Moved to GIVE
Pay Your Age?
I learned this past week that Build-A-Bear is running a new special that you might want to take advantage of, at least they were. Just recently Build-A-Bear, the store where you can go in, pick out a lifeless carcass of a Bear & then have the people who work there stuff it to your child’s liking & accessorize it to your heart’s content, ran a special where you could “Pay Your Age” for a build a bear.
What happened next, no one could have expected.
Parents, strollers & kids of all ages started lining up at the mall 24 to 48 hours in advance in order to get in & get this bear at the discounted price. I mean, if you had a 1 year old, this was a steal!
People were lined up around the mall multiple times! The wait for some was between 6-8 hours. It became apparent very quickly that there would be NO WAY the store could handle this or hold up to it’s promise.
So Build-A-Bear posted this on twitter…
Twitter :: Pay Your Age Update: “Per local authorities we cannot accept additional Guests at our locations due to crowd safety concerns. We have closed lines in our stores. We understand some Guests are disappointed & we will reach out directly as soon as possible.”
Build-A-Bear was not able to deliver on their promise & they got a lot of bad press for it.
BUT, their idea did spark one church to offer something similar.
Just a few days later I saw this online where a church was offering a special Sunday where you could “Tithe your Age!”
I’m not sure people were lining up to come in for worship that Sunday! Although, I guess you could worship for quite a bargain if you were young enough! ?
Follow the Money
Whenever we talk about giving, people start to get anxious.
But as we’ve talked about before, God doesn’t want something FROM you. God wants something FOR you.
[Tweet “God doesn’t want something FROM you, He wants something FOR you.”]And this is where the real tension lives if we’re being honest. Because for those of us who give, for those of us who are taking seriously our decision to follow Jesus & be His disciple, we know that when Jesus talked about money he was never talking about money. He was always talking about the condition of our hearts.
You know, in every great movie where there is a crime the investigators always say the same thing, “Follow the money.”
When you follow the money you discover the truth about what is going on in every story.
Jesus once said something similar. He said, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Going All In with God
So the question I want us to wrestle with today is simply, What happens when you follow your money?
What does that say about the condition of your heart & your relationship with God?
In Mark 12, we have one of the most fascinating stories about Jesus.
Jesus is about to go to the cross, but before he does he goes back to the temple. He’s not done teaching His disciples what life looks like when you follow Him & go all in with God.
Mark 12.41-44
_Jesus sat down near the collection box in the Temple and watched as the crowds dropped in their money.-
As Jesus is preparing to go to the cross to GIVE His LIFE for ALL people, He goes to the Temple to see what the people of God are giving to God.
As Jesus sits there with his disciples nearby, this is what He sees…
Many rich people put in large amounts.
Jesus sees a lot of rich, religious people putting in large amounts of money into the collection plate at church. But it doesn’t appear that Jesus is very impressed.
In fact, if you back up just a few verses, Jesus had just said this to a large crowd of people at the Temple…
v38-40: _“Beware of these teachers of religious law! …they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious…”-
Jesus sits there at the Temple watching rich, religious people put in large amounts of money & He is not impressed. It makes you wonder if these were the same people who _“shamelessly cheated widows out of their property?”-
What Jesus NOTICED
Then, Jesus notices something different. Actually, he notices SOMEONE DIFFERENT.
Then a poor widow came and dropped in two small coins.
Have you ever seen something & as soon as you saw it, you called your family over or your friends over to see it? Whatever it was, it’s like… you got to see this!
This summer we’ve been watching the show America’s Got Talent with our kids. And it never fails, if I walk out of the room for a moment to get something or to do something, one of the kids will yell at me & say, “Dad, get in here, you got to see this!”
I think that’s what’s happening here. Jesus sees something so amazing that He has to call his friends over to see it too!
Jesus notices a poor widow who had come to the temple that day to give an offering to God. She didn’t have much. She only gave 2 small coins. But Jesus noticed her & how much she gave. And it had such an impact on Him that as soon as He saw it, He called His disciples over to tell them about it.
Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others who are making contributions. For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she had to live on.”
Jesus noticed that they gave from their abundance, that they gave from their surplus. He noticed that they gave their leftovers that they didn’t need.
But this woman, she gave all she had!
She wasn’t giving from her abundance, she wasn’t giving from her surplus, she didn’t have any. She gave all she had.
And Jesus NOTICED her.
Jesus said to his friends, “Come over here, you gotta see this! This is amazing!”
This is what it looks like to go ALL IN with God.
This is what it looks like to GIVE.
This is what it looks like when you decide that your HOPE & your FAITH & your TRUST is in God & God alone!
Transactional vs. Transformational
You see, we don’t give to God in order to GET. When we give, it’s not a transaction.
In God’s economy giving isn’t transactional. It was never meant to be transactional. When we give to God it’s transformational.
[Tweet “In God’s economy giving isn’t transactional, it’s transformational.”]And faithful giving over time leads to deeper faith.
When we give all we have to God we demonstrate that all we have is God.
And I don’t know about you, but I want to live my life in such a way that Jesus takes notice of me. I want to live my life in such a way that demonstrates to God that my hope & my trust is ultimately in Him & not in the things of this world. I want to be a person of uncommon generosity & I want to belong to a church full of people of uncommon generosity because our God is a God of uncommon generosity.
[Tweet “When we give all we have to God we demonstrate that all we have is God.”]
