RPF0522-Give_it_Away
00:00:00.000 | It's Friday here at Radical Personal Finance HQ. Frequently, usually, that means a Q&A
00:00:06.600 | show, but today I am preempting a Q&A show due to lack of internet connectivity. So of
00:00:13.120 | course in thinking about other things that I would like to share with you today, I've
00:00:17.480 | got a whole long list of things that would be very timely. The stock market has been
00:00:23.280 | in gyration this week. Of course, that's always interesting to talk about. We've watched
00:00:28.800 | the continuance of our certain long-term fiscal doom for the U.S. government with the various
00:00:37.560 | spending bills that have been passed this week. So of course that would be fun to talk
00:00:41.000 | about. We continue to watch the situation in Venezuela where the International Monetary
00:00:46.760 | Fund just recently predicted that this year we'll have 13,000 percent inflation. We've
00:00:52.120 | got a real-life case study of a hyperinflationary situation, unimaginable suffering, and there
00:00:58.400 | are a lot of lessons that could be learned there. I'm privy to some information, some
00:01:02.360 | things going on around the world that would knock your socks off if I shared them with
00:01:06.400 | you in terms of the physical challenges and economic challenges of many people. But of
00:01:12.400 | course it's Friday and I don't want to send you into the weekend with that. So in honor
00:01:16.760 | of the forthcoming Valentine's Day holiday, which is a holiday that I detest, and I don't
00:01:23.520 | detest it only because I'm a curmudgeon, although I must admit I do have tendencies towards
00:01:31.040 | curmudgeonry, I detest it because it doesn't put a foundation that lasts. And love is a
00:01:41.080 | foundation that lasts. So I thought, what better way to start the weekend than by talking
00:01:45.520 | about love and money and giving. And we begin with a story. This story is called Ryan in
00:01:52.280 | Love. It comes from chapter three of a book called Love Does by Bob Goff. I used to think
00:01:59.960 | being loved was the greatest thing to think about, but now I know love is never satisfied,
00:02:05.840 | just thinking about it. We have a house down by the water and there's a little grass path
00:02:11.280 | where couples hold hands and walk along the bay front. My wife and I sit on the back porch
00:02:16.360 | and hold hands a lot too as we watch the couples meander by. We're close enough to the water
00:02:21.480 | that they wave to us and we wave back. A nostalgic snippet from another time where people waved
00:02:28.160 | to each other during slow walks. This is how I met Ryan. One day, Ryan came walking down
00:02:35.800 | the path all alone. Ryan waved to us and we waved back like we did to everyone. But instead
00:02:42.480 | of moving on, Ryan just stood there on the path waving and not moving because he kept
00:02:49.840 | waving, we kept waving. It was a little awkward, honestly. I wondered if perhaps this young
00:02:57.640 | man wanted to talk. So to break the tension, I made the short walk from the porch to the
00:03:02.720 | path to say hello. "Hi there, how's it going?" I said, reaching out to shake his hand and
00:03:07.560 | give him a break from all the waving. "Hi, I'm Ryan and I'm in love," he said confidently.
00:03:15.080 | Ryan had that glazed over look that smitten guys get. "Well, Ryan, that's just great.
00:03:22.360 | Congratulations." "No, no, that's not why I came," Ryan stammered. "What I wanted to
00:03:27.880 | say is that I walk by your house all the time and I have this girlfriend, you see," and
00:03:34.440 | he paused. "I want to know if it would be okay," he paused again, "if I asked my girlfriend
00:03:43.320 | to marry me in your backyard?" He talked like he had been holding his breath for quite some
00:03:48.520 | time. I was taken aback by this love glazed kid who would approach a complete stranger
00:03:54.880 | and ask to use his house to stage a great caper. "But that's the way it is when you're
00:04:01.680 | in love, isn't it?" All he knew was that he wanted the girl and was going to do whatever
00:04:06.480 | it took to get her. "Ryan, that sounds like a fantastic idea," I said, laughing. "Really?"
00:04:13.440 | Ryan answered. I guess he had expected an instant no or a gentler, "I'll think about
00:04:18.920 | it." "Sure, go get your girl and let's get you two engaged." With that, Ryan went half
00:04:25.280 | skipping, half floating down the grassy path. I think his feet hit the path about every
00:04:30.880 | twenty feet or so. He was being strategic. He was being audacious. He knew what he was
00:04:38.360 | going to do. He was going to get his girl. A few days later, we were sitting on the back
00:04:45.160 | porch again. Couples were walking down the path holding hands. We would wave to them
00:04:49.880 | and they would wave to us. Then came an animated figure bouncing and waving happily with both
00:04:56.480 | arms. It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was Ryan, and I walked down the
00:05:01.040 | path to greet him. "Hi!" Ryan yelped with his wonderfully goofy, glazed-over, "I'm
00:05:08.120 | in love" grin. "Hi, Ryan. What can I do for you?" "Well, you know how I'm going
00:05:13.320 | to propose in your backyard?" "Yes, I remember that." "I was wondering if you think it
00:05:19.520 | would be possible for us..." He did another Ryan pause, so I knew whatever followed would
00:05:26.200 | be a whopper. "To have dinner on your back porch before I pop the question?" I bit my
00:05:32.840 | tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I'd never even met Ryan before that week, and
00:05:38.920 | now he was asking if he could have a marriage proposal and dinner on my back porch? This
00:05:45.320 | kid has it bad. After a short pause, I shot back to young Ryan. "What the heck? Of course
00:05:51.680 | you can have dinner on my porch, Ryan. That's a great idea. What can I make for you?" I
00:05:57.240 | don't think he heard the question, because off went Ryan down the path. He seemed to
00:06:02.400 | be levitating. He may have touched down on the grass once or twice over the next hundred
00:06:07.880 | yards. Ryan was another step closer to the prize. He was all in. He was all about doing,
00:06:16.500 | and not just dreaming. He was going to get the girl.
00:06:23.060 | By now I found myself looking forward to my afternoon encounters with young Ryan. It reminded
00:06:27.600 | me how fun it was to be young and in love. I even started coming home early from work
00:06:32.880 | to sit on the back porch, waiting for him, checking my watch every five minutes or so,
00:06:38.040 | wondering when he would come bouncing down the path with another outlandish request for
00:06:43.240 | a total stranger. And sure enough, Ryan came bounding down the path again, so I went down
00:06:50.000 | to greet him. "Hi, Bob. Hey, I was thinking," and then the pregnant pause, "would it be
00:06:56.320 | possible for me to have some friends of mine serve us when we're having dinner on your
00:06:59.600 | porch?" "You bet," I shot back laughing. I was already this far in with Ryan. What
00:07:05.440 | could it hurt to have a few of his friends over? "What a great idea. How many would
00:07:09.680 | it take to serve you two dinner?" Ryan looked up with a cheshire cat grin and sheepishly
00:07:17.320 | said, "Twenty?" Did he just say he wanted twenty people inside my house to be his servers?
00:07:26.960 | I was wonderfully stunned by the consistently audacious, almost vertical trajectory of Ryan's
00:07:34.880 | hands. He wanted twenty people to serve a dinner for two? Now that's service. But when
00:07:43.000 | love does, love does it big. "What a great idea, Ryan. Twenty it is," I said without
00:07:50.240 | hesitation. Ryan bounced away down the bay front. I could tell that his head was ready
00:07:55.040 | to explode with anticipation. He had the vision, he had the plan, he had the place, and he
00:08:00.820 | had the staff. He was trigger-locked on the goal, and he was going to get that girl.
00:08:09.200 | A few days later, I was at my post. Almost on cue, Ryan came galloping down the path.
00:08:16.000 | "Ryan, how are the plans coming?" "Well," he said, "I was actually wondering if it
00:08:21.000 | would be okay if after dinner and after my friends leave, you could put some speakers
00:08:24.500 | on the porch and maybe we could dance a bit?" "Of course you want to dance on a stranger's
00:08:28.800 | porch." "Speakers it is," I told him. "Anything else?" I was trying to get all the possibilities
00:08:35.560 | out of him now. "Well, I think that about covers it for now. I'll ask her to marry
00:08:40.160 | me after we dance for a bit." "Great idea," I said to Ryan. "Go get that girl."
