Cheerfully (How to Give #4)

My freshman year of high school, my family decided to go to the movies. We didn’t avoid the theater because my parents thought it was of the devil — we avoided it because of money. We watched movies at home. It was far cheaper to check something out from the library than to buy four tickets.

Anyone remember those really big discs? Not VHS tapes — the enormous ones you’d push into the player, where if you paused or tried to rewind at the wrong moment you’d actually damage the thing. So if you borrowed a disc from the library that had been watched twenty times, you’d get about forty skips over the course of the film. Deeply annoying.

Anyway, we didn’t go to the movies often. But someone told my parents about a new film they would absolutely love and that was perfectly appropriate for their fourteen-year-old and twelve-year-old sons. So we bought tickets.

Then they told me what we were going to see.

I had never heard of it, but the title alone made me regret the entire enterprise. If I’d known God was going to let humans invent the smartphone twenty or thirty years later, I’d have prayed for one to drop into my hands right there to rescue me from the pain I was about to endure. Because I knew this was going to be a chick flick. Some kind of romantic comedy that wouldn’t even be funny. A sports-loving fourteen-year-old boy was going to hate every minute.

The movie was The Princess Bride.

You can probably guess what happened over the next ninety minutes. I walked in reluctantly, rolling my eyes, unable to believe I was going through with it. Ninety minutes later I was laughing and grinning, and my brother and I could not stop quoting it at each other for weeks. We loved that movie.

I went from reluctant to cheerful.

From Reluctant to Cheerful

Have you had that experience? Maybe not with a movie. Maybe it was a class you had to take. Maybe it was some adventure — you found yourself in a kayak thinking, I do not want to be doing this. Maybe it was the opera. Whatever it was, something in you resisted going through with it. And then over the next few minutes or hours or days or weeks, something in your heart shifted, and looking back you realized: that was good. I actually enjoyed it. I’m thankful for it.

We’re in the middle of a series called How to Give, and throughout it we’ve acknowledged that for some of us this whole concept is hard. Many of us approach giving with real reluctance.

If that’s you, my hope today is that you move from reluctant to cheerful. That you go from not wanting to give — or giving only because you claim to be a Christian and God commands it, but never doing it with any gladness — to something genuinely different. I’m hoping something transforms in you over the next thirty minutes, because becoming a cheerful giver is God’s best for you. He wants to use you to bless the world.

One Word, One Sermon

Second Corinthians 9:7 says that each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

A long time ago in a land far away — and I don’t mean a galaxy, I mean Venezuela in the late nineties — my wife and I served at a school for missionary kids. Their parents served all over the country and the region, and the students boarded with us while we provided their education. Parents came for visitation weekends, so we got to know a number of the missionaries.

I remember one couple in particular. I ended up in conversation with the wife, and she began telling me what an incredible Bible teacher her husband was. I had no reason to doubt her — maybe he was extraordinarily gifted. But the reason she gave left me skeptical.

What made him a good Bible teacher, in her estimation, was how slowly he taught.

They had just come off a home assignment in the States. The pattern then — and I believe it’s still common — was to serve four years overseas, then return to your sending church to reconnect, raise support, and recover. This couple had gotten deeply involved in their church, and he’d taught a Sunday school class. She loved watching him teach because some weeks the class only made it through a single phrase of Scripture. Some weeks, one word.

She was impressed. I was not. I remember thinking, that’s ridiculous — spending a whole session on one word doesn’t make you a good Bible teacher. The goal is helping people know the Scriptures.

In his defense, I never heard him teach. Maybe I’d have been blown away and profoundly grateful for what I learned from that one word. But I’ll confess my internal reaction was: this is absurd, and frankly a bit pompous.

And today I’m going to do exactly the same thing.

If you were with us last week, we covered about three-quarters of verse 7 and deliberately chopped off the final phrase: for God loves a cheerful giver. That’s our word today. Cheerfully.

Why not lump it in last week? After all, we already saw Paul teaching us to give — using my thoroughly ridiculous invented adverb — W.I.P.illy: willingly, intentionally, and prayerfully. Adding cheerfully wouldn’t have been a stretch.

I separated it because this one needed its own message. This is something I have struggled with. And I figured if I struggle with it, there might be one or two other people who do as well — people who don’t need it tacked onto the end of something else, but who need to hear it treated as the significant matter it is.

The Baggage I Carry

Some of my baggage comes from my upbringing. The church I grew up in loved to give cheerfully. But the way they went about it left me with questions that pushed me from cheerful giving into reluctant giving.

