The Secret of Joyful Giving - Todd Peterson + Randy Alcorn

We've been friends a long time. I was thinking about that with you the past couple days and I think it's approaching 30 years. I have to confess in front of my church I had no idea the gift God was giving me 30 years ago when all of a sudden I'd come into my locker at the Seahawks and these books would be there by this guy named Randy Alcorn. And I didn't really understand the gift and privilege that the Lord was giving to me, but I am so grateful for our friendship and for your teaching and your writing has had a profound impact on Susan and me over the years. We've had a lot of fun doing some really cool stuff over the years. We have gotten a partner with Pro Athletes Outreach and Illuminations, different things like that, like Pastor Louie said. But you had a really significant impact on Susan and me back in the early 2000s when we read Safely Home and you counseled us on actually doing business in East Asia. And I just want to say thank you again for that. We're 25 years into that and your counsel really, really, really was important in our life at that time. You have an amazing family. You have two incredible daughters, Karina and Angela, and I want you to share about them, their families, and certainly your bride, Nancy. Yeah, our daughters, who love with all of our hearts, both married guys named Dan, which will really come in handy when I get Alzheimer's because I've got Stan, you know, and single syllable, all that. So Karina is in Southern California. Dan is pastor of Life Fellowship Bible Church in Upland, California. And then Angela is now a pastor's wife. She was a school teacher's wife and he became a pastor this last fall. So two daughters who, like their mom, became pastors' wives. And my wife, Nancy, has been home with Jesus for four years now, which has made her my primary treasure in heaven other than Jesus himself. But just praise God for her, for the model she was to me, four years of suffering with cancer that brought out in her a Christ-likeness. She already was Christ-like, but more than ever before. And I remember her coming to me one day, and she was reading the Psalms, and she said, so this Psalm says that God uses everything, God uses everything for his glory. And so she says, that means that he's using my cancer for his glory. And she manifested that in beautiful ways. It just was a privilege. Thanks. Pastor Louie said, but I think it would be appropriate for all of us to thank you again, the Jesus Bible has been an incredible resource to our church and the passion movement. And thank you for your contribution to that. Absolutely. I love that video. It frames the conversation we want to have. It's rooted in God's word. You are a man of the word. I've watched that for decades. We want to talk this morning about eternal reward,

generosity, stewardship, eternal perspective. And so let's dive in. Pastor Louie said it, dozens and dozens and dozens of books, very prolific author, 60, 70, 13 million plus copies of those books sold. But the Treasure Principle, 2 million plus copies, an incredible, incredible gift to the church. Unpack for us why you wrote it and what it is all about. Yeah, the Treasure Principle, the theme of the book is you can't take it with you, which we all know or should know. But with this little twist that Jesus put into it, which is a major twist, you can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead, which is what the video was communicating based on his words in Matthew 6. Don't start for yourself treasures on earth, start for yourself treasures in heaven. Why? Because the treasures in heaven are going to last, the treasures on earth aren't. Don't waste your life, invest your life. Investments that pay off for eternity. And we know investment in the short term in this world, and lots of us are in mutual funds or whatever it is, but those are things that are not going to last. They're not wrong, they're not evil. In fact, they can be used for... for great good, but they do need to be used for great good, not just accumulated, held on to. And so one of the great things about what scripture says is we can make an investment in eternity, something that's gonna last forever. Every time you give to your church, every time you give to great missions projects in the kingdom of God, every time you give to somebody that lives down the street that has a need, you are doing something that is Christ-like and will make a difference for eternity. Paint, mulch, and burgers. Right. Or SpaceX. Scripture talks about never trading away what is eternal for what is temporal. And I just think about the dot line video

and how that helps me keep focused on what really matters. Word of God, the souls of men and women, we get to build the church. There's an intersection of those two things and what a massive opportunity. The scriptures motivate us. They're biblical motivators around the idea of living the generous life. Talk with us about a couple of those. Yeah, so what motivates us first and foremost to give to other people is love for God and love for people. So love is the great motivator, but it's not the only motivator in scripture. Sometimes it's the only one we think of. And some people go, oh, love is the only right motive to ever do anything. But God gives us multiple motives, not mixed motives, but multiple motives to give. One is because we love God, because we love people, yes. But also there's the fear of God, realizing that we're gonna stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and we're gonna give an account of our lives, everything we've said and done. Wow, okay, so that's a little scary. And that's part of the fear of God that we're supposed to have. And so we wanna make sure that we are honoring him and bringing glory to him through our giving, and that we are more givers than we are keepers.