00:08:46.160 | Ryan skipped off. A day or two passed with no Ryan sightings. I almost felt a low-grade
00:08:53.740 | depression sinking in on me. Was the planning over? Were there no more whimsical and outrageous
00:08:59.800 | ideas from Ryan as he planned his caper? Was the mischief done? I sat on my porch, reflecting
00:09:07.940 | on how contagious Ryan's brand of love was. And then, almost on cue, Ryan came running
00:09:14.960 | down the pathway again. At this point, Ryan was a regular, and he bounded across the lawn
00:09:20.240 | and up to the porch without hesitation. He was pretty winded, actually, leaning over
00:09:25.560 | with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. I wondered if I should give him
00:09:30.280 | a paper bag to breathe into. But after a few long moments, Ryan straightened up. There
00:09:36.760 | was a pause while our stares met. I had learned that a pause by Ryan meant there was another
00:09:45.280 | whopper of an idea brewing in his head. "Hey, Ryan, what's up? It's great to see you.
00:09:51.200 | How are the plans coming? Do you—" He exhaled. "Have—" He inhaled. "A boat?"
00:09:58.160 | "A boat?" I was belly laughing as I asked him to repeat what I thought he just said.
00:10:04.480 | "Yeah, do you have a boat?" Ryan asked more confidently as he straightened a bit.
00:10:09.200 | "Well, actually, Ryan, I do," I said with half enthusiasm and half awe at Ryan's
00:10:16.040 | love-induced, audacious bender. He had that glazed look again as he looked me squarely
00:10:22.600 | in the eyes. "Well, can I borrow it?" Ryan was out of control. He had no idea what
00:10:31.660 | an outrageous thing he was asking. But you see, to Ryan, I wasn't a total stranger.
00:10:38.760 | No one was. To him, the whole world was full of co-conspirators when it came to winning
00:10:45.120 | over his love. He was completely unaware of and unimpeded by what was proper, what was
00:10:53.220 | acceptable, and what was conventional. Nothing was going to get in the way of what he decided
00:11:01.420 | he was going to do. "Okay, Ryan, the boat's yours," I said. "I'll take you and your
00:11:06.800 | girlfriend out on my boat after dinner at my house, after your 20 friends finish serving
00:11:11.680 | you, and after you dance together on my porch. You can pop the question to your girl up on
00:11:16.880 | the front deck of my boat." Ryan floated away again, clueless of the beautiful, ridiculousness
00:11:25.840 | this girl was bringing out of him. Ryan was a study in focus, tenacity, and abandon. He
00:11:36.520 | was all gas and no brake. What Ryan didn't realize is that I decided to one-up him. Why
00:11:44.160 | should he have all the fun? That night, I called the Coast Guard and told them about
00:11:48.280 | Ryan's elaborate plan and his glazed-over enthusiasm for his girl, which had swept him
00:11:54.140 | into a state of unparalleled whimsy. Ryan's enthusiasm was contagious, and pretty soon
00:12:00.800 | the guy on the other end of the phone had caught the bug, too. The Coast Guard officer
00:12:04.600 | and I hatched a plan of our own. When the big night came, everything was in place. The
00:12:11.720 | night was balmy, the air was clear, and I think the stars even came out a few minutes
00:12:17.240 | early to see Ryan's elaborate scheme unfold. Ryan and his girl came walking down the path.
00:12:25.420 | When they got to the white Nantucket house on the bay, he led her up the stairs and across
00:12:30.600 | the lawn toward a candlelit table on the porch. "Ryan, what are we doing? Is this okay? Whose
00:12:37.320 | house is this?" she whispered as she held his arm a little tighter. Ryan pulled out
00:12:43.360 | her chair and said this was for her as he sat her down. The service at dinner by the
00:12:50.080 | twenty servers was impeccable, and the after-dinner dance was endearing as these two stood with
00:12:57.740 | arms around each other, slowly moving together on the porch. As they danced, they twirled
00:13:04.880 | and talked quietly. By now evening had fully set in, and the lights of the city mixed with
00:13:11.680 | the stars were starting to dominate the skyline. It was as if the early-appearing stars had
00:13:17.000 | gone home and invited all of their friends, telling them, "You have got to see this."
00:13:23.000 | The evening was coming to its natural end, and Ryan took his girl by the hand and they
00:13:27.280 | headed back to the path. I have always wondered what was going through her head during all
00:13:32.600 | this. I hope it all felt like a dream. As they got closer to the dock behind the house,
00:13:38.680 | Ryan gripped her hand, turned, and took her toward a boat that was tied to the end. "Ryan,
00:13:46.000 | what are we doing?" she half-demanded. "Come on," is all he had to say as they came onto
00:13:50.440 | my boat. I was at the helm, and they made their way to the bow. With the stars out in
00:13:55.440 | full view, we slowly motored out into the bay. After a short time, we approached the
00:14:00.320 | spot where Ryan and I agreed I would stop the boat so he could pop the question. In
00:14:05.800 | a total coup de grace, Ryan had fifty more of his friends on the shore to spell out,
00:14:11.800 | "Will you marry me?" with candles, just in case he got tongue-tied or overwhelmed
00:14:18.040 | in the intensity and whimsy of the moment. With their flickering sign as his backdrop,
00:14:23.880 | Ryan got on one knee. "Will," he exhaled. "You," he inhaled. "Marry," he paused. "Me?"
00:14:37.520 | There was a gasp, followed by an immediate and enthusiastic "Yes." In this, the most
00:14:45.160 | special moment of their lives, neither Ryan nor his bride-to-be noticed that the Coast
00:14:51.240 | Guard had pulled in behind us with their firefighting boat, just as the officer and I had planned.
00:14:56.520 | I gave the "thumbs up," the sign that she said "Yes," and he shot off every water cannon
00:15:01.640 | he had on the entire rig. It was a scene that belonged in New York Harbor on the Fourth
00:15:06.240 | of July with the Statue of Liberty in the background, but it wasn't happening there.
00:15:11.220 | It was happening for Ryan because that's the way love rolls. It multiplies. Ryan and his
00:15:18.080 | bride-to-be let the mist from the water cannon settle over them like a thousand small kisses.
00:15:24.160 | Ryan's love was audacious. It was whimsical. It was strategic. Most of all, it was contagious.
00:15:37.560 | Watching Ryan lose himself in love reminded me that being engaged isn't just an event
00:15:43.520 | that happens when a guy gets on one knee and puts a ring on his true love's finger. Being
00:15:48.560 | engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It's about going to extremes and
00:15:54.960 | expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels
00:16:00.640 | darkness with light. That's what I want my life to be all about, full of abandon, whimsy,
00:16:08.400 | and in love. I want to be engaged to life and with life.
00:16:19.040 | Today on Radical Personal Finance, I want to share with you about love and money and
00:16:24.480 | giving. And I lead with that story because I think it provides a useful and important
00:16:34.080 | picture of how much fun money can be when it's given away. Who had the most fun? Who
00:16:45.080 | had the most meaning out of that story? Was it the one who gave the most or was it the
00:16:53.880 | one who was given the most? This is one of those beautiful things about love. Love is
00:17:02.720 | one of those things that is wonderful to receive, but it's even more wonderful to give. And
00:17:08.440 | the way that you receive it is by giving it. So in our story about Bob Goff, the author,
00:17:15.400 | and Ryan, the young man, and his fiancée, clearly in this particular narrative that
00:17:22.280 | was described, Ryan's fiancée was the one who received the most. But was she, exclusively
00:17:30.440 | in the context of this story, the one who received the most from that particular experience?
00:17:39.680 | I would dare say that Ryan gave the most because he invested his time and his life and his
00:17:46.280 | energy into hatching out this elaborate scheme to show his love how much she means to him.
00:17:55.360 | And then Bob became included in that. Now what's so beautiful about love, especially
00:18:00.960 | as it relates to money, is you can express it without money and with money. What I find
00:18:09.320 | so beautiful about that story is the extremes. Here is Ryan, a head over heels in love young
00:18:17.480 | man with probably very few physical treasures, very little money, and yet he was a man who
00:18:26.440 | was rich in love. He was a man who was rich in love of his friends to help him and his
00:18:34.240 | fiancée to celebrate their night together. He was a man who was rich in ideas, and he
00:18:41.240 | was a man who was rich in courage to show his love what she meant to him. Bob, on the
00:18:47.960 | other hand, was a man who was rich in material possessions, big house on the water, nice
00:18:53.600 | boat. And yet those possessions did not control him. Rather, he used those possessions in
00:19:03.760 | the service and love of others. And thus he got to actually benefit from those possessions.
