Hi, my name's David. This is an interesting season because it's a season of giving. Sandy actually just said, This is a season of giving. It's Christmas time. We're all thinking about gifts. We're all thinking about presents. We're blessing others. We are receiving ourselves. I thought it would be a good time to talk about giving. Actually, the first... Originally, the title of this slide here was not the nature of giving. It originally... I'm going to back up a little bit so I don't get too much feedback. Let's do that. Originally, it said, How to Give. I thought that was funny. I thought it was actually a very good title for what I wanted to talk about. But I wasn't sure if maybe Standing up here with a slide that said, How to give would give the wrong idea. But if you're wondering, it is PayPal and Tilly in Canada helps. And there's envelopes at the back as well. End of sermon. I'm going to sit down now. So I wanted to talk a little bit about giving because recently I have spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to give and what it means to give well.
And I'll tell you why. Some of you may know this, and some of you may not. I have been gainfully employed recently at a charity. And charities think a lot about giving this time of year. The real story is my dad actually started at this This charity, about a year ago. He got recruited to go there, basically to clean the place up because it's this organisation that has all these different issues on the top-down level. He got there and he said, Basically, the office is managing to run the place, and that's it. They're so short staff that they couldn't do anything beyond daily operations. And so he was like, I need to bring in somebody who can just help me answer simple questions about the strategy of what we're doing, understanding why donors give, understanding how donors give, understanding our donors better. And so I got brought in in in the spring. Originally, I was pitched three weeks to help do phone calls. And then it turned into three months of this really understanding what it means to give to charity. And I couldn't help at the same time but think we're talking about giving to charity, and everything in my mind has to have a purpose.
And so as I'm doing this, I'm trying to think, okay, I think I understand why we give, but I'm not sure if I understand why we give through this charity in particular, the charity that I was working at, or that I am working at, is called Link Charity. And the way it works is that it's essentially a middleman. So you have a charity over here, and you have a donor over here, and Link helps to get to get the donor's money to the charity as efficiently as possible. And I didn't understand at the time, but the idea of Link is to do that in a way that optimises giving so that donors can give more. And this is going to It's going to be a key theme today. But as I was thinking about this, I'm trying to understand why does this organisation exist? I'm thinking a lot about giving. And so I asked myself the question. Let's see if it works. Do I have to turn this on? Or do I have to point at the back, maybe? Alex, can you give me a slide? I asked myself the question, why do we give?
And I'm going to give you guys 10 seconds just to think in your head. I'm not going to ask you I don't say anything out loud, but just think about, especially when we're giving in the context of church or to charity or to those in need, why do we do it? Alex, I'll get you to give me a slide here. I would say that we give to further mission. What that means is that giving is not just... Well, I mean, we give for giving sake, but I think that giving sake is more than just, I want to help you. I think that giving sake is really when done right, it's about trying to take our skills, our Our talents, our abilities, our time, our experience, our knowledge, and to use it to help further somebody else. So the next question I asked myself, slide, please. How should we give? And when I started thinking about this, I realised this actually played into a conversation that we were having at Link at the time. One of the challenges that we were trying to work through was an idea that there are There are two things that are opposed to one another.
Generosity on the one side and stewardship on the other side. Because stewardship says that we should be We should be good caretakers of what we have. We should be careful. We should be efficient. The problem was that at the time, culturally, at this place that I had just started to work, stewardship was not coming out as stewardship. Stewardship The stewardship was starting to look like frugality. It was starting to look like cheapness. And efficiency is good. But this was in such a way that… Well, I told you, the reason why I got called into this place is because they were so choked out on staff and hiring freeze that they could not keep up with the work that was coming their way. There was a culture whereby they were trying to save so much in what they did and be so efficient that they were not giving enough for people to actually have what they needed. And I realised, as we thought about this, that when you compare that frugality versus how we should be giving, which I believe is generously, I think it's important to look at how God gives. So give me a slide here, Alex.
