The Giving Heart With Sharon Epps

As we often say, there are only four things you can do with money: Live, Give, Owe, Grow. Dessert lovers can picture this as a pie. 

Do you remember when you were a kid and your sibling took a bigger piece of a pie? The same thing happens with money. When one area of money allocation takes a bigger slice, another area must shrink. 

Now, most often the world makes money decisions or “cuts up their pie” in this order: Live, owe, grow, give. 

God’s order for money decisions is: give, grow, owe, live.

Even though when we talk about finances, giving is expressed as an amount, giving is actually an indicator of the heart.  Giving breaks the power of money in our lives. But it can become legalistic if the focus is on the amount and not on the attitude.

So let’s talk about the heart.

The purpose of wealth is giving. 2 Corinthians 9:8 tells us that God is able to bless you abundantly SO THAT you can be generous and share with others. The whole purpose of our wealth is to be generous and share. 

Next, we need to understand the purpose of the tithe. There are four things that the tithe does.