"Giving Was Never about checking a box"

The more I study Scripture, the more I realize how often we reduce something beautiful into something much smaller than God intended.

For a long time, whenever I heard teaching on giving, it usually centered around one question. "Did you give your ten percent?" That's an important conversation. I'm not dismissing it. But I wonder if we've spent so much time talking about the amount that we've forgotten to talk about the heart behind it. As I've been studying the difference between the storehouse and the treasury, I've found myself asking questions I had never really considered before. What was the tithe actually for? Who did it serve? What was God trying to accomplish?

The more I looked, the more I realized the story of giving in the Bible is much bigger than a percentage. If that's true, then maybe we need to broaden the way we think about generosity as well. Under the Mosaic Covenant, God established the tithe to provide for the Levites because they had no inheritance of land. While everyone else worked the fields, they devoted themselves to serving God's people. The storehouses were filled with grain, oil, wine, livestock, and other provisions because that's how Israel lived. God wasn't creating a fundraising campaign. He was creating a way for ministry to continue without those serving Him having to abandon their calling just to survive.That says something about God's heart. He didn't just care about the temple. He cared about the people serving in it. He cared about the widows. He cared about the orphans. He cared about the foreigner who had nowhere else to turn. Giving wasn't simply about putting something into God's house. It was about making sure God's people were taken care of.

When I get to the New Testament, I don't see God becoming less generous. If anything, I see Him expanding the invitation. The church is no longer a building in Jerusalem. We are the church.That changes the way we think about generosity. We should absolutely want to support our local churches. Our churches need resources to minister well. Lights have to stay on. Bills have to be paid. Staff members deserve to be supported. Pastors who faithfully pour into people shouldn't have to wonder how they're going to provide for their families while they're caring for ours. I believe that's important. But I also don't believe our responsibility ends when we put something in the offering. If the brother or sister sitting next to us is struggling, our first thought shouldn't be, "The church should help them." Maybe our first prayer should be, "Lord, how can You use us to help?" Sometimes that help might be money. Sometimes it might be a meal. Sometimes it might be helping someone get to work until their car is fixed. Sometimes it's sitting with someone after everyone else has gone home. Sometimes it's opening a door that God has already opened for us. Sometimes it's simply reminding someone that they haven't been forgotten.

When Jesus said the world would know us by our love, I don't think He was talking about what happened during the offering. I think He was talking about how we live.

That's why I don't believe giving begins or ends with ten percent. Giving is our time.

Giving is our encouragement. Giving is sharing what God has taught us so someone else doesn't have to walk the same road alone. Giving is opening our homes.

Giving is using the gifts God has placed in our hands to point people back to Jesus.

Giving is praying with someone in a hospital waiting room. Giving is noticing the person everyone else walked past. I don't believe we do those things because we're trying to earn something from God. We do them because of everything He's already given us. Maybe that's where we've lost some of the beauty. When giving is taught primarily through fear, people naturally begin asking, "How little can I give without disappointing God?"

But when people begin to understand the generosity of God, I think a different question begins to grow. "How can we use everything He's entrusted to us to love the people He loves?" That's a completely different conversation.

The more I've reflected on this, the more I've realized that honoring God has always been connected to how we honor His people. Not because people replace God, but because people matter deeply to God. How we treat the person sitting beside us says something about what we believe about the God we claim to serve.

I don't want generosity to become another religious performance. I want it to become part of who I am. If God is shaping that in me, then I hope He's shaping it in us too.

I hope we'll become the kind of people who don't measure generosity by a percentage alone, but by hearts that are eager to love, serve, encourage, and provide for the people God places in front of us. I hope we'll be known as people who don't wait for someone else to meet a need because we understand that we are the body of Christ.

I hope we'll continue supporting our churches faithfully while never forgetting that ministry doesn't stop when the service ends.The person sitting beside us is our neighbor.

The coworker carrying burdens nobody knows about is our neighbor. The single parent trying to make it through another week is our neighbor. The young believer searching for someone to walk alongside them is our neighbor. God has placed all of us in one another's lives for a reason. Maybe that's what biblical generosity has been pointing us toward all along. Not simply a percentage. A people whose hearts have become so transformed by the generosity of God that generosity becomes part of who we are.