How does God give? When we think about this, there's so many examples in the Bible, and I feel like I don't have to say this. I think that probably everybody knows in this room that God gives so generously. God gives riches. There's a song that we sing Sometimes there's a line in it that I always think of when I think. There's a funny thing when you lead a lot of music where you can't remember if something is a scripture verse or a line from a worship song, which is actually really probably a bad thing for me because I throw things out there like they're from the Bible, and then they're not. But I thought that this song had a great line, which is, What riches of love does he lavish on us? And that's just such a good example. So I'm going to actually draw on my second example here for for what we're talking about today. A couple of weeks ago, Karen Fraser beat me to the punch. I think it was the advent week where we were talking about hope. And if you were here, you might remember, she did a little children's story where she had a cup of water and she said, How much hope does God give us?
And she poured a quarter in to the cup. She said, Is this how much hope God gives us? The kids will say, No. And then she pours half. And it's like, Is this as much hope as God gives us? No. She poured it all the way Is this the hope that God gives us? No. God gives us more than we need. God overflows us because he wants that to flow from us into others. So when we look at the example of how does God give, it's really giving is meant to be overwhelming. Giving is meant to be more than what is needed, more than what is asked. So of course, how does God want us to give? Alex, can you give me a slide? So when you look to the Bible, this is This is not just the standard for God. This is the expectation of us as well. You probably know this story. It is the widow's might. It's short but sweet. Essentially, they're at the temple, they're giving their money, and the rich guy Guys are coming in and they're giving their interest. They're giving their surplus is what the Bible says. Surplus can be taken to mean they're giving the stuff that they don't need.
Maybe they're earning interest on that. This is what we do in society. We We put all our money in a bank account. We earn interest. They're giving such that they are keeping a lot for themselves. And Jesus looks at a poor widow who has only two copper coins, and she gives both of them to the church. And he says, I tell you, this poor woman has put in more than all of these rich guys combined, for they have put in a little of the money they had no need for. She is very poor, and she put in all she had. She has put in what she needed for her own living. And this, Jesus tells this parable as a context for understanding the way that we are called to give. We are called to give sacrificially. We are called to give our portion. And I think it's important to also recognise what that does not mean. This woman does not go to the bank and take a loan out so she can give more. She doesn't sell herself away to another man for marriage so that she can give his money. She gives what she has.
So God God's not calling us to give more of ourselves than we can, but God is calling us to give what we have. So this is the baseline for what I want to talk about here. The idea that when we think about giving, we want to think about really taking what God has given us, the things that he has blessed us with, the things that we are overflowing with. We want to think about giving those to others, and we want to think about doing so in a way that is overwhelming, in a way that is more than needed, more than asked for, more than wanted, sometimes, gracefully, and in ways that are, at times, sacrificial. And so as I got thinking about these things, I thought, Let's bring it Let's bring it back to Link Charity. So slide, please, Alex. This comes to me, brings me to a conversation about what we should give. And this is really where I felt I wanted to go today. We spent so many weeks talking about something here, and I realised that as I was doing this thinking about giving, that there are ways to give well, and there are ways to give less well.
At Link Charity, what we do, I said, donor is over here, charity is over here, and we try and get as much from the donor to the charity as possible. What that means, without getting too complicated, is that the government opens up certain avenues for giving that allow you to optimise what you give from a tax perspective so that you can make your money go further. So for example, gifts of stocks, stock market. You don't need to know anything about stocks. I understand what I'm going to say, but this is what we do. We might take a stock in a company like Microsoft, and if that stock was sold at $100, the government's going to tax a whole bunch of money off that, and the donor might be left with, let's say, 50 bucks to give to charity. But the government allows you, when you give a stock to a charity, to not have to pay any tax on that. So we could take a share of Microsoft for 100 bucks and sell it at the full price and give the whole amount to charity. And this is the thing that Link and other charities like Link do to try and optimise giving.
