Ep. 095 - How Much Should Christians Give? Biblical Wisdom on Tithing, Stewardship, and Generosity

Episode Transcript

Austin
If you've ever asked, how much should I give? You're not alone. The question has stirred hearts for centuries. But here's the truth. Generosity isn't about hitting a magic number. It's about reflecting the grace of Jesus and our finances. Today we'll explore what Scripture says, why giving matters, and how to approach this question with wisdom and joy.
So Spencer today we're going to talk about actually diving in a little bit deeper past the framing that we had last episode about just the heart of giving and the reality that giving breaks the power that money has over our life. And our last episode, we looked at the tension between the words of Jesus of you cannot serve God and mammon.
It's going to be one or the other. We're going to bow down to the footstool of either God or a false god. So today we're going to take a step past that and say, okay, now we know that giving is a response to God's generosity towards us. It is our joyful response to his grace. So when we think about how much should we give,
Really the question that we have to come back to is how much should I keep? When you think about that question of how much should I keep? What are the things that come into your head?

Spencer
Well, first we've got to anchor ourselves, like you said, as a steward. So the question of how much should I give is oftentimes you know, rooted kind of like we would give to the IRS, you know, we would pay taxes. You know, the IRS has this whole way of looking at things that they say, well, if you make a certain amount, then you will you will have this, you can look at your last year's taxes and you can pay that amount, or you can pay that amount plus 10%, depending on how much you make.
And, we will say that you're good for it until the tax bill actually comes. So you won't be penalized if you do that. And it's almost like the same way that we look at giving sometimes, from a base case. It's like, well, I'm just going to check off this box. 10%, 10% goes to God, 90% goes to me.
We never really grapple with the fact that it's all his. We are simply stewards. We pay lip service very much to that. So as we grapple with how much we actually keep, how much we use for our own needs, we also can think critically about, okay, if these are all God's resources and he has many more children outside of just me and my family, how do I act as a steward and deploy those resources?
So there's a lot more going on. If he's the steward and he has an entire world of children that he's taking care of. How do I then position myself to think well, about what I use for those things that he's put in front of me, and then what I distribute to other believers and to kingdom purposes there.

Austin
Absolutely. And we'll dive in in our next episode as we start thinking about, okay, now that I'm compelled to give prayerfully, you are compelled to give, but it's the question of how do I actually allocate those resources to places where God may be leading me? And so when we look at the Old Testament, we see there's a variety of different tithes that the Old Testament, that the writers that the Levites would take in, they would take in the type to the Levite, they would take in the type to the temple.
And then every third year there's the tithe to the poor. So that just means a 10th tithe always has meant a 10th, that that is the definition of the word. And so the reality here is we kind of have to wrestle with who do I give? Where do I give to? But before we get any of those places, we really have to say it is all God's.
And are we going to give the baseline of what he has always said throughout Scripture? Now, John Wesley, again, we come back. We've come back several times to his use of money sermon. And he says, give all you have to God. Do not stint yourself like a Jew rather than a Christian to this or that proportion. Render unto God not a 10th, not a third, not half, but all that is God's, be it more or less.
And I think this framing continues to remind us of, we look at a 10th that tithe 10% and say, this is my target. And we often measure holiness against that. Holiness should never be measured against a simple command of God. It's it's a heartfelt obedience to the Lord. If I simply give 10% because it's the right thing to do, because Scripture says it.
But my heart is not compelled, does it? I mean, yes, it's good. I am obeying the Lord. But if my heart is not there to rejoice in the Lord, and it's not out of reciprocation to what God has done for me, then it's almost as if I'm acting purely out of obedience, but not out of a relationship. And we want to be obedient.
But there needs to be this this joyful relationship. And walking with the Lord and recognizing his abundant grace towards us.

