids for free every Friday so I can get some rest and get some things done.” Wow, talk about life coming full circle! We were in a season of need, and someone unknowingly met that need in the exact same way we meet another family’s need five years earlier. My first question to Sarah was “do we even know this family?”, to which Sarah responded “no, but she seems really nice.” Perhaps it’s a testament for how overwhelmed we were at the time, but we humbly and gratefully (and quickly) said “yes.” It was exactly what Sarah (and our marriage) needed. We are so grateful for the love and generosity this family showed to what was then considered strangers. We are strangers no more. Today, I work alongside the mom, I’ve led mission trips with the dad, and I have a very special bond with their teenage daughter who loved on my kids way back when they were just little nuggets. They are some of the most loving and most generous people we know, and I’m so grateful to have them in our family’s life!

We all go through seasons of need and seasons where we can serve those in need. I pray you have the heart, humility, and self-awareness to embrace both sides of that coin. If you are in a positive season of life, be on the lookout for people who you can lovingly serve. Conversely, if you’re in a tough season of life, be willing to let others walk alongside you to help you onto your feet. After all, the sooner you get back on your feet, the sooner you’ll be able to play the role of the loving servant again.

If you have any stories where you’ve been on either side of need, I’d love to hear! Please share in the comments. Also, if you found this post valuable, would you mind sharing it with someone who may also find it valuable? I think there are people who need to hear this message today!

“We all go through seasons of need and seasons where we can serve those in need. I pray you have the heart, humility, and self-awareness to embrace both sides of that coin. ”