And as I was thinking about why these places exist, I got thinking about Why isn't all giving optimised? Why isn't there a way that we could align what we give to the church and to each other and to those that we're in relationship with and to those that we're in community with? Why isn't there a way that we can align those gifts in such a way that they also are more fruitful. And I realised the answer had been sitting in front of me the whole time because for weeks in the fall, we were talking about... Slide, please. Spiritual gifts. We talked a lot about what our spiritual gifts are. Many of you might have taken a quiz. Many of you might know your gifts. Some of you may not. And we spent a lot of time learning about what these spiritual gifts are, what they do. But one thing that I realised was that I wanted to understand a little bit more about how we can actually use them. The thing that I realised was when we use our spiritual gifts, we are set up in such a way that we are giving in a way that is more natural to us.
We are allowing our gifts to take our time and our energy and our knowledge and our efforts further than we could otherwise. So let's take an example. Let's say that your spiritual gift was leadership. But for whatever reason, you felt called in church to serve snack. Nothing wrong with serving snack. Nothing overwhelmingly awesome about leadership. They are both equal gifts in God's eyes. But if the person who is called to be a leader is spending all of their time serving snack, they actually burn themselves out faster. Their time doesn't go as far, and their energy isn't rewarded the same way as when they're using the gifts that God naturally gave to them. The fact of the matter about spiritual gifts is that we often talk about how they are gifts that we are blessed with by the Holy spirit. And that's true. But I actually think that it's important to remember that the other is true as well, that these gifts are not for us. These are actually gifts that we give to others. You don't reap the reward of your own spiritual gifts. Your spiritual gift is a present that you pass on to somebody else that they can be blessed with opening and receiving Everything.
And so as we think about how we can give in the context of church, in the context of our lives, I think it's important to remember that we have to think about how the ways that we give to others and the ways that we pour to others' lives will not be equal for each of us. And so the first step to this, obviously, is understanding what your spiritual gifts are, understanding who you are, what your talents are, but what the ways that God has blessed you to give to others are. And that's a lot of what we looked into in the fall. The next step is to understand what the opportunities are for you to use those things to bless others. The fact of the matter that we can be generous and good stewards at the same time. I said before that stewardship and generosity could seem at odds if you looked at them at certain extremes. But the fact of the matter is that when we are giving of In the ways that we are called to give by God, we can actually be efficient and frugal and great stewards at the same time as we are being overwhelmingly generous and lavishing others with God's love that has been given to us.
So I just want to reframe that for you as we think about it. The fact of the matter is, though, that everybody needs to give and everybody needs to receive. So there are a couple of dangers here that I just want to caution you about because I don't want to like, David has these keys to the kingdom that if we just give more of ourselves with our spiritual gifts, everything will be good. There are two things that I think we need to just be wary of. And I think I have a slide here. I don't remember. Alex, slide? Yes. Okay, we have a scripture. Let's just read this real quick. This is a scripture from Luke, which I have taken to calling the golden rule. It's not the golden rule. If you know the golden rule, the golden rule is due unto others as they would do unto you, which is an interesting theme that you can find through a lot of scripture, including here. This is a passage that says, Give and it will be given to you. You will have more than enough. It can be pushed down and shaken together, and it will still run over as it is given to you.
The way you give to others is the way you will receive in return. So the point here being, what you give defines what you will receive. If you give too little, you run the risk of not receiving because, as the Bible says, to receive, you freely give. And obviously, that's not good. If you feel like you really need to receive. That's okay. We all go through different times of life where sometimes you need to give more and sometimes you need to receive more. But even still, it's always important that you are leading with the right foot, that you are giving even in the smallest way. Even saying, Hello, how are you to somebody? Is a way that we can share love. So first thing, if you're not giving enough, you're going to stop receiving enough. And that is not a good thing. So I want to caution you about that. The other thing that I just wanted to caution you about is what happens when we give too much, especially when we're giving in ways that are not optimised with who we are. The person who's a great leader who spends their time serving snack is not only burning themselves out faster, but they're also actually taking away an opportunity from the person who's really good at serving snack.