Spencer
Well, and if we want to get legalistic, or we want to really come to the point where we're abiding by the law. Like you said, there's three tithes. It's 23.3% on average. And so as we look at that, those are great training wheels. You know, we think about the analogy of riding a bike. Great a great starting point.
Training wheels. If you've never given before start with 10% increase from there. Lord willing. Prayerfully consider that. But, you know, I don't know about you, but training wheels were never very satisfying for me in riding a bike. No, you know, you stay on training wheels for a couple of weeks. Maybe even a couple of days. You don't want to stay on training wheels starting at age seven and going out to age 17.
That that takes away the entire fun of the bicycle experience. And it's not as though we want to have, you know, even more repressive training wheels, or we want to have some kind of different training wheels. We want to remove the training wheels. We want to be able to move faster. We want to be able to do more and it's the same way with our giving.
We we might start there and say, okay, well, this is I've never done this before. And so this is a good beginning point. But really moving quickly beyond that to say, Lord, I stand today in one of the richest cultures in the world. Wherever we we sit in this culture, we have more access to resources. We have more access to amenities, to even luxuries than people could have even dreamed of.
Kings could have dreamed of. You know, hundreds of years ago. And so I think if we position ourselves both with gratitude spiritually and seeing the heavenly realm and the spiritual realm, what we've been given there, but also the material realm, what we've been given on this side of things, perhaps our hearts at least can start at that point where there's a baseline of giving.
And then as the Lord continues to work, he can push us towards increased levels of generosity.

Austin
Right. Because, again, as we think about it, in those two poles, you cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon. As we serve God, as we lay down our lives, as we lay down our resources at his feet, there's less to be used for myself. If we continue to increase that percentage that goes to the Lord again, we're just giving back to him.
What is already his. We're sending treasures ahead into the kingdom, but we're essentially saying we don't need to seek pleasure in this earth. We don't need to seek pleasure by buying those things, whether it's the clothes, the house, the cars, the books, the, the whatever, the food. Gosh, I love food. But if I spent all of my money on really nice restaurants to dine out, then my lifestyle starts to anticipate and expect that that sort of luxury is what I,
what brings me life and joy and not in the Lord. And so as we shift these giving priorities as we increase our giving past 10%, like you're saying, it's actively saying no to the things that Mammon wants to draw my heart away from the Lord and actively increasing my joy in the Lord.

Spencer
Then hopefully each of us, our vision of the Christian life is that we're closer to Jesus. In a year in ten years in 20 years than we are right now. And I think one of the keys to being closer to Jesus is having a life that's simpler in terms of our deep desires, you know, our deep desires, hopefully they become more and more towards God and less and less towards, maybe all kinds of different things, you know, that could fill that space.
So there are wonderful, good gifts that God gives us that yes, we can enjoy. But hopefully as we grow closer to Jesus, as we mature, as we don't drink just spiritual milk like the author of Hebrews says, that we're able to put aside some of those things that maybe are wants and, have that maturity to say, okay, I can rejoice in little or in plenty.
You know, as Paul said, it said, you know, I've been supplied all that I need and whether I am lacking or whether I am fully supplied, you know, financially, I, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And, and that's, I think, where each one of us know we want to be. And yet we don't set up our financial lives and in particular, are giving in such a way that we prioritize simplicity and we prioritize releasing things from our hands as time goes on.
But that's really where we need to be if we're closer to Jesus. Typically.