And of course we keep some things, and that's all to the glory of God. Our keeping should be just as our giving should be, but we hold things loosely because we're followers of Jesus. And then the third of the great motives in scripture is the hope of reward, the promise of eternal reward. And so sometimes we think, well, reward, I mean, you shouldn't be motivated by reward, come on. I mean, it's by grace we've been saved through faith. That in and of ourselves is the gift of God, not by works lest any man should boast. And so we go, yeah, because works are bad. No, for verse 10 in Ephesians two, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what purpose? To do great works. To do good works. And he is going to reward us for those. And then some people say, well, yeah, it's not really a good motive, not a good incentive. Well, first of all, if it was a bad incentive, Jesus wouldn't have used it to motivate us, right? Because he doesn't tempt us, he offers us reward. And the other thing is just think of a father who I know, I think of like when my daughters were in high school, suppose that they're in their mid 40s now, but when they were in high school, you suppose we had a family work day on Saturday and said, okay, get out there.

We're all gonna get this work done. And then at the end of the day, I'm gonna pay you both a certain amount of money, what it was back in the day. You know, I'd have to inflate it now to, you know, but so now maybe it would be $100 or something. Back then, I think it was $40. I don't know what it was. But then, and then we'll get all cleaned up. I'll take you out to a nice dinner. Now, as a father, would I want them to say, oh no, we don't care about reward. And dad don't even, you know, and you don't take us out to dinner. We're just gonna fulfill our obligation, check off the box and do our duty. Would that have made me happy as a father? No, because here's the key. If we came up with the idea of reward, it would be totally inappropriate. His grace saves us. Well, why in the world would we demand or even ask for reward? But the point is, it's his idea. And he's the one that offers it and talks about it. And he wants us to be excited about eternal reward. And that's why Paul says, I press on in looking forward to the reward that will be mine for serving Jesus. It's awesome. I love how

God's Word just comes out of you. I have had the privilege of sitting with you like this before, and you have this incredible Bible. I know it's one of many, and I think we have a picture of it because it's a picture to me of what it looks like to devour God's Word, to abide in the Word in such a way. So it would be awesome if we could see that pop on the screen. It's just an amazing, amazing illustration of what it looks like to digest the Word of God. God wants us in His Word. The Scripture says it transforms us by the renewing of our mind. And when we look intently into the Word, it changes us. And thank you for being a speaker of the Word of God. It's not your opinion. You're telling us what God's Word says. You have said before, those who don't give are impoverished. What do you mean by that? Well, you are a poorer person when you don't give. If you are a keeper primarily in life and not a giver, your life will head toward ugliness in 1 Timothy 6, verses eight through 12. But if we have food and clothing, we'll be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful desires

that plunge people. The word that's translated plunge there is often translated drown, that drown people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith, pierced themselves, that's, I've run out of fingers on my hands. So go to the next one, have pierced themselves with many griefs. God has, there's actually 12 things that are in this passage. Warnings about what will happen to us if we are lovers of money, if we desire to be rich more than anything else. If that's our driving motivation, then we're going to have disastrous consequences. But then turn it around. Eight verses later in 1 Timothy 6, 18 through 19, Paul urges the rich, quote, be rich in good works, be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasures for yourself as a good foundation for the coming age. And obviously he's thinking of Matthew 6, what Jesus said about storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven. Now, the thing that's so encouraging about that is that if you look at James, weep and howl, you rich, for the judgment that's going to come down on you.