And if your gift is being done by somebody else less well, we could say in some context, you lose the opportunity to exercise your gift, which actually means that if I'm the leader who's serving snack, all of a sudden, I'm robbing myself of the opportunity to receive. So it's not just about, Oh, this sounds nice. We can give more of ourselves if we do this right. It's also about the fact that in community, When we think about how we all have to give and receive, we have to recognise that these things have to be taken as though we are a team. And it's important that we look around, that we understand that we have to be willing to let our spiritual gifts work together. It's not enough for somebody just to say, I am an excellent speaker, so I will speak all the time. I will speak everywhere, but I will not receive in other ways. You have to exist in community. That speaker is blessed when they can speak to people who have other gifts. And when those people use their gifts to bless the speaker back. That's how churches work. That's what pastors are in a large degree, right?
So these things exist in community. And when we talk about community, we get to It's my last point. A slide, Alex. Who should we give to? There's a great scripture which I want to touch on here. Alex, can you give me a slide? This is the parable of the sheep and the goats. Jesus tells it. And the context is, Jesus is telling this story about a king. And really, what he's talking about is the king in heaven. He says, He says, 'Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ' 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. ' 'I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. ' 'I was a stranger and you invited me in. ' 'I needed clothes, and you clothed me. ' 'I was sick, and you looked after me. ' 'I was in prison, and you came to visit me. ' 'Slide. ' The righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? ' When did we see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you?
When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? God says to them, Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters, you did for me. The message of this scripture is that when we give to those who have less than us, we are really giving to God. And what God is really saying here is that when we align ourselves with his mission, when we give to those who he would like to see blessed, he is really accepting that as blessing his heart as well. I talked at the beginning about Why do we give? Why do we give is to further mission. Well, when we think about furthering mission, we have to think about giving in ways that benefit who we're giving to, not just that benefit us for the act of giving, because everybody knows it feels good to give something to somebody. But we also want to make sure that when we do that, that we're doing it in a way that's useful to the person who we're giving to. At Link Charity, we see this all the time because we process donations.
And one of the big things with donations is designations. Sometimes people will designate very specifically that my money is supposed to go to this very specific thing. And sometimes that's a really good thing. But sometimes it also means that people will give to things that are old or outdated or aren't really being done anymore. For example, Matthew worked at People's Church for many years. I'm going to bring them up. People's Church ran a programme called Living Truth for many years. It no longer exists. But last week, I wrote a check that was supposed to be specifically for Living Truth. What are you supposed to do with that? It's giving that's not aligned and therefore is not furthering mission. Sometimes we give to those who don't need it. If we give to charity, for example, and it's a charity that has tonnes of money in the bank and doesn't have any more capacity to increase its operations, our gift is actually not going to go anywhere. It's going to sit in a bank account. We see that at Link sometimes, too. What really is important is that when we give, we want to maximise not only our time and efforts, but we want to maximise how that gift is received.
So when we think about that, I think that the best thing we can do is think about mission statement. So for example, when we give to the church, ultimately, what we want to see is the church's mission be furthered. And I believe that the church's mission is something like to show God's love to one another in community and to build disciples in God's name. So if we're giving to the church, but we're specifically doing it in ways that are outside of that framework, we're actually not really doing that much for the church. If we're like, Hey, let's take all of our church members to buffet, but we're going to sit at different tables, and we're not really going to talk about church stuff. We're just going to eat food. Well, it's like, Okay, that's nice. But is that helping to show God's love to one another in community and building disciples? Maybe not as much It was like a Bible study at somebody's house or other things doing good work in the community. When we give to charity, we want to think, Okay, I don't want to give money to charity that's specified for helping hungry children.