Austin
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think Randy Alcorn poses the question, if you lost 10% of your income tomorrow, would you be okay? And I think for most of us, for most people in the West now, obviously, we know that there are people that are absolutely living on subsistence. They have very minimal. And what they have is what they have.
But for most of us in the West, we have enough income to where if 10% of it went away, we would be okay. But I think if I look at what I have heard or conversations I've had, the reality, I think we resist that generosity. We would resist giving that 10% to the Lord because I think there's some level of fear.
What if God doesn't provide everything that I want? What if God isn't enough? I think it essentially comes back to what if God isn't enough. I know the tangible pleasures that I get from Mammon. I know the tangible pleasures that I get from these worldly things. What if God doesn't provide that same level of joy?
What if God doesn't provide that same level of comfort and presence with me that I can get from X, Y, or Z over here? And so I think there's an innate fear of that loss of joy, of that loss of presence that is absolutely not like once you start giving, once you actually start that joyful journey in obedience, we see that it's more of God that we get, not less of him.
There's more pleasure, more joy, because we get to participate with his church. We get to participate with missionaries around the world that are seeing people come to faith. We get to participate with IJM as they rescue slaves, with Hope international, these organizations that we love, that we've been partnered with as Hope sends out loans, microloans to businesses and small families that can then provide for their family.
They are able to then participate with God to earn an income to see their family flourish. It's it's a really beautiful thing to then see what God is doing around the world. But we also have to see it as, yes, there may be some loss here, but it's not a loss of my joy. It's an increase of my joy in the Lord.
You know, Spencer, I think when we think about tithing as a 10th of our income and starting there, I think the common place that is challenging can often be where do I begin? How do I cut things out? So I think this is where we have to come back to that idea of actually setting lifestyle limits. Let's talk through a little bit more about that.
How does lifestyle limits really impact our ability to give? Because I think if we continue to think of ourselves as 100% of it is mine, then just like Rachel McDonough says, a lifestyle that has no limits or boundaries will expand to consume whatever resources are available. And so if we are spending 100% of our income when it's 100,000, and then income rises to 150, and we have not set any limits and boundaries, then we're just going to spend all 150.
And so how does a lifestyle of setting limits on our spending on our savings, how does that impact our giving?

Spencer
I think one of the ways that we need to take a little bit of a step back is just start with a blank slate in terms of where we might spend resources, what our budget might be, because sometimes we have a certain amount of income and that defines every other decision. What I mean by that is we might graduate college or we might move to a new city, and we have that income and so we go to a real estate agent and the real estate agent says, okay, well, you qualify likely for this amount of home or this kind of apartment, you know, there.
So then that becomes that first piece that we're saying, okay, well, I could I could qualify for a loan. And so maybe you're not you don't you don't buy a home that's quite that high but pretty close. Well now you've put that big, you know, if we think about your your spending in terms of a jar, we've put a huge rock in that jar.

Austin
Yeah.

Spencer
And then, you know, from there so many other decisions are made because, the community that you live in oftentimes will then define what friends you have, what their tastes will be. And so if we go to the most affluent group of people that we are prepared to live with, we're going to be dragged in that direction constantly by lifestyle choices, by what, what kind of cars they drive, by all kinds of different elements
there. What we need, I think, better to do is to come at this and say, what amount do I feel called to give and take that out of the equation entirely first? Take the amount that we save, take that amount out of the entire equation. Second, so that we've got those two anchoring points. And of course you've got to calculate taxes and such.
So that then that living piece thereafter, we can we can think much more rationally with, you know, one of the things that even thinking back a number of years ago, we had some friends that they really wanted us to live close to them. And we had located in Parkridge lower income community. And, they wanted us to move to a, a different, neighborhood that was a much higher level of income.
And to join a country club, you know, that was right close by. And intuitively, I just knew, okay, if we end up going there and and participating in that country club, all of the kids that my kids will be interacting with on a summer to summer basis, on a year to year basis, the core group of people, they're going to have a particular set of spending decisions, that is going to influence us.
It's not. Now, there's some wonderful things about these people. And, you know, every community is different. There are trade offs in every community. So, but I just knew that the level of spending that we would be drawn towards would be antithetical to what I felt like we were called to. And living in Park Ridge and locating in Park Ridge, I didn't feel that we could move out.
And then come back and try to do ministry, you know, back in a particular neighborhood, because who you do life with is going to influence so much the decisions that you make. So I think where we locate, how we look at some of those core building block decisions will define a lot of the latitude, ultimately, that we'll have. Now,
you know, obviously there's folks that they have a very, very high level of income. And so they they've they've got a lot of decisions even beyond that. But I think in terms of the the joy and the the flexibility that we have, oftentimes that first decision that we make, it's it's the first cut in the stone, you know, like the chosen Jesus talks about it.
And one of the, one of the episodes of The Chosen talks about the first cut of the stone. Really sets the foundation in ways that go far beyond what we might imagine, for the trajectory of one's life. And I think that really, that has a big impact in our budgetary elements.