00:19:12.520 | The most fun that you will ever have with money is giving it away. Previously on Radical
00:19:20.960 | Personal Finance, in episode 516 called Don't Let Your Pursuit of Money Ruin Your Life,
00:19:26.560 | I shared with you a story that I found on Reddit about a young man who lost the love
00:19:32.840 | of his life because of his miserly tendencies. Miserliness and greed are tendencies and traits
00:19:46.520 | that you will need to continually fight against. And the only way that I know to fight against
00:19:52.120 | them is to continually give yourself away. And I want to talk to you about giving, not
00:19:59.080 | in a comprehensive sense. I love to talk about charity. I love to talk about giving. I love
00:20:03.360 | to talk about love. And I may do a bit more on this subject in coming days and episodes
00:20:11.480 | talking about love and its various expressions. But today I want to give you six ideas about
00:20:16.480 | giving as they relate to love in hopes that they'll be an encouragement to you. Number
00:20:25.000 | one, give of what you have and start with your stuff. One of the greatest errors that
00:20:33.520 | people make is they think that, "Well, if I have a lot of money someday, then I'll give."
00:20:39.560 | It doesn't happen. What happens is you give of what you have. Now, we don't know anything
00:20:46.040 | of what happened to Ryan, but if Ryan continues to give in his life the way that he gave when
00:20:53.440 | he had no money, if he continues to love his wife with the outrageous abandon that he demonstrates
00:21:01.360 | in that story, he will have a marriage that is so rich in love, it'll reward him for his
00:21:09.640 | entire lifetime. He'll build a house that is so filled with love that his children will
00:21:14.840 | return that to him for his entire lifetime. And if he builds a fortune and he pours that
00:21:20.280 | fortune out and giving to others, he will be so rich in love, he'll have friends everywhere
00:21:27.760 | and rich experiences. And when he lies on his deathbed, he will be able to look back
00:21:34.520 | with satisfaction, not because of what he had, what he accumulated, but because of what
00:21:42.120 | he gave.
00:21:43.120 | Now, I want you to compare that with the image of a miser, a word that we don't frequently
00:21:49.720 | use in our modern language, but is a word that is so vivid, at least to me. When I think
00:21:57.280 | of a miser, I always think of the old Charlie Daniels song called "The Legend of Wooly
00:22:01.760 | Swamp." Listen to the words of this song and consider if you want to be like this man
00:22:09.400 | or if you want to be like Bob and Ryan in the story I just read to you.
00:22:15.040 | The old man lived in the woolly swamp, way back in Booger Woods. And he never did do
00:22:20.560 | a lot of harm in the world. He just never did do no good. People didn't think too much
00:22:26.120 | of him. They all thought he acted funny. The old man didn't care about people anyway. All
00:22:32.720 | he cared about was his money. He'd stuff it all down into mason jars and bury it all around.
00:22:39.880 | But on certain nights, if the moon was right, he'd dig it up out of the ground. Then he'd
00:22:44.360 | pour it all out on the floor of his shack and he'd run his fingers through it. Yeah,
00:22:49.200 | Lucius Clay was a greedy old man, and that's all there ever was to it. That is the picture
00:22:58.400 | of a miser.
00:23:03.360 | Now listen to what money does in the context of this song. "To the miser and to those who
00:23:10.560 | want the money but have no love in their hearts." Next verse. "The Cable Boys were white trash.
00:23:18.200 | They lived over on Carver's Creek. They were mean as a snake and sneaky as a cat and belligerent
00:23:24.000 | when they'd speak. One night, the oldest brother said, 'Y'all meet me in the woolly swamp later.
00:23:29.560 | We'll take old Lucius' money and we'll feed him to the alligators.' They found the old
00:23:34.080 | man out in the back with a shovel in his hand and 13 rusty mason jars he'd just dug up out
00:23:39.840 | of the sand. Then they all went crazy and they beat the old man and they picked him
00:23:44.160 | up off of the ground. Then they threw him in the swamp and they stood there and laughed
00:23:48.400 | as the black water sucked him down. Then they turned around and went back to the shack and
00:23:53.680 | they picked up the money and ran. Hadn't gone nowhere when they realized that they were
00:23:58.160 | running in quicksand. And they struggled and they screamed but they couldn't get away.
00:24:03.300 | And just before they went under, they could hear that old man laughing in a voice as loud
00:24:08.800 | as thunder. Now that's been 50 years ago and if you go by there yet, there's a spot in
00:24:14.560 | the yard in the back of that shack where the ground is always wet. And on certain nights
00:24:19.520 | if the moon is right down by that dark footpath, you can hear three young men screaming and
00:24:26.200 | you can hear one old man laugh. That in my mind is a beautiful picture of the gripping
00:24:40.000 | power of money and greed. And I use that word beautiful in the sense of describing how accurate
00:24:45.920 | it is. Of course it's a viciously ugly picture. But is that not true? People didn't think
00:24:56.520 | too much of the old man. They all thought he acted funny. The old man didn't care about
00:25:00.480 | people anyway. All he cared about was his money. Now we don't, most of us, know misers
00:25:08.960 | in this sense. The old hermit living out in the woods in a shack with rusty mason jars
00:25:15.720 | stuffed with coins and notes. But how many of us know a miser in their heart who expresses
00:25:25.160 | that miserliness, not with a rusty mason jar but with an IRA, with a sack of gold in their
00:25:34.000 | safe, with a perfectly constructed seedy ladder, with a beautiful portfolio of alternative
00:25:44.240 | investments, with a magnificent portfolio of cryptocurrencies? And yet the money has
00:25:54.400 | their heart and their hearts are just as black as old Lucius Clay. Compare the end of Lucius
00:26:05.600 | Clay with the end of Bob Goff. Compare the end of the white trash cable boys that went
00:26:17.840 | to steal the money with the end of Ryan. And ask yourself, which path are you on and which
00:26:25.160 | path do you want? Jesus taught that it is better to give than to receive. Now that seems
00:26:38.840 | paradoxical but it's true. And I hope in these vivid images that I'm bringing to you can
00:26:43.840 | see how true it is. It's better to give than to receive. And the most fun you'll have with
00:26:50.040 | money is to give it away. So number one, give of what you have. Give of your stuff. If you
00:26:57.440 | have stuff, use that stuff for others. If you have a boat, use it for the service of
00:27:03.440 | others. If you have a house, fill it up and use it for the service of others. Don't keep
00:27:09.200 | your house barren and cold and physically beautiful but bereft of life. Fill your dinner
00:27:16.080 | table with friends and neighbors and people in need. Bring the person in off the street
00:27:21.520 | and serve them a good meal. Bring your neighbor across the street over to your house and invite
00:27:25.600 | them in and share a rich dinner together, share a glass of wine together and give of
00:27:30.600 | yourself. Use what you have when you have it. I think we all love to watch those videos
00:27:37.160 | on YouTube where some YouTube videographer goes and gives a large amount of money to
00:27:43.200 | a homeless person. And then it touches our heart when we see that person go and take
00:27:48.440 | of the great gift that they've been given and give to others, of their friends. They
00:27:52.840 | go and buy food or give to others who are in greater need. You and I have been given
00:27:57.440 | so much. And it's our responsibility to turn and give to others. So don't hoard your life.
00:28:05.680 | Don't hoard your time. Don't hoard your stuff. That's a recipe for misery. Hoarding your
00:28:11.680 | life by living out in a shack by yourself may not be you. But hoarding your life by
00:28:19.440 | devoting it solely and selfishly to your own pleasure may be you. There's no fulfillment
00:28:27.440 | in that path. You can be just as lonely standing on the golf course as you can in a shack out
00:28:36.480 | in the middle of the swamp. It starts with you. So number one, give of your stuff. Use
00:28:43.320 | your stuff for others. Number two, give of your money and give first off the top. One
00:28:48.920 | of the most powerful things to do when you recognize a danger is to confront it immediately.
00:28:56.280 | And when you're fighting against the danger of greed, you need to confront it immediately.
00:29:03.640 | So give of your money, give of your time, give of your life first off the top. With
00:29:10.120 | money, I recommend that before you do anything else with money, you give. Choose an amount
00:29:15.960 | of money that you're going to give off your money and give. This is the only way that
00:29:21.400 | I know of for you to ensure that you'll always be a giver. I really have a hard time believing
00:29:30.560 | that a man who won't give a dollar out of 10, that that man will suddenly change and
00:29:38.240 | give a million out of 10 million.
00:29:43.160 | Now it may be possible. I do think there probably are people who have done that. It is sometimes
00:29:51.660 | easier to give when you have huge abundance. And the man who suddenly finds himself in
00:29:59.540 | possession of $10 million may very well be struck with a generous urge. But I'll bet
00:30:07.100 | you if you ever find a man who does that, you'll find that that man has always been
00:30:13.880 | a giver. Maybe not of money, but of time and of stuff.
