A holy invitation that will change your life and the lives of others
on being generous with our generosity and how it changes everything
Generosity. What comes to mind when you hear that word?
The definition of generosity is a willingness to give help or support, especially more than is usual or expected.1
For many, that word conjures up thoughts of tithing to the church or giving to our communities. Perhaps what comes to mind for some is the giving and receiving of a gift or compliment, ‘I want to be generous with giving this gift to him.’, ‘That was so generous of you!’
With my slow movement into 2024, like many of us, I prayerfully and expectantly asked God to provide me with one word and waited patiently for the right word to be provided. And he provided - which is exciting! But then, as the days unfolded into weeks, I heard another word: GENEROUS. Who says you need just one word for the year, anyway? How generous of God to provide me with TWO! 😊
I’m not in a financial position to generously bless anyone with the ‘give’ percentages I’m able to provide - praise God to those who are within the body of Christ - but I am grateful that our generosity is not limited to our income. As I examined this word and what it means for me, I asked myself, ‘Where can I be generous?
I want to stop here for a moment because you might start evaluating your generosity right about now…
Friends, listen: I know you are already generous. I know you give your money to your church; your time to your friends, family, church and community; and show kindness to your neighbors. We are all, in fact, quite generous. That’s not what I’m talking about, unless that is a good place for you to start if you aren’t currently doing any of those things.
No, what I’m talking about are the smaller things that make us who we are, our little unique idiosyncrasies and qualities that separate us from others, maybe the things we don’t see in ourselves but others do, the hard circumstances we have in our lives, or even the things we take for granted because they are just always there.
The revealing of an invitation
I took that question to the Lord, and over the course of some prayers, journaling pages, and time, he revealed an invitation that was so precious, so sacred, that in my humanness, it felt like it wasn’t for me. I had a hard time receiving it and had to fight myself to not rebuke or doubt it. But I want to be obedient and make my best effort to honor him with this treasure he shared.
As his precious son or daughter, I believe he has the same invitation for you, too. And that’s the main reason for this article…
This is what he spoke into my heart:
Beloved daughter, you are precious to me. Every part of you is good because I made it that way. You, Kelly, are my masterpiece and I made no mistakes with you. I made you with many great qualities…so use them all, share them, give them away generously to others and watch my purpose prevail.
He softened my heart *toward myself* and he opened my eyes to see many little unique qualities and areas where I can be generous and love others well with my generosity. He showed me that these, in fact, are treasures to give away and that I should be generous with them. What good is storing up treasures only for ourselves? That seems a little Ebeneezer Scrooge-ish to me, does it not?
Little things making a big impact
After identifying the top-tier usual suspects - my art, serving my church/community, my kindness - I dug below the surface to discover perhaps some hidden treasures….
~ how I love to pray for people and how praying RIGHT THEN blesses others - I can be generous with this
~ how I have opportunities to teach character through youth sports - I can be generous with this
~ how, in the past, I started companies and with a business degree, have skills that I can use to help other friends in their businesses - I can be generous here
~ how I have specific information about addressing and overcoming mold toxicity and every day people are being diagnosed with mold sickness and discovering it in their homes - I can be generous with my wisdom
~ how we have navigated extreme mental health challenges with our children and know the deep struggle so intimately - I can be generous with my empathy, wisdom, and encouragement to others going through the same
Matthew Kelly, author of the book, The Generosity Habit, says, “When we are generous, regardless of how we express that generosity, what we are really saying to people is, ‘I see you. I hear you. You matter. I am with you. I care.’”
He goes on to say, “The generosity habit is simple: give something away, every day. Five words that will change your life forever…Give something away every day. It doesn’t need to be money or things, in fact the philosophy behind the generosity habit rests on this singular truth: You don’t need money or material possessions to live a life of staggering generosity.”
Let’s not only be generous with the top-tier, easy-to-identify qualities we have to give away, let’s be generous with all of the great qualities God designed within us.
God made all of His creation to give. He made the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, the earth, the plants to give. He also designed His supreme creation, man, to give. But fallen man is the most reluctant giver in all of God's creation.- John MacArthur
Now, it’s your turn
Maybe this seems like a lot of words to simply issue a challenge for us to examine the gifts we have that we can give away. But maybe you have no idea what they are so how can you be generous with something you have if you don’t know what you have? I believe identifying them requires a daily examen because these gifts are not always obvious. It certainly requires intentionality to look for opportunities to give them away, too.
So, ask yourself, right now: How can I be more generous with what God has given me?
Maybe you think, like me, you don’t have much…I have little time, I have little margin, my home is not the cleanest, my art does not appeal to the masses, I don’t have many followers so who will receive what I have to give?
I know I don’t need to convince you that God can do a lot with our little. He can take our breadcrumbs of an offering and multiply it according to his purpose. It’s not really up to us to judge how generous our offering is or even how it was received, we just need to be intentional in recognizing our gifts to give and obedient in making the offering, then leave the rest up to him.
Identify your offerings
Go ahead and open up the notes on your phone or your journal and give these questions some thought. Invite God in to illuminate the things you cannot see on your own. And friend, really try to RECEIVE them from him.
What is unique about me: what experiences have I lived through that others haven’t; what special skills and talents did God gift me with; what do others compliment me on often or see in me that I have a hard time seeing in myself?
What material possessions has God gifted me that I can share with others?
What special wisdom or encouragement have I gained through my trials that may be helpful for others?
What part of my story would be a generous offering to others?
In what ways have others been generous to me?
What circles/social groups/environments am I in where I can be more generous?
Spiritual gifts
Have you ever taken a spiritual gifts test? It’s important we know our spiritual gifts2 so that we can be generous with giving them away! I have taken several over the years but recently took THIS ONE and enjoyed that it had a few extra components to it that most spiritual gift tests don’t have.