Austin
Absolutely. Well, I love what Ron Blue really talks about here. And you're coming back to it is this idea of we need to think about our giving first. We need to think about then our saving second, and then living on the remainder. And if God is calling you to give 20, 30, 40% obey and give 20, 30, 40%.
Again, we look back to Wesley's quote at the beginning all is God's. It's not a 10%, 20%, 30%. We don't negotiate with God on the percentage. We say, God, what would you have? I want to follow what you would say. And Ron Blue also talks about, he says people regularly would come up to him, although I tithe on the gross amount of the net amount and he simply asks, do you want God to bless the full amount or not?
And that can be really challenging to think. Okay, well, I thought I was going to tithe on the net. Well, now I've got to if I'm tithing on the gross, if that's a lot higher and it might be a bigger check, it's going to be a bigger check to write. But I think we have to come back with that opinion of our entire salary.
Is God's the entirety of it full stop. Everything that we have, our investment income, our if you have rental real estate, if you have, any sort of income that you generate, it is all the Lord's. And we want to give out of the abundance of everything that he has given us.

Spencer
Well, and I think even sometimes we hear of folks that have done experiments, you know, with this. And so, you know, most of us could say, well, I could do I could do something really difficult for two months or three months or six months or whatever it might be. There’s a financial advisor who he was thinking about going and working for generous giving, a number of years ago from a nonprofit that we really appreciate.
And he decided with his wife, after they prayed that they would take six months and they would live on the salary, the nonprofit salary that he would need to take, which was substantially less than he was making at the time as a business owner and such. But what that unleashed in them was tremendous joy, because they saw that all of the different material things that were kind of above and beyond, they weren't actually bringing joy to them.
The simplicity of life actually allowed them to do fewer things but have more family time together, among other you know, key decisions that were made. And so I think even we can come back and say, if it sounds daunting, what if we looked at, say, living on the poverty line, you know, as defined by the US government or twice the poverty line or three times the poverty line or what it whatever the number there that you look at and say, that would be a challenge.
It can be done. You know, you look at it and you say, okay, what if we did rice and beans for dinner? You know, every every night this week you can still have really delicious meals with rice and beans. It's quite different. But, you know, it might draw your family actually together more. I tell you, your kids would remember that week, that month, that three months a lot more than the others.
In all likelihood, if you constrain things, maybe maybe you at the same time, you give up the the Netflix and the Hulu and the, you know, all the different subscriptions and and maybe that's amazing for your spiritual walk too. There's these I think these big, rocks, you know, that we put into that budgetary jar again, that they kind of get stuck there and we don't realize that we actually have a choice.

Austin
We don’t even question.

Spencer
We don't question it. And so sometimes when we say, oh, I don't have to have cable, I don't have to have, you know, YouTube TV or whatever it is, you know, for streaming service or entertainment. I can live without all these other things because you know what? Humans have done it for thousands of years. and have done it quite enjoyably, you know, during that time oftentimes.
So I think even, having a, a transition period there and whether it's a week or a month or weeks, probably too short because you can, you know, live off of all the good stuff that you bought, you know, two weeks ago. So, but, if you, if you really get creative, I think that we can be unlocked to see how much we actually have.
And if we're not tremendously grateful for what we have, if we don't have that sense as we wake up in the morning of gratitude, of what God has provided, that that level of entitlement is not good for us either. So there's multiple things, I think, going on here that if we can again break the power of money, that money has over us through giving and do so in a, in creative ways that maybe are even unlocking us to be more joyful in our giving and to consider giving more than we might have anticipated, because we're not actually beholden to some of these things that maybe they've become rhythms in life and they're
not helpful for us.

Austin
Absolutely. Spencer thanks for the conversation about tithing. And how do we think about how much should we give next time we're going to talk about where should we actually deploy those resources? If you have questions about this, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Clients, we would love to have that conversation with you as well.
Until next time, take care! If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclosure
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.