00:30:17.800 | I used to have this old neighbor, old redneck neighbor of mine growing up. He was a good
00:30:21.920 | man, but he loved to play the lottery and he would always talk to me about what he was
00:30:28.720 | going to buy for me when he won the lotto. And he was going to buy me a new car and he's
00:30:33.000 | going to buy my brother a new car. And I always told him, especially as I got older, I said,
00:30:38.960 | "If you ever win the lottery, the worst thing that ever happens to you, I'm going to pray
00:30:42.440 | that you never win the lottery because it'll ruin your life." It certainly seems to ruin
00:30:47.240 | most people's lives.
00:30:49.720 | But in his case, I actually believed him in this way. He was such a giver that I think
00:30:56.160 | he would have given me a car if he'd ever won the lotto. But that giving was expressed
00:31:01.760 | constantly in other ways. The man was poor. He lived on Social Security disability. That
00:31:11.720 | was it. But he would go and he would cull in the orchards, not cull, glean. He would
00:31:18.520 | go and glean in some of the citrus orchards and he'd fill his trunk full of oranges and
00:31:22.680 | grapefruit and he would bring those to us and he'd always give that to us. He didn't
00:31:28.080 | have much money, but he grew a big garden. He'd always give us the food out of his garden.
00:31:32.940 | He didn't have a lot, but he'd give his time. He was a giver. And I think he was blessed
00:31:40.320 | for it.
00:31:41.600 | So focus on giving first off the top and start with your money. If you don't know how to
00:31:46.080 | do that with your time or with your stuff, start with your money. Give first off the
00:31:50.840 | top so that you can protect yourself from greed.
00:31:56.640 | Number three, give systematically. One thing I have found is I frequently need to put in
00:32:03.060 | place a system in order to make sure that I consistently do the things I need to do.
00:32:12.080 | My systems fail frequently. I don't always do the things I need to do. But I always know
00:32:16.880 | if I'm going to make progress, I need to build a system. So give systematically.
00:32:23.600 | Figure out a plan for your money so that you can give systematically. I encourage you,
00:32:30.400 | open up a separate bank account that you call your giving account and systematically put
00:32:36.600 | a certain amount of money into it, whatever you've determined to give. Set the money aside
00:32:43.880 | in advance. And that way, you have a storehouse of money. And when you see need, you can give
00:32:50.200 | abundantly.
00:32:53.120 | I build this personally from this particular idea, from Paul's encouragement in the Bible
00:33:00.760 | in the book of 1 Corinthians, where in talking about a need, the collection of money that
00:33:07.520 | was going to be given from some churches who were doing very well financially to some churches
00:33:12.040 | who were in great need, when he said, "On the first day of every week, each of you is
00:33:17.040 | to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper so that there will be no collecting
00:33:21.000 | when I come." A number of years ago, I was reading that passage and I thought, "You know
00:33:25.520 | what? That is a very important approach." And so I opened a separate giving account.
00:33:29.920 | I just always put the amount of money that I determined to give into that separate giving
00:33:34.600 | account. And it changed my observation of the needs around me. It also changed my ability
00:33:43.320 | to impact those needs. Because instead of trying to fish around and find a $20 bill
00:33:48.880 | to give to somebody in need and wondering if that $20 bill were going to impact some
00:33:54.660 | other area of my finances, there may be hundreds of dollars in that account. And now I can
00:34:00.040 | sit and consider how much of these hundreds of dollars should I give to this need? So
00:34:06.600 | give systematically. Give systematically of your time. Give systematically of your love.
00:34:12.100 | Do those things systematically so that you can train yourself.
00:34:18.840 | Number four, give for your entire lifetime. Start when you're young. Don't wait. Start
00:34:28.840 | when you're young. Start your children when they're young and continue until you're old,
00:34:35.000 | until you reach death's door. Don't make your ambition to be the one who can get the most.
00:34:42.040 | Make your ambition to be the one who can give the most. Now here's the paradox. In order
00:34:50.040 | to give, you frequently will need to get. And the giving will often result in more getting
00:34:58.800 | than anybody else. But make your ambition to be the one who can give the most. Don't
00:35:06.640 | sit and look admiringly at a newspaper article and say, "Well, so-and-so is taking the Warren
00:35:14.520 | Buffett and the Bill Gates billionaire pledge, but I can't do anything because I'm not a
00:35:20.200 | billionaire." Nonsense. Good for them. I'm proud to hear of every billionaire who devotes
00:35:28.000 | a significant amount of their fortune to charity, but you know what? I don't want that problem.
00:35:33.800 | I have no idea how it would be possible to give away a billion dollars and have it do
00:35:41.360 | something good. If I'm ever a billionaire, perhaps I'll know then. You don't know it
00:35:48.880 | either though. You don't know how to give away a billion dollars. You probably don't
00:35:53.560 | even know how to give away a million dollars and have it do good. But if you'll practice
00:35:59.480 | with a dollar and 20 and 100 and 1,000 and 10,000 and 100,000, you'll be ready for the
00:36:08.020 | million and 10 and 100 million and billion someday because you'll develop the skills
00:36:14.200 | that you need to give your money away effectively. Make sure that you're practicing those skills
00:36:19.320 | now and then make a plan to give for your entire lifetime. Don't make your ambition
00:36:27.200 | to be the one who can get the most. Make your ambition to be the one who can give the most.
00:36:34.200 | I believe you'll live a richer life. Number five, give in secret. As much as you possibly
00:36:42.780 | can, give in secret. The more you can give secretively, the more satisfaction you'll
00:36:51.000 | get because you'll learn how pure your motives for giving are. I build this particular principle
00:37:00.100 | in practice, again, directly on the teaching of Jesus, wherein Matthew, he said, "When
00:37:04.660 | you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues
00:37:10.180 | and in the streets that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received
00:37:15.100 | their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right
00:37:20.000 | hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret
00:37:26.060 | will reward you." Give in secret and you'll have an eternal reward and you'll have a deeper
00:37:37.400 | satisfaction of seeing the impact of your money. This will actually also help you with
00:37:44.720 | many components of your financial planning. The more you give publicly, the more requests
00:37:49.640 | for giving you'll get. Want to make your life difficult? Start giving money when people
00:37:55.280 | know where it's coming from. You'll be inundated with requests. Want to make your life simpler?
00:38:05.080 | Give in secret. Don't let anyone know what you give or where you give or why you give
00:38:10.000 | or how you give or how much you give. Just give. And then the true needs can be met and
00:38:19.480 | you'll have the luxury of being able to make your judgment of somebody's need a little
00:38:25.880 | bit more privately with a little bit less noise from hands reaching out to you greedily
00:38:30.920 | saying give to me, give to me, give to me. Do your giving in secret.
00:38:37.280 | Number six, give as God directs you to give. This particular point, I'll give you some
00:38:43.360 | examples of, but I believe it's very much underappreciated and under discussed in the
00:38:50.200 | world of financial advice. In short, ask God what to give and who to give it to. And I
00:38:59.120 | want to make one comment with a special emphasis on you who struggle to wonder and to know,
00:39:09.920 | one, does God exist? And two, is God involved? And I want to tell you one story that for
00:39:17.680 | me I think is very important. And in short, the principle is this. I personally believe
00:39:25.320 | that if you have an interest in getting yourself brought to God's attention, one of the ways
00:39:33.360 | that you can do that is through giving. One thing I've learned through correspondence
00:39:39.920 | with many listeners is I have many listeners who would like to believe in God, but lack
00:39:46.760 | the faith for various reasons. There's a story in the Bible that is very instructive, I believe,
00:39:54.520 | in this regard. It's a story of a man named Cornelius. Now, a quick bit of history I believe
00:40:01.200 | is very important before I read the verse to you that I believe is so crucial. The man
00:40:07.760 | named Cornelius, so it's a little bit of early Christian history. So Christianity was birthed
00:40:14.440 | out of Judaism. Christians believe that God spoke first to the forefathers and the patriarchs
00:40:21.000 | through the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
00:40:25.960 | that is the family that brought the...those are the patriarchs of Judaism. And so God
00:40:31.600 | worked first through the Jews, his chosen people. God didn't choose the Jews because
00:40:35.760 | they were special. He chose them because he wanted to choose them and based upon the faith
00:40:39.920 | of the patriarchs. In fact, they were in many ways the worst of the lot, the least of the
00:40:45.400 | least repute. So through the adventures over the three to four...the three or 4,000 years
00:40:51.100 | of Jewish history, through the various adventures, God brought forth the Jewish people. And then
00:40:56.880 | at the time that was appointed by God, Christians believe that God sent Jesus, the Messiah,
00:41:01.880 | to the Jewish people. The Jewish people rejected Jesus, but he was sent to the Jewish people.