There's a number of passages of the scripture. And let's face it, all of us, I mean, if you have a middle-class income in America, actually, if you even are in lower class in America, by global standards, you're wealthy. I mean, that's just the fact. So then we're going, okay, I guess we're all rich. And so we're all getting condemned, except he says to the rich, I say this, be rich in good works, generous, willing to share. And not only will you not come under judgment, but when you give, storing up treasures for yourself as a firm foundation for your eternal future. And this is like, thank you, Lord, for giving me hope. And even in the middle of it says, God who has given us all good things for our pleasure. And he has done that. We don't have to feel guilty about experiencing some material pleasures in life. But we have to be very careful because we'll give an answer. And this is where we need to draw a line and we need to say, look, there's a finish line. I can't just keep storing up treasures for myself on earth. I've got to give away and give generously to the kingdom of God. I don't want to be like the rich fool who God says today, your life is required of you, you fool. We want to be more like the poor widow who gave all she had.

She gave all she had. We would have counseled the rich man. Hey, that's fine. That's the American dream. Just accumulate. And then we probably would have said to the poor widow, no, don't give, we've got a fund for you, a widow's fund. And we would have tried to help her out, which is the right thing to do. I'm not saying God calls every poor widow to give away everything she has like the one that's in scripture, but obviously she had faith and God trusted her and I don't believe she did go hungry. And this is where we have to develop the life of trust. There's a weight to stewardship. And you said a minute ago, we shouldn't sense like it's an obligation. There should be joy in it. You wrote a book called Happiness, one of your books. And in there you talk about how the word happy and blessed work together. Jesus said it's more blessed to give than receive. Talk with us about happiness and joy in giving. Yeah, the Greek word makarios, which is used in scripture and normally translated blessed or blessed actually means, you look it up in any Greek dictionary, it actually means happy making or happy. Depending on the context and whether it's an adjective or noun or whatever it is.

The Lord Jesus himself said in Acts 20 verse 35, there is more happiness in giving than receiving. That's the good news translation and it's very accurate. Again, most English translation says it's more blessed to give than to receive. It's very striking because it's the only verse in the book of Acts that is only there but not in the Gospels. So nowhere in the Gospels will you find, not even the Gospel of Luke and Luke wrote Acts as well, will you find it's more happy making to give than to receive but it's almost like Luke is looking back and say, oh, here's something that I didn't include in my Gospel but that Jesus said and I'm gonna quote Paul saying it, it is more happy making to give than to receive. The striking thing about it is when we think of blessed, we don't think of happy but that's what it actually means, even historically. I found an old Webster's Dictionary in the early 1800s and look up blessed and it says happy and when we use it like people talk about the blessed Virgin Mary, they're not talking about the happy Virgin Mary, they're talking about the holy Virgin Mary. So we take a happiness word and turn it into a holiness word. Now I'm all for holiness but there's lots of good holiness verses so let's not take a happiness verse and turn it into just a holiness verse

though the two of them go hand in hand. The holy life is truly a happy life. It's not the pharisaical, you know, check off the box life, it's the life that's centered in Jesus and then our happiness overflows. We're all motivated by happiness and a great example of that is Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol. I'm gonna read you a couple of lines from Late in a Christmas Carol and by the way, Charles Dickens wrote a book for his children called The Life of Our Lord and it was not published in his lifetime or in their lifetime but then it was up to the grandchildren of Charles Dickens. Do you want to publish this? And they did, it's called The Life of Our Lord, you can get it on Amazon or elsewhere and it is Charles Dickens writing a story, sharing the truth of Jesus, including a clear gospel presentation for his children and so when you read in A Christmas Carol, what happens to Scrooge? What happens to Scrooge is a conversion. I mean, these three, you know, the imagery sure with the three ghosts and all of that but here's what it says at the end of A Christmas Carol. Some people laugh to see the alteration in Scrooge but he let them laugh and little heeded them

because remember, he's going through the streets now and giving to people and he's filled with joy and he was a miser and the word miser, you know, miserable comes from miser. A miser is miserable but then it says his own heart, Scrooge's own heart laughed and that was quite enough for him and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge. The keeping Christmas well means knowing the Jesus who is the center of Christmas. It's amazing, that's awesome. We have a culture book here, it's called our Us book. It's where we state our core values. We believe generosity should be normal. It should be how the world experiences us. We took it very seriously from the earliest days to you heard. Pastor Brad talked about the opportunity to give, to love Atlanta, have a giving moment each Sunday. There's a saying that we came up with here, the church isn't built on the gifts and talents of a few, but on the sacrifices of many. And there are many, many, many, many people who are a part of Passion City Church who have given incredibly generously to build the church over the years. I think that one of the ways the enemy tempts us is he likes for us to think that our money is ours. It's my money, I can do whatever I want with it, it's my business what I do with it. But the Scripture talks about God owning it all. Talk with us about that.