After you’ve taken some time with these questions and if you decide to take the quiz, I’d love to know what special insights God gave you - what are your special gifts? How might you plan to start giving them away?
Build your website
Another fun exercise in your discovery process is to build your website. It doesn’t have to be a real dot com website, it’s basically a personal and professional resume of what you stand for, who you are, what you like, and what you have to offer.
I am currently in the process of building one and it’s been a surprising source of discovery for me, illuminating my passions and some of these ‘small’ qualities about myself that I might usually overlook.
Open up a Word document or the Notes app on your phone and take some time to think and type out:
your bio
your story
what you’ve done in the past that has contributed to who you are today
what you are doing now - all of it, whether you get paid for it or not
what you want to offer the world
what you hope others will take away from visiting your website
Building a website is NOT my strong suit, I prayed for someone to generously come around and offer their skills but that didn’t happen so I’m taking it one slow step at a time and of course, wish I could afford to have a super sleek and streamlined design, but I’ll stick with this one for now. If you’d like to take a look, keeping in mind it’s a work in progress, you can visit me over at kellybpittman.com but please don’t subscribe to emails, because I haven’t figured out how to set that up yet. One step at a time.
Generosity is God’s Way
We love because he first loved us…3
We comfort others in their troubles because he first comforted us in our troubles…4
Generosity works the same way: we give away the good things he first gave to us.
God doesn’t bless us with gifts just for our own good. This is something I have to work on with one of my boys all the time. Humility is his struggle, though, of course, he doesn’t realize it. I tell him using his popularity to gain personal power or control over friends is not why God made him popular. He must use that gift to be generous to others - as a platform to talk about Jesus, to choose the kids that don’t get picked to be on a team, to extend kindness to someone nobody else does and show others it’s cool to be kind.
“The burden of what Jesus says is this: give it away. Give it away gladly. Make friends by your generosity. The door to a gospel future is by generosity, outrageous, intentional giving away in the present to create a viable future. That seems to me such an urgent word, because we are so deeply caught in cycles of greed and affluence and self-indulgence and acquisitiveness of a fearful kind that will yield no human future.”― Walter Brueggemann
God only gives good gifts - every good and perfect gift comes from God5 - and in moments of clarity, we see that his good and perfect gifts are abounding and abundant. It’s all a gift…
our children, our talents, our jobs, our paychecks, our artistry, our time, our warm home and cooking, our leadership abilities, our knowledge of homesteading, our books, our songs, our poems, our jokes, even our trials…these are all good gifts.
What if all of this was given to us to enjoy, then give away?
I believe it is. It’s just God’s way. And He’s given us a perfect model for this…
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
God loved his Son. His Son was good. God loved us and wanted to give us good things. So, he gave us his Son, “I have this good thing and I want all of you to have it, too.”
To add to it, what he GAVE with the giving of his Son was THE MOST generous and gracious gift one could ever receive, even though we don’t deserve it: eternal life! 🤯
The point of all of this is to notice the extreme GENEROSITY that God displays here. And we are called to keep passing the torch…
God gifts us —> we receive, we give away to someone —> they receive, they give away to someone —> they receive, they give away to someone…
I want to be generous like that. I want to be a good steward of what God has given me, by giving it away for the good of someone or something else, even the smallest thing that could bless someone else. I want to be generous with my generosity. What if we were ALL generous like that? What would our homes, churches, communities, and towns look like if we all kept passing generosity torches to one another? Just think how that would flip the script of our current “me” culture.
“Effective stewardship leads to generative work and a generative culture. We turn wheat into bread—and bread into community. We turn grapes into wine—and wine into occasions for joyful camaraderie, conviviality, conversation, and creativity. We turn minerals into paints—and paints into works that lift the heart or stir the spirit. We turn ideas and experiences into imaginative worlds for sheer enjoyment and to expand the scope of our empathy.”
― Makoto Fujimura
The bottom line is this: we are called to be generous. And when we are generous with our generosity, it changes our life, and it changes the lives of others. It changes cultures and communities and if enough of us are doing it, it can change the world.
Yes, receiving gifts is truly wonderful, but our parents have been instilling this truth in us since we were old enough to experience disappointment when we had to split our allowance three ways6 instead of keeping it all, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive7.’
Now, friends, let’s go be generously generous - and do our parts to change the world!
xo,
Kelly
Quotes on generosity that I love:
"Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another's life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift — yet sometimes you don't let yourself know that.)"
— Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Vol.2
“Remember this – a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop but the one who plants generously will get a generous crop.” – 2 Corinthians 9:6
"It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert."
— Jacques-Yves Cousteau
"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."
— John Wesley, Letters of John Wesley
“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.” — H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.” — Mother Theresa
“I realize that some people’s lives are harder than others. If you’ve been dealt a bad hand, I understand. Even in the United States where equality is one of our chief values, inequality is still rampant. But focusing on what you don’t have or the bad hand you were dealt can actually make your life worse. What you think about affects who you become. It affects your relationships and the people you attract into your life. Keeping your focus on what you do have, what you have been given, and the good things in your life will make you happier and more grateful and will empower you to become a generous person yourself.” ― Brad Formsma, I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life
“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others,
the more he has for his own.” ― Lao Tzu
“Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gifts: an essay8
“What if artists became known for their generosity rather than only their self-expression?”― Makoto Fujimura
Generosity definition from Cambridge Dictionary
We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:19
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. - 2 Corinthians 1:4
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. - James 1:17
Give Save Spend
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ - Acts 20:35
You are such an inspiration to me as we go THROUGH this journey together. You are so right about the healing effects of being generous even while in the midst of suffering! IFLUMBAIW!