00:41:09.200 | Jesus preached to Jews. Only rarely did he preach to non-Jews. So the early church was
00:41:17.120 | built after Jesus died, was resurrected, raised back to the Father in heaven, after the day
00:41:22.980 | of Pentecost in which he poured out the Holy Spirit, as is written in the beginning of
00:41:27.360 | the book of Acts. The early church was birthed in Judaism and it was filled with Jews. And
00:41:34.440 | since the Jews believed that their religion was special to them, and it was, the early
00:41:41.160 | Christians believed that God would continue to work primarily with Jews until we have
00:41:48.160 | an account of a man named Cornelius. Cornelius was not a Jew. Cornelius was a military officer,
00:41:55.000 | a centurion, which in the Roman military system was an officer who was in charge of a hundred
00:41:59.840 | men. So you consider all of the military men that you've known in your lifetime and put
00:42:06.520 | those attributes onto Cornelius. Now sure, Cornelius was a disciplined man, a very strict
00:42:13.000 | man, a hard man. He was a man of war. But here's what's interesting. Reading in the
00:42:18.720 | book of Acts, about after the first third of the book, chapter 10, we read this. At
00:42:25.880 | Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian
00:42:31.840 | cohort. Listen carefully. A devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms
00:42:39.360 | generously to the people and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day, he
00:42:45.400 | saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, "Cornelius." And he
00:42:52.000 | stared at him in terror and said, "What is it, Lord?" And he said to him, "Your
00:42:57.560 | prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God." Your prayers and your alms,
00:43:12.040 | alms are gifts, charitable gifts, have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men
00:43:21.720 | to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner
00:43:28.480 | whose house is by the sea. When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two
00:43:33.960 | of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him. And having related
00:43:38.520 | everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. This man who is not a Jew, who's a military
00:43:44.360 | officer, using my words, was doing what he knew to do. He feared God. He gave money generously
00:43:58.560 | to the people and he prayed continually to God.
00:44:02.240 | Now, the story goes on and Peter, one of the 12 disciples, a very famous of the 12 disciples,
00:44:08.480 | as the story is recounted in the book of Acts, Peter was praying on the rooftop and he was
00:44:12.880 | also given a vision. It was a very startling and unique vision. And that vision involved
00:44:19.760 | Peter being commanded to eat animals that Jews had previously been forbidden to eat.
00:44:25.400 | And Peter refused. But the vision came back and said, "Don't call things unclean that
00:44:31.600 | God has called clean." And Peter was given the specific instruction that there would
00:44:36.520 | be a man named Cornelius who would be sending men for him and Peter was supposed to go with
00:44:40.480 | him. So Peter then, the soldiers knock on the door of the house where Peter is staying
00:44:45.680 | and in obedience to the vision, Peter goes with Cornelius' servants and soldier back
00:44:53.480 | to the house. And he finds out what was going there, what was happening there. And Cornelius
00:44:59.840 | says to him, "Here's what was happening. Four days ago, I was praying in my house at the
00:45:03.640 | ninth hour and then a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, 'Cornelius, your
00:45:07.640 | prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa
00:45:14.320 | and ask for Simon, who is called Peter.'" And he says, "Now we're all here in the presence
00:45:18.080 | of God to hear what you've been commanded to say to us by the Lord."
00:45:23.640 | Now listen to this, reading from Acts. "So Peter opened his mouth and said, 'Truly, I
00:45:30.960 | understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and
00:45:39.760 | does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching
00:45:46.380 | good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened.'"
00:45:52.160 | And he goes on and he gives the whole story of the, and he preaches the whole story of
00:45:58.680 | Christ, of everything that Christ came to do. "And as Peter was still speaking, the
00:46:04.360 | Holy Spirit fell on all those who were listening and they were baptized in the Holy Spirit.
00:46:09.640 | They went on to be baptized in water and there was a mighty move of God among the household
00:46:14.640 | of Cornelius." Picture this, picture how revolutionary this is. You have a military soldier who's
00:46:20.600 | not a Jew, who's being preached to by a Jew who never imagined that the gospel of Jesus
00:46:28.280 | was for anybody except Jews. Peter was a Jew and he thought that Jesus was simply the Messiah,
00:46:35.080 | the one to build the kingdom for the Jews. And it was through this man, Cornelius, that
00:46:42.200 | the gospel was preached to people who were not Jews. I'm not a Jew. You're probably
00:46:49.880 | not one either. This man, Cornelius, was that linchpin. It was his faith in God, which was
00:47:02.200 | expressed in his fear of God and in his financial giving and in his prayers. Now, what was interesting
00:47:14.260 | was Peter went on to be called to account by the early Christians who were Jews in Jerusalem
00:47:21.920 | for what he had done. He had broken this huge taboo. He was going and he was preaching to
00:47:28.120 | a non-Jew, to a Gentile, and he was called to account for that. Now, he went on and he
00:47:36.200 | gave his defense. He gave his defense for why he had done what he had done. He'd received
00:47:41.080 | the heavenly vision and he was obedient to it. He gave his defense for what had happened,
00:47:46.280 | how the Holy Spirit had fallen, and it was a clear evidence of God's approval of these
00:47:51.200 | Gentile believers being allowed to become disciples of Jesus. But it was based upon
00:47:59.000 | this man, Cornelius, who gave money consistently because he knew it was right. This man was
00:48:15.640 | so pivotal in the history of the world, and one of the reasons that the Bible clearly
00:48:23.360 | states that he was remembered before God was because of his giving of money. If you're
00:48:31.480 | one who is looking for faith, if you would like to have a heart filled with faith, but
00:48:40.840 | you struggle, I encourage you, be a giver. Give of your money to others who are in need.
00:48:51.640 | Consider God, give of your money, and pray, and see if God doesn't meet your need. He
00:49:01.000 | doesn't need to put you in contact with anybody. He doesn't need to put you in contact with
00:49:04.200 | me or anybody. He can do it with a vision, and he's doing it all over the world today.
00:49:15.100 | But start by doing what you know to do. One of those things is giving your money away.
00:49:24.520 | That's the first part of give as God directs you to give. I say that because money is an
00:49:29.520 | expression of what happens in our hearts. If your heart is filled with light, the money
00:49:39.100 | is a blessing to you and will be a blessing to others. If your heart is black and filled
00:49:44.040 | with darkness, then either you'll be the one burying it in rusty mason jars in your backyard,
00:49:51.280 | or you'll be the one murdering the one who's burying it in rusty mason jars to get it.
00:49:58.880 | If you take that metaphor and you expand it out over the history of the world, you'll
00:50:07.360 | see the elements of civilization in that. You'll see and understand what's happening
00:50:13.900 | in the world when men build giant companies and then scam everybody. It's because their
00:50:20.300 | hearts are black. Whether that's Tycho or Enron or Bernie Madoff, or whether it's the
00:50:29.360 | local common criminal who sticks a knife in a lady's ribs and steals the purse off her
00:50:35.160 | shoulder. The money is an expression of the heart.
00:50:43.740 | I think that story of Cornelius is so underappreciated. As I studied it out and just thought about
00:50:50.440 | it, I think that's so underappreciated how pivotal that man is in the history of the
00:50:55.720 | world. Now to the shame of Christians everywhere, relationships between Christians and Jews
00:51:03.640 | have not always been as beautiful as that story would recount. Christians have a lot
00:51:09.900 | of blood on their hands of their interaction with the Jewish people. It hasn't always been
00:51:16.920 | as pretty as it was in that story. But that man Cornelius and his giving of money and
00:51:24.800 | his fear of God, that man Cornelius was pivotal in history.
00:51:30.640 | Now there's another interesting account in scripture about another man in similar circumstances,
00:51:36.520 | a man named Job. I'll save that story as far as those details for some other place and
00:51:41.320 | some other venue. But Job has an interesting, just the cliff notes of it, Job is an interesting
00:51:47.640 | story because it's almost exactly the same. Job is a very strange figure in the Bible.
00:51:52.960 | It's a very, very strange book. One of the strangest books that I struggle with to understand
00:51:57.240 | more than almost any other book. I simply do not understand much of Job and Lamentations
00:52:04.560 | is the other one. I don't get it. I just don't get it at all.