Yeah, one time I was going to speak at a generous giving conference, and you've been at those conferences Todd, and probably some others in Passion City have been as well, and a guy came up to me and says, would you just do me a favor when you speak? And I said, yeah, sure, I think. And he says, would you just not say God owns it all? I'm just really tired of hearing that. And I'm going, well, no, I am going to say God owns it all. And here's the thing, I'll stop saying it when everybody acts like it's true. That's the problem, we don't act like it's true. You can say God owns it all, but what does that even mean? But we have got to come to terms with what it means. Psalm 24, verse 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Psalm 10, verse 14 says, look, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it belong to Yahweh your God. Job 41, verse 11 says, who has given me anything that I need to pay back? Everything under heaven is mine. Haggai 2, verse 8 says, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, says Yahweh of heaven's armies. It's like you think he's trying to make a point in all of these passages, it all belongs to him. And that's why Malachi 3 says, stop robbing God. And by the way, sometimes we think of Malachi 3, it's just about tithing. No, stop robbing God by withholding your tithes and offerings, offerings were free will offerings. So it means that we can rob God, not simply by refusing to tithe, but by not giving to God things that he would prompt our hearts to give to him, free will offerings. We don't want to rob God. I don't want to stand for the judgment seat of Christ and have Jesus say, well, you know, you're covered by my blood and you're getting into heaven, but you didn't please me with what you did with your finances. You held onto them when you should have given it away.

You robbed me of glory. You robbed other people of help, and you robbed yourself of eternal treasures. I do not want that to happen. I don't think you want it to happen either. And you say, well, wait a minute, I mean, we're not under condemnation once we come to Jesus. No, we're not under condemnation forever, but at the judgment seat of Christ, we will give an account for what we have done in our lives. And I do not want him to say to me, I'm disappointed. I want to hear those words. Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your master's happiness. So we're going to answer for it. But by the grace of God, we can live our lives here in such a way as to bring him glory, bring good to others, bring happiness to ourselves, where everyone wins except the devil. He's the one that loses. That's great. Really, really great. I have heard you say before that God doesn't prosper us to increase our standard of living, but to increase our standard of giving. And I remember when I was early in my NFL career, one of my coaches who was a believer said to me, you're going to be really tempted as your income goes up to let your lifestyle creep. Don't. Talk with us about the idea that God would prosper, favor, provide for us so that we could give more generously. Yeah. Yeah. There's a world out there of great need, and we all know it, but we tend to kind of look away from commercials when you have a mother who can't feed her children or they don't have clean water or, you know, whatever, and we don't want to think about that.

But that's a reality in our world, and we need to face up to it. And we need to learn the meaning of enough. But also to understand that there is such a thing as too much. Second Corinthians 8.15 says, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. And that's the way it's to be in the body of Christ. It's a bad thing to have too little, we know that. But it's also a bad thing to have too much, and that's why Proverbs says, give me neither poverty nor riches, because the riches are going, here's what happens. Things have mass, mass has gravity. The more we accumulate, the more we hold onto, the more gravity is exerted by it on us, and it pulls our hearts toward it. There's only one way to break out of the gravity of stuff, of things, of money and possessions, and that's by giving them away, and that's where you store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. And the more treasures you give, then that's the giving. The more you give away to worthy kingdom projects, to your church, to what God has called you to do, the more your heart follows your treasure. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. It's not just where your heart is, there's your treasure's gonna be. It's where your treasure is, that's where your heart be. And you say, well, I wish I had more of a heart

