Daily Devotional

As some of you may know, I have been facilitating a class here at Campus Bible Church for a number of years now called Financial Peace University. It’s a nine week course by Dave Ramsey to help people get a handle on their finances, including getting out of debt, budgeting, and learning how to save and spend appropriately. I first took the class myself back in 2014 and it made such a difference for me that I decided I wanted to help bring the program to more people.

One of the tenants of Financial Peace is to learn to do a budget, every month, for the rest of your life. If we don’t designate where our money will go and keep control of it, it will go away. I know this from personal experience. When doing our budget, we are taught to budget our giving first. Now this might seem backwards to some of you. You might be saying, shouldn’t we make sure all of our bills and necessities are met first before we start giving money away? But if you budget like that, you will more often find that there is simply no money left over to give. There is always something more important (in our mind) to spend our money on. But God wants our first fruits, not our leftovers.

God has blessed us with all that we have and asks us to give a portion of that back to Him. It’s about faith, that we will trust Him knowing He will provide for our needs. So in our budgets we give out of faith first, then spend the rest. Now I want to be clear, this is not a magical formula or cosmic investment. God does not say give me $10 and I’ll bless you with $1000 dollars. To be fair He might, or He may decide to call you to become even more dependent on Him. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but either way blessed be the name of the Lord. We don’t give to God in order that we may get back, we give out of love, reverence, trust, and obedience.

God calls us to give but He wants us to give cheerfully, not out of obligation or grudgingly. Think back to when you have given someone else a gift. Did you wish you hadn’t or did it bring you joy to see the look on their face? Giving is some of the most fun you can ever have with money. And as Christians giving to God and to others should be a part of our daily lives. And when you learn to manage your money you will find you have a lot more to give than you thought you did. I really like the verse that follows this one, verse 8 says: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Become a cheerful giver and see what God does in your life!

New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.