00:52:07.960 | But with Job, one of the things that's amazing about him is we have Job who was an ancient
00:52:11.960 | figure, possibly a contemporary of Abraham, but we have no knowledge or record of any
00:52:17.640 | connection with Abraham. But one of the things that Job did that brought him to God's attention
00:52:24.520 | in an amazing way was he was a faithful giver. You go read the story if you want. Read the
00:52:32.000 | first few chapters, skip the middle 15 or however many chapters it is because they're
00:52:36.400 | really weird. And then the last few chapters, there's, forgive me, I don't mean to be, what's
00:52:45.480 | the word, disrespectful of it. It's just, it's a hard book to understand. This is a
00:52:50.080 | book of Job, but it's pretty clear on the subject of money. And I commend it to you
00:52:53.120 | if you want to study that one out.
00:52:54.880 | Now, here's the other aspect of give as God directs you to give. For those of you who
00:52:59.440 | struggle with faith or struggle with that, I commend to you give of money and see if
00:53:07.040 | God doesn't open your eyes or grant you the faith that you're looking for. If you have
00:53:12.160 | faith to give, give as God would direct you to give. One of the most exciting things about
00:53:18.400 | the giving of money is the way that God can use it in your life. I have so many stories
00:53:26.180 | I could recount to you of the excitement of giving money, stories where I have been a
00:53:30.600 | receiver, some stories where I have been a giver, stories of people who were near to
00:53:35.000 | me. And God frequently uses money, at least in my life, to interact with me and with faith.
00:53:45.240 | If you're going to give, I encourage you to work together with your wife or with your
00:53:49.400 | husband and give together. There's a man I knew in years past, and this story was – I'll
00:53:55.600 | just share a couple to hopefully encourage you because this is so under-discussed in
00:54:00.160 | the world of financial planning. A man I knew personally, he had gone through and he'd
00:54:07.720 | been involved in a business relationship of sorts with another man. And this business
00:54:14.040 | relationship had ended on a sour note. He and his business partner had come to a contentious
00:54:21.280 | parting of the ways. There had not been fraud committed, but they had just come to a disagreement.
00:54:26.400 | They dissolved their mutual business interests and they each went their own ways. This man
00:54:32.840 | that I knew was – a while later, I forget if it was weeks, months, or years. My guess
00:54:38.480 | would be something like months. A while later, he had bought a new vehicle for his business.
00:54:43.040 | They were in the same business as the other man, something like a new van, a work van,
00:54:46.120 | or a truck. And he'd bought a new vehicle for his business. And he was in prayer one
00:54:51.680 | day, and he felt like the Lord spoke to him and said, "You need to go and give this
00:54:54.920 | vehicle that you just bought to your ex-business partner." And he thought, "Why?" He
00:55:03.280 | didn't owe him any money. There was no reason for this. It was an acrimonious parting.
00:55:08.480 | "Why?" Put it aside, came back again. "You need to go and give this vehicle."
00:55:14.240 | So this man that I knew wasn't sure what to do with this. And so he told his wife,
00:55:19.000 | he said to his wife, he said, "There's something I want you to pray about, but I'm
00:55:23.480 | not going to tell you what it is. So please give yourself to prayer and see if you can
00:55:29.400 | get an answer from God on something." But he didn't tell her anything that it was
00:55:32.640 | related to. A few days later, he's talking to her and he says, "So what did the Lord
00:55:38.640 | speak to you?" And she said, "Well, not really anything." And he said, "Come on,
00:55:41.840 | there must be something. What did the Lord speak to you?" And a little bit timidly
00:55:46.600 | and kind of ashamed at how silly the whole thing seemed, he said, "Well," she said,
00:55:53.160 | "I feel like God wants us to give our new vehicle to your ex-business partner."
00:55:59.440 | And my friend's answer was, "Praise the Lord." Got in the vehicle, called up his
00:56:05.440 | friends, said, "I'm coming. I'm going to give you this vehicle. I just need you to
00:56:07.920 | give me a ride home." Took it there and delivered it that same day.
00:56:10.520 | Now, here's what's amazing about that story. Of course, it's one of those stories
00:56:15.440 | that defies every bit of logical reasoning, but it's one of those stories that is so
00:56:23.280 | exciting to be involved in it. When you're in the place of giving and you're in a
00:56:30.600 | situation like that, where your wife hears the same thing you hear from the Lord, it
00:56:36.160 | gives you, it opens up things that are often not expressed, and it gives you
00:56:41.200 | faith. This happens when you're on the giving end. It also happens when you're on
00:56:46.080 | the receiving end. There was a time in my life where I had a specific financial
00:56:50.560 | need, and I determined that I was going to wait on the Lord until I had my specific
00:56:55.400 | financial need met. I didn't tell anybody. I just committed it to God, and I waited.
00:57:02.960 | In a really remarkable way, I had multiple people who came together, who gave me a
00:57:12.640 | sum of money, and it was a substantial sum of money, who gave me a substantial sum of
00:57:17.080 | money that was exactly the amount that I needed for this particular need. That
00:57:24.040 | encouraged my faith. That encouraged me deeply, and it was exciting to be a part
00:57:30.320 | of. I've seen this happen for others. Sometimes you know about it, sometimes you
00:57:35.320 | don't. A friend of mine was building a house. They're building an addition on
00:57:39.640 | their house, and they had completely run out of money, but they were determined they
00:57:43.480 | were not going to borrow money. There was a particular time in this person's life
00:57:49.040 | where the man was sweeping the addition because he had completely run out of money
00:57:54.400 | and had no ability to buy materials, had no ability to pay people, just had run out
00:57:59.760 | of money and didn't know what to do, and was sitting there sweeping the addition on
00:58:04.560 | their house thinking, "You know what? This thing is just never going to be done. I
00:58:08.440 | don't see any way. I don't make enough money. I don't have enough money. This
00:58:11.800 | thing is going to sit here undone for years," and was deeply depressed and was
00:58:16.360 | really wrestling. "Maybe I should just go and get a loan." He came back to a place
00:58:19.960 | of faith and said, "No, I'm not going to get a loan. I'm going to wait." Some time
00:58:25.320 | later, I forget whether it was days or weeks, somebody out of the blue anonymously
00:58:29.920 | – I can't remember if it was anonymous or not – somebody out of the blue gave them
00:58:35.120 | about $10,000, which was exactly the amount of money that they needed to finish the
00:58:40.160 | addition. They never told anybody. They never said, "Oh, I need $10,000. Let me
00:58:45.160 | tell you." But because financial needs are so acute and they're so involved in our
00:58:52.360 | lives, they're so meaningful, there are physical needs and financial needs that are
00:58:58.600 | very hard to get more personal than that. When you have a physical problem in your
00:59:03.800 | body or if a financial need – relationship problems, of course, are also some of the
00:59:07.760 | most intimate. But that encourages your faith. Now, you may know when you give. You
00:59:14.520 | may know what happens or you may not know. You may never know the account of it. I'll
00:59:19.080 | give you another story and I'll finish with this one as far as the stories.
00:59:22.640 | A man I knew, a good part of his life was devoted to international missionary work.
00:59:31.200 | This man was active in Asia, preaching and moving and preaching in Asia. While he was
00:59:39.560 | in Asia, he had contact with a lot of different churches. Most of the time when he
00:59:45.280 | would leave – this man I knew personally lived here in Florida. When he would leave
00:59:48.600 | Florida, he would of course – he would work much of the year to save the money to
00:59:52.840 | buy the plane tickets that he would need and buy the plane tickets and then to have
00:59:58.280 | money to give to the people in Asia where he was going and ministering. And then of
01:00:04.280 | course, frequently people who were involved in local church would also give so that he
01:00:08.240 | would have excess money for his missionary work in Asia.
01:00:14.760 | What was interesting was he would go to Asia every year. While he was there in a country
01:00:19.800 | in Asia, there was one trip where on that particular trip, he didn't have enough
01:00:24.520 | money. I don't remember the circumstances as to why, but people hadn't given very
01:00:29.200 | freely, didn't have enough money. But he went ahead and went. He had enough money to
01:00:35.840 | buy only a one-way ticket instead of a there and back ticket on that particular trip.
01:00:42.720 | And on this trip, while he was there in Asia, he ran into a problem with some of the local
01:00:48.560 | churches that he had interaction with. And he was speaking against and standing against
01:00:55.320 | sin that some of the churches had allowed into their church congregations. Well, these
01:01:02.000 | churches wanted him to back down from that position and he refused. They wanted him to
01:01:07.360 | say, "Well, just come and speak," and he refused to speak.