Almost every Sunday of my childhood we had two sermons. There was the regular message — like what I’m doing now — which typically ran forty-five to fifty-five minutes. Our services were literally two hours long. We sang a lot. And if the Spirit was really moving, we’d go two and a half hours, which meant it was an even better Sunday.

Then it would come time for the offering, and the pastor — or an elder, or someone else from the congregation — would walk up with their Bible and deliver a second sermon. It was usually only five or ten minutes; you might call it a devotional. But nearly every week we had a message about giving.

And when that person stepped up and announced we were about to receive the morning’s offering, there would be people in the congregation who literally cheered.

Maybe that was their way of demonstrating cheerful giving. Over time I came to suspect it was something else.

First, a Defense of That Church

Before I critique the church I grew up in, let me defend it. I found Jesus through that church. I watched people there pursue Jesus authentically and passionately. I’m genuinely grateful for it. Many of the people I grew up around are still friends with my parents to this day, scattered across the country and still bonded to one another. I’m glad I got to witness that.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to convictions where I now differ from them — and one of those is in this area of giving. Because part of what made them cheerful was, I believe, twisted theology.

Now, my elementary- and middle-school mind may have misinterpreted things. Maybe they never taught it quite the way I heard it. But here’s what I came away with as a kid.

We were taught to give generously. That was ingrained early — you made five dollars mowing a lawn, fifty cents went to the church. Ten percent, automatically, no discussion.

But I was also taught that God would return it to you a hundredfold. In Matthew 19:29, Jesus says anyone who has left father and mother and houses for his sake will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life. They took that idea, combined it with what we saw in 2 Corinthians 9:6 — sow generously, reap generously — and concluded that if you give ten percent, you can expect a hundredfold return.

Let me do the math for you. Say you come into ten thousand dollars — a job, a gift, an investment. You give ten percent, so a thousand goes to the church. But God returns a hundredfold, so you can expect a hundred thousand back.

That is a brilliant investment scheme. Of course I’m going to cheer. Turn a thousand into a hundred thousand? Sign me up.

Except Nobody Was Driving a Cadillac

Over time I began to notice that the people in my church were not driving luxury cars. None of them lived in mansions. I never saw any of them donating millions to some great work. They were middle-class, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth Iowans. Good people. But I did not see the hundredfold return I kept hearing about Sunday after Sunday.

So I got jaded. Cynical. I started pulling away from that particular brand of Christianity.

Here’s the interesting part: I never stopped giving. Even as a broke college student, whenever I earned something, the habit was so deeply ingrained that I still gave ten percent. But I wasn’t doing it cheerfully. When I gave, I had doubts. Questions. Does this even matter? I did it — reluctantly.

Maybe you carry similar baggage. Maybe it’s twisted theology. Maybe it’s legalism that got pounded into you, so that instead of giving willingly, intentionally, and prayerfully, you feel like you’re giving forcefully — as though if you don’t hit ten percent, God will revoke your place in heaven. That isn’t cheerful giving. That’s fearful giving.

Or maybe your baggage comes from genuine financial struggle. It’s hard to give cheerfully when you’re not sure how you’ll make the mortgage. When you’re wondering about filling the car with gas — or when you can fill it, but if the transmission goes you have no plan. When you’re so deep in debt that you feel you have nothing to give at all.

How do you get to cheerfulness when you carry baggage that heavy?

First: This Isn’t a New Testament Innovation

Before we answer that, two things.

The first is that cheerful giving is not a New Testament concept. It’s a God concept, running through all of Scripture. Deuteronomy 15:10 says you shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.

You can see the overlap with 2 Corinthians 9:6–7. The second half echoes God blessing you, which parallels sowing and reaping generously. The first half — give freely, don’t be grudging — is essentially verse 7.

But notice something crucial: this verse isn’t about giving to God. Read it in context and the “him” is the poor person. This is about giving to the poor.

Remember last week’s true truth: what you have isn’t yours. It’s God’s. He owns everything. And if he already owns everything, how could you possibly give to him? It would be like someone handing me my own phone and calling it a gift. That’s already mine.

Besides, as Psalm 50 puts it, even if God had needs, he wouldn’t tell us — because God doesn’t need anything. He doesn’t need us to give to him.

Who does need? The poor. The poor lack something. So God commands his people to give to the poor and alleviate their suffering.

Four Kinds of Poverty

Let me push this further, because throughout this series we’ve insisted generosity isn’t only about money.

Yes, give to the materially poor. That’s why, when a first-time guest fills out a connection card or emails us, we donate five dollars to Compassion International on their behalf, helping a child who genuinely struggles to know whether there will be food, clothing, or schooling. We want to help meet real material needs.