for God's kingdom. Put more of your treasures there, and your heart will follow. I wish I had more of a heart for my church, Passion City. I really wish I had the heart for this church that some people seem to just really have, and I don't have it. I wish I had it. Here's how you can get it. Give your treasures to it, and your heart will follow your treasures. And we don't wanna be rich fools. I was telling Todd the other day, sent him an email about a small church in our area. It's actually a church that's pastored by one of the Dan's that's my son-in-law, and he, they as a church took a special missions offering to go toward the orphans of South Sudan school in Uganda, and this woman named Rosemary that does this amazing work that my daughter and son-in-law went and visited, and they came back and they said, hey, we're gonna take a special offering at our church, you know, church of 300 or so people, and would the ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries that gives away all my royalties, would you do a matching thing with us? And I said, sure, absolutely. Do you wanna put a limit on how much you'll match? No, no, whatever it is. If it takes a year to get enough royalties

to catch up to it, we'll do it, you know, but glad to do it. So they took an offering. It was $72,000, and we had 90-some thousand dollars that had just come in in royalties, and so we're easily able to match that, and then someone else, another individual donor from that church said he would match it, and so that $72,000 became $216,000 from a church of 300 people to help orphans in Uganda. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And these are children, many of them, who literally witnessed the slaughtering of their own parents. The infant mortality rate or the mortality rate of children under six in Sudan is the highest of any country in the world. Horrific situations, and these children are being helped in the name of Christ, and what a privilege.

I mean, it's just, your heart will be so full of happiness when you do stuff like that. And then I've had people over the years, because our ministry gives away all the royalties from my books, and I've had people over, do you know what you could do with the royalties for 13 million copies of your books that have been sold? They go, well, I'll tell you this, there's nothing we could do with it that would bring us, and Nancy used to say the same thing exactly, there's nothing we could do with those royalties that would bring us nearly as much joy as what we've done with them. Amazing. So all the royalties off that have funded kingdom work, and that was the foundation for even naming the ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries, because you're focused on what will last. That's awesome, awesome. Okay, I have picked up over the years these little things I call randyisms, and they're like the little one-liner, and all great communicators, we hear Pastor Louie, Dr. Crawford, you name it, say these little things that are like, man, I gotta hang my hat on that, and one of the best is, God's grace is the lightning, our giving the thunder. Explain the relationship. Well, you know how scripture says we love him

because he first loved us. That's how it works with giving. There's a word for giving, it's the word grace. The word grace means giving. So when you read the longest passage in the New Testament on giving is 2 Corinthians eight and nine and the word grace appears, the grace. God has given us the gift of grace and by the grace of God, we are doing this giving. Well, God's giving to us, God's grace to us is the lightning but where there is lightning, there is always thunder and the thunder back to God is our giving to him, our giving to him and to help others in need in the name of Jesus and if you are not a giver, you are not entering into the grace of God in your life and I mean, God can live without your money but you can't live without his grace and he's extending his grace to you every time you give and it's like I'm just gonna give back to you, R.G. Letourneau invented earth moving machines and gave away 90% of his income and he said and he made these gigantic shovels and he said, God shovels it in, I shovel it back but God has a bigger shovel. It just keeps coming in. These royalties just keep coming in and by the way, I'd written a couple of books before we started giving away all the royalties, maybe three books and I didn't have any, none of those first books were on the bestsellers list

until we started giving away the money and then all of a sudden, wow, apparently God is raising money for his kingdom through the royalties that are coming in and I'm going, great. In fact, that reminds me, some of you probably read, know Francine Rivers, the novelist and Franny is a good friend of Nancy and mine and she, her book, The Atonement Child, any of you read The Atonement Child? You know what I'm talking about. That was her first book and she dedicated it to the Lord and said, that was her first book after she became a believer. She had written some pretty steamy romance novels and then she said, okay, from now on, she says, but all the royalties from this book go to Jesus and I think that book has sold like four or five times more than any other novel she's ever written and I don't think that's a coincidence. Very cool, very cool. As we wind down here, you say that Nancy talked to you about rewards. She had a really cute, interesting question for you. The scriptures talk about eternal reward and we'll rule with Christ and he may give one these many cities and another. Are rewards, like God's really gonna reward us forever for what we did here on earth

