What is generosity?
Learning to freely give what God has freely given.
Generosity is the joyful, cheerful practice of stewarding everything God has entrusted to us: our money, time, abilities, possessions, and opportunities, for His glory and the good of others. At its core, generosity is not primarily about giving away resources or money, but about cultivating a heart that trusts God more than a trust in our own possessions.
Generosity begins with God Himself. God is the most cheerful Giver. The Father generously gave His own Son (John 3:16; Rom 8:32), Jesus generously and joyfully gave His own life (Mark 10:45; Heb 9:14), and the Holy Spirit generously gives gifts to build up the Church (1 Cor 12:4-11). As disciples, we become generous because we have first received God's abundant generosity toward us. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.” God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7), because He is one.
Dallas Willard writes that the spiritual disciplines, like generosity, help us become the kind of people who naturally do what Jesus would do. Generosity trains our hearts to loosen our grip on temporary treasures so that we become people who freely love God and our neighbor. David Mathis reminds us that generosity is one of God's ordinary means of grace, not only blessing others, but shaping us into people who treasure Christ above everything else. Because Paul says in Acts 20:35, "It is more blessed to give than to receive.”