But there are people who aren’t materially poor and are desperately relationally poor. The kid who sits alone at lunch. The coworker who’s socially awkward. The neighbor who only goes to the mailbox when no one else is outside. Often they’re isolated precisely because social interaction is hard for them — and they matter to God. Could you give some of your time to the relationally poor? And when you do, give it freely, not grudgingly. Cheerfully.

What about the emotionally poor? When you encounter someone who is genuinely down, struggling with their mental health, hurting — can you give them your time and your attention? Some of you have real skill in asking the right questions. Some of you have the rarer wisdom of knowing when to say nothing at all. Don’t keep that to yourself. You may think, I don’t want to intrude. You probably need to intrude, just enough to say: God loves you. God cares about you.

And then there are the spiritually poor. They need to know God loves them, that Jesus came to earth, that he went to a cross for them. If you follow Jesus, you have a commission to go to the spiritually poor, love them like Jesus would, and live among them like Jesus would. You need to be generous.

The Whole Chapter Is About the Poor

What we see in Deuteronomy isn’t confined to the Old Testament. Come back to 2 Corinthians 9 and you discover the entire passage is about giving to the poor.

In week one, looking at the first five verses on giving expectantly, we saw that the Corinthians had an expectation to give because Paul had sent Titus and several others to gather a collection. The Corinthians had heard about the effort to supply the saints and said they wanted in. So Paul dispatched a team to collect what they’d pledged. That money would go to Jerusalem, where the apostles would distribute it to meet the needs of believers — exactly what we saw in Acts during our “Defining Church” series.

This isn’t a New Testament novelty, and it isn’t about what we owe God. God does not need your money. God wants to use your money, your influence, your skills, and your time to help the materially poor, the emotionally poor, the relationally poor, and the spiritually poor.

Why? Because it runs from the Mosaic covenant clear through the New Testament for one reason: it reflects the character of God. This is who he is.

Think about it. Because of our sin we were spiritually poor. That spiritual poverty made us emotionally poor and relationally poor — we needed a relationship with God. And because of the brokenness of the world, many of us have been materially poor as well. And God steps in, loves us, rescues us, heals us, provides for us. That’s who he is. If we’re going to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved, this has to become part of us too.

Second: The Word Behind “Cheerful”

The Greek word translated “cheerful” in verse 7 is hilaron. I don’t know Greek and I may be mangling the pronunciation, but I do know that’s where we get our English word hilarious.

I went looking for a translation that renders it “God loves a hilarious giver.” Couldn’t find one. They all use “cheerful,” and wisely — because you just laughed when you heard it. “Hilarious” carries an unseriousness with it, maybe even a touch of irreverence. It seems over the top.

But I want you to catch this: your cheerfulness isn’t merely meant to induce a smile. It’s meant to induce delight. It should bring joy to the giver and to the receiver. It should be so far over the top that someone might reasonably call it hilarious. Overwhelming.

How on earth do you get there when you’re already struggling with reluctance? Two ways.

One: Cheerfulness Is a Result, Not a Fourth Point

Keep verse 7 in context. Paul isn’t tacking cheerfulness on at the end as an additional requirement. It’s a result — the outflow of what we heard last week. When you give willingly, intentionally, and prayerfully, joy follows.

Sometimes I think the people in my childhood church who cheered were faking it until they made it. So I’m not telling you that when we move into our time of worship through giving, you need to perform enthusiasm. Instead, work on the upstream problem.

How do you begin to give willingly? How do you become intentional with what God has entrusted to you? And that leads directly to being prayerful — you have to talk to God. If it’s all his, go talk to the owner.

Father, you’ve made me a steward of these things. Where do you want me to give? How much? How much should I actually keep? How do I give of my finances, my influence, my skills, and my time? How do I open my fist?

When you start operating that way, joy begins to surface.

Fair warning: sometimes when you pray and ask God what he wants you to give, he’ll name something and you’ll think, whoa, that’s too much. That reaction means you’re still thinking of it as yours. But as you break through and say, “God, I have no idea how you’re going to help me pay the mortgage this month, but if this is what you’re asking, I’m going to follow through — I’m being willing, I’m being intentional, we’ve prayed about it, this is what you want” — what you find on the other side is cheerfulness.

A Family Who Gave Their Whole Life

I came across a story this week from a woman and her husband who began praying seriously about all of this. What’s striking is that it wasn’t only about finances — though finances were a big piece. It was time. Influence. Their home. Their life.

Years ago they wanted to start a family. They were a fairly typical dual-income married couple with a house and two new cars, and a lot of it felt empty. So they started asking what it might look like to do things differently from the standard American script. They looked into adoption, and eventually into foster care.