But the charity is an organisation that specialises in setting up radios and technology equipment in third-world countries because they're not going to be able to use that. And so ultimately, when we give to God, I think that we want to keep God's mission in mind, right? When we give to God's kingdom, we want to see God's mission furthered. And what we really want to do is we want to see how can we share God's love with the world, keeping in mind that when we do that, the ultimate reward that is waiting for us is a seat next to the King as he welcomes us home. God says, Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for me. So give me a slide, please, Alex. So my question, as we come to a close here is twofold. One, how can we give God's love to someone every day? I've talked a lot about giving today, and I know that sometimes talking about giving falls on deaf ears because there are different groups of people. One group of people is saying, well, I'm giving enough. I'm good. And to those people, I say, I'm glad.
Thank you so much. I don't want anybody to feel like I'm giving you a hard time because you are not giving, but you really are. Teachers do that in school sometimes. Never liked it. But at the same time, I think that it's It's also important, even if we do feel like we're giving to the best of our ability, it's always important to be aware and to be present about whether we're doing so in the ways that suit us naturally the best. Maybe You are a person who's in a season of life where you feel like you really don't have a lot to give. And that's okay. I have been there myself in different ways. Broke young person, for You're like, I don't know. I don't have money to give. You can give other things. You can give your time. You can give your talents, your knowledge. Maybe you're somebody who feels like, Man, I'm just in a tough place. I haven't been feeling myself lately. I don't feel like you're not ready to take that step forward and give. I would say to you, giving isn't about making a life-changing to move in one moment.
Giving is about being willing to share God's love in a series of small moments. As we think about how we can share our spiritual gifts, I'm not asking anybody to sign up to be the new church treasurer next week. But what I do think that we should consider is how can you, in each word that comes out of your mouth, in each conversation you have with somebody that you don't know that well, how can you share God's love and how can you do so in a way that lights your soul on fire according to the gifts that he has given And so if you're feeling like you are somebody who's burned out, who doesn't have a lot to give, I would say reconsider your own expectations. The size is not what matters. What really matters is that we are engaging with God's love and engaging with blessing others. Can you give me a slide, Alex? So going forward, I would just challenge each of us here as we think about our spiritual gifts, and hopefully, as more of us know what they are, let's think about how we can use those things. These are tools that God has given us to strengthen ourselves, to strengthen others, to strengthen our church.
So let's be intentional about how we align our spiritual gifts with his call. As we go, we're going to sing one more song, and I'm going to pray first. But I would just ask as we close our service today, if you haven't done the spiritual gifts quiz, you I can find it through Jen when she's back. It is a great resource, even just to get you in the ballpark of understanding who you are. Once you have that understanding of yourself, I would really challenge you today to be present, to be aware of yourself, and to say, how can I stop getting in my own way? And how can I really start to bless others with who God has made me in his perfect image? Let's bow our heads. Dear heavenly we thank you for you have crafted each one of us unique in your image. You've given each of us abilities, talents, understandings, ways of connecting with others, ways of comprehending you and the world around us, and know two of us are the same. Lord, as we keep that in mind, we pray that you would help us to be shown by you who we are.
Help us to discern what ways you are calling us to serve in your kingdom. We know that maybe not every position is meant for the quarterback or the kicker, but that there is a position for everyone on your team. And Lord, as we find ours, we just pray that you would help us to work together as a team and that you would bless our church as we seek to use our spiritual gifts not only to bless you, but to bless one another, to bless our community, and indeed to bless the least of those in our community who we know really bless you. We thank you for the ways that you have blessed our church in the last year, and indeed, in the last six months, I guess, three months, four months since we got Pastor Jenn. And Lord, I just want to pray your blessing on us for the next year as we come up to New Year's. This is a time when often many people are looking we pray that you will help us to do both as we look ahead with excitement to what may be waiting for us around the corner. Continue to walk with us through this week and indeed, through this year.
We pray this in your name. Amen.