01:01:11.040 | Now much of the time when a preacher or a missionary or somebody who is preaching is
01:01:17.000 | invited to come to a church, sometimes they will be paid what's common in Christian culture.
01:01:22.920 | Sometimes they'll be paid, arranged in advance. Sometimes the person will take up an offering,
01:01:30.640 | which is a voluntary contribution for the preacher to pay the preacher. The Bible teaches
01:01:36.280 | very clearly that preachers of the gospel who make their living by the gospel need to
01:01:41.280 | be paid well. And so in this context, he knew that if he were to go and to compromise in
01:01:48.760 | this area of sin, if he were to go and to preach that they would, this was a prosperous
01:01:54.000 | church, they would take up an offering for him and that he would have the money that
01:01:58.560 | he needed to get back home from Asia to Florida. He said no, based upon not compromising in
01:02:08.480 | the area of sin. He had just enough money to buy his ticket back to Hong Kong, which
01:02:14.680 | was a central hub of Asia. And there were in Hong Kong some related churches, churches
01:02:19.560 | that had connections. And while he was there, he normally would go and would speak at these
01:02:25.120 | churches. And again, these particular churches were very prosperous. They came and they wanted
01:02:30.080 | him to speak and he said no, based upon not wanting to bring division between them of
01:02:35.280 | his not being willing to speak in one place, but as being willing to speak in another.
01:02:39.080 | He said no, again, knowing that they would have collected for him an amount of money.
01:02:44.800 | And forgive me, one more thing, a detail I missed. While he was in Asia, they actually
01:02:48.560 | had taken an offering or contribution and they tried to give it to him while he was
01:02:53.560 | in the other country in Asia, not in Hong Kong. And he looked at it, counted it, knew,
01:02:58.960 | and I'm telling you a story with, it's not firsthand, secondhand. I knew, I know the
01:03:02.400 | person intimately who this was involved with. These details are exactly right. He looked
01:03:08.120 | at it, he counted it, it was enough money to buy his return ticket and he gave it back.
01:03:12.200 | He said, no, I'm not going to take the money until you guys deal with this particular area.
01:03:16.800 | While he was in Hong Kong, he felt impressed to go and to go to the ticket counter in the
01:03:21.800 | days when you could reserve a ticket without buying it, went to the ticket counter, reserved
01:03:25.680 | a ticket back from Hong Kong to Florida and said to the man behind the counter, I'll be
01:03:31.120 | back in an hour to pay for it. Was walking around the Hong Kong airport, no money, no
01:03:36.360 | idea what to do, just simply seeking to know what's the next step. While he was walking
01:03:42.560 | around the airport in Hong Kong, an unknown lady walked up to him out of the blue. He'd
01:03:48.680 | never met her, never knew her name and said, I felt impressed by the Lord this morning
01:03:54.600 | in prayer to give you this, handed him an envelope or a package or something and walked
01:03:58.960 | away, took it open, counted the money. It was exactly as much as he needed to pay for
01:04:05.400 | the ticket home and cover his traveling expenses that are associated with travel.
01:04:09.520 | Friend, that is exciting. When you're involved in that kind of working with your money,
01:04:19.480 | that is exciting. Now that lady, to my knowledge of the story, that lady probably never knew
01:04:32.160 | what her giving was meaning. She never knew. She just knew that she was responsible to
01:04:37.560 | go and to give this particular amount of money to somebody in a certain location. To my knowledge,
01:04:45.880 | she never had any contact with him before or after. She never knew him. He never knew
01:04:51.160 | her. But the need and the gift were brought together. That is powerful. That's exciting
01:05:04.360 | to be involved in. I said that was the last story. I'll tell you one more. This one is
01:05:11.960 | not personal, but this was a particular account that for me was very influential. When I was
01:05:21.240 | a younger man, I was really wrestling with basically the theology of money. Because on
01:05:27.280 | the one hand, some of the theology of money can be very confusing and paradoxical. The
01:05:35.320 | Bible contains many warnings about wealth. Scripture says that the love of money is the
01:05:40.400 | root of all evil. Very, very stern warnings. Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to
01:05:51.080 | go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Very, very stern
01:05:56.080 | warnings. On the other hand, frequently wealth is a blessing of God. There's more about money
01:06:04.080 | in the Bible than almost anything. I was really wrestling with a lot of things. I read a story.
01:06:08.400 | I'll tell details on this one because it's not personal to me or to my own experience.
01:06:12.960 | It doesn't expose anything that I think is best kept private. I read a story about a
01:06:16.760 | man named John Lake. John Lake lived, he was born I think back in the late 1870s, something
01:06:27.160 | or other. This man had had a very difficult childhood and really struggled with, in his
01:06:34.880 | early adult life, really, really struggled with faith and seeing God's power actually
01:06:40.120 | expressed in any way. He had a really incredible experience where in his early testimony of
01:06:49.600 | his wife dying and then being raised from the dead, it was a remarkable thing that came
01:06:54.320 | at a crisis point in his life. After that period of time, when he came to a situation
01:07:01.840 | and he realized that things were changing, he'd gone on and he was very, very successful
01:07:06.620 | in business. He was, I think he was in the real estate business and the insurance business.
01:07:12.760 | He became very wealthy in Chicago or somewhere up in the Midwest. He was very, very wealthy,
01:07:19.120 | but he felt God asking him to, he felt a burden to go into more of, to leave the world of
01:07:26.940 | business and to go into full-time preaching and a full-time ministry.
01:07:32.200 | And during this period of time, in general, one of the things that many people do, and
01:07:36.400 | I don't think it's wrong to do, but many people who have this desire is they work to build
01:07:41.920 | up their financial resources so that they can provide for themselves. Frequently, if
01:07:47.640 | a man is called to ministry, he needs to provide for himself. And we have the scriptural example
01:07:52.520 | of doing that, of using the work of your own hands to provide for yourself so that you
01:07:57.380 | can fulfill your work of ministry. But this man Lake was very, very wealthy, but he found
01:08:02.420 | that his desire and appetite for wealth was diminished. And he felt that he had the desire
01:08:07.060 | and the need to go internationally and to minister internationally. And so he began
01:08:13.620 | systematically giving away all of his money over a period of time. And then he bought
01:08:18.940 | him and his family, I think he had six children, five, six children, something like that. He
01:08:23.100 | bought passage for him, his children, and his wife to, I believe, South Africa. You
01:08:27.740 | have to go and look at the details. Well-known man. And he didn't have the money. He'd given
01:08:34.260 | away all of the money from his great wealth to go and work as a missionary. He bought
01:08:40.660 | tickets on the boat, to get on the boat and had nothing left to start over in Africa.
01:08:47.980 | Nothing. I believe the account was that when he was standing in line for the immigration's
01:08:53.300 | office, he had to buy some new tax stamps and he didn't have the money to buy a new
01:08:56.900 | tax stamp. Somebody walked up to him out of the blue, gave him a check that was enough
01:09:00.980 | to buy the money to buy the tax stamps. When they were on the dock in Africa, a woman walked
01:09:07.280 | up to him and started asking about some details and said that the Lord had spoken to her and
01:09:15.580 | showed her that she was to provide for him a place to live and a place for him and his
01:09:19.980 | children to live. And I forget any more of the details. It's been a long time. But those
01:09:24.980 | details of that testimony encouraged me deeply at a time when I was really struggling because
01:09:29.580 | I realized this. I have never believed that it is honoring and being very Christian-y
01:09:36.260 | today. I hope you'll appreciate it. But I frequently, I just want to yell and scream
01:09:47.340 | a lot of times at so many people who profess Christianity and who are poor and broke, not
01:09:56.780 | due to impressive and good circumstances, but due to their own laziness and foolishness.
01:10:04.260 | It is so absolutely dishonoring, dishonoring to Christian testimony to see so many lazy,
01:10:13.900 | broke Christians in a world of plenty who through character weakness spend everything.
01:10:21.980 | And I have always been troubled by that. It really bothers me deeply to see that. And
01:10:27.900 | so often Christians will put kind of spiritual sounding language on it. "Oh, I'm just trusting
01:10:32.580 | and learning." Meanwhile, there's money flying out all over the place. In the United States
01:10:36.500 | of America and in many wealthy countries, especially when there is almost no persecution
01:10:43.500 | against Christians, to not become wealthy is largely, in my mind, largely frequently
01:10:50.300 | a character flaw. Now, if somebody is giving away all their money and that's why they don't
01:10:55.580 | have money, that's different. But if somebody is just spending frivolously and heedlessly
01:11:01.060 | and not investing wisely, not being careful with their money and just saying, "Whoa,"
01:11:05.020 | kind of bumbling along through life, I find that to be very dishonoring.