One of the hardest parts of fostering, she said, is that when children return to biological parents, you don’t get to know how they’re doing. You don’t know if they’re safe. You don’t know whether the situation actually improved. Over four years they fostered eight children and were able to adopt two of them.

Then they noticed a pattern: most of their foster children’s mothers had become parents as teenagers. So they started asking what safety net existed for young mothers before the state removed their children — and that question led them to a ministry serving teen moms.

Through it, she met a pregnant seventeen-year-old in an unstable living situation. She and her husband began talking about inviting the young woman to move in, knowing full well it meant their own plans would be postponed or scrapped entirely. Their biggest concern was money — her husband is a teacher, and they were now a family of six. But they felt the Lord would provide.

So the young woman moved in that June and had her baby in August. She drove her to the hospital, stayed with her, and held her hand while she gave birth. She described it as a privilege to walk in motherhood alongside her, raising their babies next to each other. Their most effective ministry, she said, has been simply being tangible, consistent, and stable — I am here for you, no matter what. They wanted to help her do whatever she wanted to do, which turned out to be college. So they sacrifice financially and with their time, and she keeps the baby while the young mom is in class.

Every month brings stressors, just like any family — a car breaks down, someone needs new shoes. And every month, she said, they watch God’s provision show up, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in enormous ones. She doesn’t always know how they’ll get through the month. But she’s more dependent on God than she was four years ago, and more in love with him because of it.

My favorite line in her whole account is that it has been a privilege to walk in motherhood with this young woman. That’s joy. That’s cheerful giving.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy. They’re living on a teacher’s salary and some months are genuinely tight. But because they’ve done this willingly, intentionally, and prayerfully, joy came out of it.

So if you want to experience joy — if you want to become a cheerful giver — start with willingness. Start with intentionality. Have the conversation with God. As you pray about it and begin to act, the joy will come.

Two: Look at the Generosity of Jesus

The second thing that helps us become cheerful givers is to look at the generosity of Jesus.

Have you noticed how generosity begets generosity? When you witness extravagant generosity, other people start piling in. It’s why crowdfunding campaigns blow past their goals, or why after a natural disaster relief efforts sometimes receive far more than they can immediately use. We see generosity, we’re moved by it, and we want to participate.

So look at the generosity of Jesus, because I think it will move something in you.

What do we see him do? He gave his wisdom. He gave his presence. He gave healing to some and food to others. But ultimately he gave what was most precious: his life. Because he loves you.

Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus went to the cross for the joy set before him. His joy was not in the cross. The cross was hell — he was scourged beforehand, nails driven through his wrists and feet, and he ultimately died of suffocation, unable to draw breath. There is no joy in a cross.

The text says for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. And on the other side of that cross was you. You are his joy. So he cheerfully, willingly, intentionally gave his life in order to have you. He wanted you redeemed, out of the grip of sin, restored to relationship with him and the Father and the Holy Spirit.

When you begin looking at that kind of generosity, it moves you. You find yourself wanting to participate in what matters to God. And as you give toward the things where you can see his generosity at work, joy follows.

And on the day you breathe your last and stand before God, you’ll sound like that young mother’s host family: God, it was a privilege to take what you gave me — my finances, my influence, my skills, my time — and use it to bless others. Thank you. That was a joy.

If you want to give cheerfully, look to Jesus. He came for us when we were materially poor, emotionally poor, relationally poor, and spiritually poor. As we begin to give the way he gave, we discover the same cheerfulness.

A Prayer

Father, do this in us — for your glory and for our joy. Make us cheerful givers.

I confess there have been so many times I gave reluctantly because I mistakenly believed these things were mine. Keep changing my eyesight, my viewpoint, my attitude, until I stop seeing any of it as mine and start seeing all of it as yours — and until I find it a privilege to give it away to bless others.

You know how broken this world is. It was so broken that we could not save ourselves from our sin. That’s why you came, Jesus — to die in our place. Because you gave like that, help us reflect that character. Move in us. As we go into our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our schools, wherever you lead, make us generous with our finances, our influence, our skills, and our time. Let us open our fists and allow you to give through us — because as you do, you bring healing to a broken world and healing to us, transforming us into the image of Christ.

Change us. Mold us. Move us from reluctance into cheerful generosity, because I am firmly convinced that’s when you are most glorified and lifted up — and when we discover that giving was a joyful privilege all along.

Whatever it is you need to do with God right now — giving your life to Christ for the first time, surrendering something you’ve been gripping, or simply asking him to move you from reluctance to cheerfulness — do it. Ask him. He doesn’t twist arms and he doesn’t force anyone. He simply calls. And what he calls you to give freely isn’t ten percent. It’s your life. In Jesus’s name, amen.