How We Give It

You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.

—James 5:5

Our money speaks loudest when it comes to how we give it. Some individuals give large amounts . . . to themselves in self-indulgence. And this is the individual James had in mind when he issued this accusation: “You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury.”

James’s words get harsher: “You have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.” I relate well to this imagery, having grown up in Fort Worth, known for the stockyards that once marked the beginning of the Chisholm Trail. To this day, out on the North Side, you can walk the streets and see (and smell) those stockyards. The cattle in those pens are fed the finest of grains to fatten them up. Little do they realize they are going to be slaughtered. So they eat and eat and eat, enjoying the pleasures of the moment. The more they eat, the sooner they will be led to the slaughterhouse. When they get good and fat, the attendants throw a little corn in front of those mindless cows. Continuing in their self-indulgent ways, they follow the corn trail right out of their pen and right into the shoot—to the slaughterhouse next door.

James was saying that some people are just like those Texas cattle. They keep fattening themselves up, never realizing they are hastening the day of their own demise. They are headed to their own day of reckoning. Yet, as they follow their own self-indulgent appetite, they become too blind to see where it is taking them.

One day each of us will stand before our Maker. I doubt He will ask to see whether your Bible is all marked up and underlined. And I don’t think He will want to see your diary or prayer journal that contains your innermost secrets and prayer requests. Some of us may be shocked to learn the most telling sign of what is most important to us in this life will be our checkbooks. Our cancelled checks and ATM debits say a lot about where our heart really is. Money talks. And how we use money speaks volumes about what we truly deem important.

Since how we use money is important to God, He has provided some laws to govern our giving and the stewardship of our possessions. First is the law of clarification: God owns all the wealth in this world and in the world to come. Everything belongs to Him. He owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). In David’s words, “All that is in heaven and in earth is Yours” (1 Chronicles 29:11). And in the Psalms he added, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” (Psalm 24:1). Every single thing belongs to God, including what is in my bank account and stock portfolio—and in yours as well.

Next comes the law of circulation: God wants His wealth in circulation. In the beginning the theme of God’s economy was simple: give, give, give. The sun gave. The earth gave. The animals gave. Man gave. But Satan slithered into our lives and introduced a new concept: get, get, get. We became greedy and began to live by our enemy’s philosophy. But this was never God’s plan.

The laws of clarification and circulation are followed by the law of cooperation: all of God’s wealth will one day belong to His children, His heirs. The problem is that too many of us are hoarding wealth and not cooperating with His plan to give. At this point as Paul said, we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). This is an awesome reality. We are not equal heirs with Christ but “joint heirs” with Him. God owns all the wealth in this world. And all His wealth belongs to His heirs.

This brings us to the law of cultivation. The way to appropriate God’s wealth is to give. One of the most well-known biblical principles is that we never reap until we sow. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38). To quote King David, “We can give out of God’s hand.” Put differently, we give out of His unlimited resources, actually giving from His hand to others. King David said it best: “For all things come from You, and of Your own [hand] we have given You” (1 Chronicles 29:14).

To recap, God owns all the wealth in the world, He wants it in circulation, and it will one day belong to us, who are joint heirs with Christ. The way we are to appropriate God’s riches is to give, and that is very countercultural. We live in a world where accumulation is the name of the game. But one day we will answer for what we did with what God gave us along this life journey.

The fundamental danger with accumulated wealth is that it has a way of keeping our focus on this world. Too often, once we begin to possess wealth, it has a devious way of beginning to possess us. We must get our money honestly, guard it loosely, and give it generously to Christ’s causes.