Pre-Decide: When You Stop Holding Back

That's not what the culture is telling us. That's not what the world is telling us. That's not what our fleshly feelings are telling us. We feel like it's more blessed to get than it is to give. So what we decide to do often is we excuse our lack of generosity by convincing ourselves, well, if we had more, we would be more generous. That's that's what we start to do to justify not being generous. And we even commit to ourselves, maybe even to others, when I get more, I will then what? Give more. Then I'll be more generous. [00:38:29] (46 seconds)  #DontWaitToGive

Because generosity is not about the amount of money you have. It never has been. Generosity is about our hearts. It's always been just about our hearts. Never about the amount of stuff, of money that we have. So I entitled this message when you stop holding back with that idea that we need to stop saying one day I'll be generous. One day I'll be more consistently generous. One day I will be, excessively generous. We need to start now. We need to pre decide that I am going to commit today moving forward to be a generous person. [00:43:20] (42 seconds)  #GenerosityStartsNow

pre decisions that generous people make. The first one is this, pre decide to plan generosity. Plan generosity. You think generosity ought to be just in response to the moment. No. If you don't plan to be generous, if you don't have a plan for generosity, then you could say yes or no to every circumstance and every opportunity, and you could say no for any obstacle that comes up if you haven't already pre decided you're gonna be generous. And this is what you're gonna do. You see, if you decide when I have more and the opportunity comes up, then I'll be generous, then Satan will make sure you never think that's the right time. That's the right opportunity. That's the right amount for me to have now. So now I can be generous. He'll never want you to think that way. [00:44:55] (55 seconds)  #PlanYourGenerosity

And so they were supposed to, whatever income they got, whether it was through crops or herds or or other jobs that they had, whenever they got income right off the top, they would give god back one tenth of that income. So, here's what they had to do. They were forced to plan for that tithe to come off the top. So if you plan for the tithe, then here's what you're planning to do. Live on the 90%. You make a plan. You make a budget. You get a life plan that says, god's getting that. That's that's the generosity he's called for in his word. And so I'm planning that whatever I make, 10% of that is his. So I'm gonna plan my budget on the 90% that's left. [00:47:46] (47 seconds)  #TitheFirstLiveOn90

A lot of us are being asked now when you do when you check out or you buy things online or somewhere else, do you wanna round up? They usually attach it to some calls or something that they wanna use the money for. Right? You just round up whatever the amount is that you're about to pay. You round it up to the next, dollar amount or whatever that that makes it an even number or or a number with zeros at the end, so you don't have change there. So rounding up has become even more popular since they quit making pennies now, and they don't wanna fool with that anymore. So they're asking you to round up when you pay for something. Well, I think when it comes to generosity, one of the things we can do is we pre decide we're gonna round up and here's why. There's a principles of scriptures that I think support this idea. [00:59:19] (43 seconds)  #RoundUpToGive

``They're not looking for what's the least amount I can do. Their mindset is how much can I do with what god has entrusted to me? See, they're always looking for the opportunity to do the most good they could do with what god has given them. That's a whole different mindset. What's the most good I can do with this? To help others, to bless others, to make a difference. [01:00:33] (27 seconds)  #DoMoreWithWhatYouHave

Did Jesus say, here's what you need to do if you wanna be pleasing to god? No. Why did he do this? When he felt the presence of Jesus and realized how blessed he was to be in the presence of Jesus, it changed his heart. He was transformed by knowing Jesus from being somebody who wanted to cheat people and be greedy and get all he could for himself. Now, the transformation has happened in the presence of Jesus that he wants to be generous now. That's how he wants to live his life moving forward. [01:04:47] (37 seconds)  #TransformedToGive

And the third thing is this, we need to pre decide to practice gratitude. You see, motive matters to god. People can give lots of money without having a heart of generosity. They can. They do it all the time. They do it for tax purposes. They do it for publicity. They do it to to get something they want in return. People give a lot of money for a lot of reasons other than I wanna honor god and be pleasing to god. Every day you see it happening in the world of commerce. But motives matter to god. He wants us to do this to be generous people because we recognize the generosity of god toward us. We recognize all that god has given to us. [01:06:08] (49 seconds)  #GiveWithGratitude