01:11:11.060 | On the flip side though, I don't believe that being wealthy is necessarily always a great
01:11:17.100 | thing. There's a story in the Bible about where the man called the rich young ruler
01:11:21.760 | comes to Jesus and says, "What do I need to do?" And Jesus says, "Well, keep the law."
01:11:25.540 | And the man says, "I've done all this." And he says, "What else?" And Jesus says, "Go,
01:11:30.820 | give all your money away to the poor and come and follow me." And when I heard the story
01:11:35.180 | of Lake, it really brought me to a place of confidence that I had struggled with for a
01:11:40.900 | long time to say, "It is not dishonoring to be a servant of many and grow very wealthy
01:11:48.820 | because of it." It's very honoring. Wealth that is accumulated from honorable conduct
01:12:03.020 | and service is absolutely right. But wealth should never control you.
01:12:12.100 | And I made a deal with the Lord in that crucial time early in my life. I said to Him, I said,
01:12:18.780 | "I'll do my best, but if you ever say, 'Give everything away,' I'll do it. In the meantime,
01:12:25.060 | I'm going to seek to be faithful." For me, that was a pivotal, pivotal decision and it
01:12:37.660 | brought me a place of freedom. And to this day, I guess I've never really talked about
01:12:42.300 | this in public, but here it is. To this day, that is still a commitment that I have. I
01:12:49.140 | will be faithful and I will seek to serve as many people as possible. And I expect that
01:12:56.900 | the wealth will come in ever increasing amount, but I will never close my fist and hold onto
01:13:07.740 | it and allow the money to control me. That's why that testimony of Lake was so important
01:13:16.180 | to me. It's one thing to see a broke man give away a little bit of money. It's another thing
01:13:23.540 | to see a wealthy man give it all away. Lake actually went on, if you read the stories
01:13:30.460 | and things, he had an amazing work. Thousands, tens of thousands, I want to say hundreds
01:13:37.620 | of thousands, but I think that would be a bit of an example. Tens of thousands of people
01:13:41.900 | were healed through his ministry, physical healing. He was very active in public healing
01:13:48.620 | ministry, incredible medically documented miracles and all, but he went through significant
01:13:56.860 | financial need. Just because God met his need in that line there with the man and the woman,
01:14:07.460 | doesn't mean he didn't face his own crisis. There was a point in time at which he was
01:14:13.020 | actually accused by enemies of mismanaging money. It was that the accusations were unfounded.
01:14:19.040 | He was accused by some of his enemies of mismanaging money and all of the donations and support
01:14:24.260 | that had been going to his ministry dried up. There was a remarkable scene where the
01:14:29.540 | men that he was supporting out in the bush in Africa who were preaching came together
01:14:33.620 | and they said, "We're going to keep going no matter what. If we starve, our only request
01:14:38.420 | is you come and bury us." Many on his ministry team died due to lack of money and died because
01:14:47.820 | of lack of food. They ran out. So that life of faith was never easy for him, but it was
01:14:56.540 | real. And that is the point that I'm trying to drive at today with money. Give. Give of
01:15:05.740 | everything that you have. Give now. Give your money. Give your time. If you don't have
01:15:10.180 | money, give time. If you don't have time, give of your stuff. But become a giver in
01:15:17.140 | practice because giving is one of the most clear expressions of love. At the beginning
01:15:26.260 | of this show, I said I don't like Valentine's Day. You say, "Well, why do you not like
01:15:30.900 | Valentine's Day?" I detest it. You say, "Well, everything associated with Valentine's Day
01:15:37.620 | is good, right?" Give. If I give my wife pink flowers, and I'm not a, like I said, I'm not
01:15:43.980 | really a curmudgeon. Give your wife flowers or whatever you want to do. But that giving
01:15:54.180 | has to go every day. I've just seen so many people in my life who do the biggest work
01:16:03.900 | to put together a fancy-looking date on Valentine's Day and then don't lay down their life for
01:16:14.460 | their wife the next day. If you lay down your life every day and you love every day, then
01:16:22.380 | Valentine's Day can be a beautiful cherry on top. I like to go on nice dates with my
01:16:26.380 | wife. I think it's fun. I'd rather do it the day after Valentine's Day or arrange something
01:16:32.220 | fun to do with the crowds. But those special experiences are the cherry on top of a life.
01:16:43.260 | They don't change anything. They just add a little bit of sweetness to everything else.
01:16:51.140 | So in closing, let me encourage you. Give. Show your love for others by giving. Give
01:16:57.460 | it all away while you're alive if possible. Another so crucial, I've preached so much
01:17:06.580 | today. I hope this has been encouraging to you. But Jesus said, "Don't lay up for yourselves
01:17:10.860 | treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break in and steal. But
01:17:16.100 | lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and where
01:17:20.500 | thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be
01:17:25.140 | also. If you will consistently practice giving, giving of money, giving of yourself, if you
01:17:32.300 | will consistently love in deed, meaning in action, not in word, but love in action, love
01:17:42.620 | in doing, in deed, you'll be richer than anyone else.
01:17:50.180 | So I love that quote that Bob Goff started his chapter with. "I used to think being loved
01:17:56.220 | was the greatest thing to think about. But now I know love is never satisfied just thinking
01:18:02.460 | about it." I may, I'm not ready to commit to it yet, but I may talk more about money
01:18:08.820 | and marriage and love this next week to go along with February 14 or maybe I'll talk
01:18:12.780 | about hyperinflation. I haven't decided yet. But the point of all of this is to say that
01:18:17.060 | love is something that goes deep. Love is not an emotional feeling that you get when
01:18:27.020 | you see a sexy looking woman walk by and you experience love at first sight or a hot looking
01:18:33.500 | man if you're a woman. Love is something that gives. Love is an action. And a good way for
01:18:43.740 | you to practice that action is through the giving of money now. It's so, so impactful.
01:18:53.580 | "He was working in his garden when I happened by, He waved me over with a look in his eye,
01:19:04.420 | And started breaking off some ears of corn He said hey boy today this corn is yours right,
01:19:15.920 | Boil it up for your supper tonight, Cause I've learned it's true what my family used to say,
01:19:27.820 | And nothing's quite as good until you've given away,
01:19:35.320 | If you want more happy then your heart will hold, If you want to stand tall and if the truth were told,
01:19:43.620 | Take whatever you have and give it away,
01:19:51.120 | If you want less lonely and a lot more fun, And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
01:19:59.620 | Throw your heart wide open and give it away,
01:20:05.620 | Yeah, there's been a lot of water all over the dam,
01:20:23.120 | Since the day in the garden with my Uncle Sam,
01:20:27.120 | So I hope you'll hear these words I have to say,
01:20:33.120 | There are two kinds of folks, There's takers and givers,
01:20:39.120 | There's righteous and complainers, And big hearted liberals,
01:20:43.120 | It depends on how we choose to spend our days,
01:20:50.120 | Cause we can afford all we've got, Or give it all away,
01:21:00.120 | If you want more happy then your heart will hold, If you want to stand tall and if the truth were told,
01:21:08.120 | Take whatever you have and give it away,
01:21:16.120 | If you want less lonely and a lot more fun, And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
01:21:24.120 | Throw your heart wide open and give it away,
01:21:31.120 | If you want more happy then your heart will hold, If you want to stand tall and if the truth were told,
01:21:40.120 | Take whatever you have and give it away,
01:21:47.120 | If you want less lonely and a lot more fun, And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
01:21:55.120 | Throw your heart wide open and give it away,
01:22:03.120 | Give it away, you gotta give it away,
01:22:11.120 | Give it away, you gotta give it, give it away,
01:22:19.120 | Give it away, you gotta give it away,
01:22:27.120 | Give it away, if you want more happy then your heart will hold,
01:22:38.120 | If you want to stand tall and if the truth were told,
01:22:43.120 | Take whatever you have and give it away,
01:22:50.120 | If you want less lonely and a lot more fun, And deep satisfaction when the day is done,
01:22:58.120 | Throw your heart wide open and give it away,
01:23:06.120 | If you want more happy then your heart will hold,
01:23:10.120 | If you want to stand tall and if the truth were told,
01:23:14.120 | Take whatever you have and give it away,
01:23:26.120 | Give it away, you gotta give it, give it away,
01:23:34.120 | Give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away.
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