Given Less Money While Becoming More Generous

Surrendering our money to God is often a first step before surrendering everything else.

We both grew up in the Christian faith. As “good kids” who loved Jesus and got married after college, we built our lives around faithful Christian practices. Over time, God challenged us to move from basic, everyday obedience toward radical surrender.

First came our money. As a young married couple, we saved a lot, gave 10%, and lived frugally. But we didn’t truly understand biblical generosity. When John was in grad school, our hearts changed. We realized together that Christ’s generosity to us was the right model for our generosity to the world and decided to go all in with joy.

Despite limited earnings from John’s career path as a ministry executive, we began giving beyond 10%, growing to 23% of gross income in 2018. The giving was exciting, we got closer to God, and loved the adventure.

But over the next five years, our financial giving rate would steadily decline from 23% down to 12%. What happened? The truth is that over those five years, we learned to become more sacrificially generous, even as we gave away less money.

In fact, the surrender of our money was the first step toward the surrender of everything else. Giving our family to Him would be the next, bigger step after giving Him our money. If He had adopted us into His eternal family, might we be called to adopt someone in desperate need into our earthly family? Wouldn’t that be a natural extension of what Christian generosity is all about?

God's affirmation was so healing. He is not after a perfect financial formula, but rather the whole surrender of 100% of our lives, out families, and indeed our finances, all to Him.

With three biological kids already at home, taking in newborn twins through foster care was—some might say—a sign of insanity! But God spoke clearly to us from Isaiah 58: “bring the homeless poor into your house…and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” After two and a half years of foster care, our beautiful twins became part of our forever family through permanent adoption.

In our foster and adoption journey, expenses and stressors piled up continually—medical, practical, and groceries. Post-adoption, we sold our 3-bedroom home and bought a 5-bedroom home. On a ministry salary, we felt the squeeze. As our giving rate dropped, we began to feel guilty about no longer being “radical givers.”

One day, God spoke to John during a time of prayer, “Every dollar you spend on your adopted children is the same to Me as a dollar given to an orphanage overseas.” God’s affirmation was so healing. He is not after a perfect financial formula, but rather the surrender of 100% of our lives, our families, and indeed our finances, all to Him. In fact, we feel that…

All of Megan’s sleepless nights caring for the twins, who arrived from the NICU as 5-pound preemies,

All of John's extra work to earn more and provide for us all,

All of our stress over court dates and case workers,

All of this is the most precious thing we’ve ever given back to God. Much more so than even the largest checks we wrote to good nonprofits!

We’ve learned together that our financial giving rate is a helpful but incomplete metric. If we had a higher giving rate, but hadn’t taken the leap into foster care, we’d have been disobedient to God’s gracious call on our lives. Rather than focusing too much on numbers and percentages, we’ve learned to surrender everything. It’s a daily journey of trust and prayer, in which we joyfully give Him our whole lives—every dollar, every breath, our family, our home, and our time.

This article was published in our Faithful Steward magazine, a quarterly publication filled with encouraging stories, biblical teaching, and practical tools to help you grow as a wise and joyful giver. If you'd like to begin receiving Faithful Steward, consider becoming a FaithFi partner.