and what does Nancy want to have as a reward? Well, she said to me, okay, so scripture talks about, if you've been faithful and little, I'll put you over much. I'll put somebody over one city, I'll put somebody over five cities, I'll put somebody over 10 cities and she looked at me and this was probably a month or so before she died and she said, do you think it's okay if I ask the Lord not to put me over a city but to put me over 100 dogs on the new earth? And I said, well, actually, I think that would be just fine. That's our golden retriever, Maggie, who was absolutely precious to us and I'll tell you one quick story about Maggie. We came home from a doctor's appointment and it was when the doctor said, okay, it's stage four now, the cancer. We don't know how much longer you'll live but it is terminal and we're going unless God heals and so we pray every night for the healing. We came on that day, got down on my knees, prayed for Nancy for healing but also just for his grace in her life. Went downstairs, got down on the couch, bowed my knees, I'm praying and suddenly next to me is this otherworldly howl. It's a groan that's coming from my dog. Never did it before, never did it afterwards but I thought of Romans eight, the whole creation. and groans, not just we ourselves,

but the whole creation groans with longing for the redemption that is going to come, not just to us, but to the whole creation, to the world. And what, it was like, I'm sobbing because of my dog who loved Nancy more than life. And Nancy loved her and loved me, and I love Nancy. And I thought, what a beautiful picture that God sometimes gives us through animals. For all of us dog lovers, that means a lot, right? Okay, I know the privilege Pastor Louie enjoyed in endorsing your newest book that will be coming out in November, All God's Creatures, so we gotta make sure we get that book, Passion City. Our last seconds here, just share with us your personal journey of becoming a generous giver, and maybe even, if you're willing, talk to us a little bit about, as Nancy was going home to the Lord, what she said to you. Yeah, yeah, as a young Christian, I read all of these books, Tortured for Christ, God's Smuggler, a number of other books of just sheer commitment to Jesus. And that encouraged me to take the money that I made, I was in high school when I came to Faith in Christ, from berry picking and cutting cauliflower and other farm-related jobs that I did, and started giving that to the Lord. And then I realized, hey, I need to give to my church. There's a reason why that offering goes around.

And I needed to start giving to my church, something that I hadn't done to that point. But with Nancy, this was literally on her deathbed, probably about a week before she died. She reached over to my hand, we'd been praying together, and she said, Randy, this is hard to say, she said, Randy, thank you for my life. And I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, except we had lived our lives together, married for 47 years, she was my best friend for 54 years, since we were freshmen in high school, thank you for my life. And I said, well, Nancy, thank you for my life. And then she says, but what I mean is, you stretched us, and you helped me to give me more and more. And I said, well, you did the same for me. But she says, and so I wanna thank you, because I'm going to Jesus, and I'm gonna have greater reward because of you. And I said, well, I'm gonna have greater reward because of you. But I thought, what a sweet way, as part of our goodbye to each other, not a goodbye forever, just for now, that we would know in eternity, because of our giving together to the kingdom of God, that we would have treasure in heaven, more treasure, because each of us had prompted the other to follow Jesus more closely.

Praise God, praise God. I had the joy of knowing Nancy, and she was the biggest Seahawks fan. She was amazing. Love football, dogs, and Jesus above all. Thank you very much, Randy. What a gift to us. Friends, there's never been a greater time, more exciting time to be alive, a part of the church. God is redeeming the world, and he's bringing the nations to the light, and the scriptures talk about his glory, covering the earth the way the waters cover the seas. Recently, I was given a white paper by a friend, and he reminded me of an incredible quote. Randy and I were talking about it as we drove down this morning. Abraham Kuyper was an incredible theologian, and he was the prime minister of Holland, the Netherlands, and he said this, and I've just been thinking about it all week as we were talking about today. He says, there isn't a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who's sovereign over all, doesn't cry, mine. Friends, Acts 17 says God chose us for here and now, and the privilege of our lives, like Pastor Brad said it, that we may declare his praises,

that we may, we get to be a part of what God is doing. so that every square inch of the earth is covered by his glory.