What do you have that you didn't receive? Sit with that question for a moment before you answer it too quickly. Because the honest answer — the one that takes some courage to say out loud — is: nothing. Not a single thing. And once that truth really lands, it changes the way we hold everything we think is ours.
We're in the middle of a stewardship series here at Gloria Dei, and over the past few weeks we've been spending time in 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth about their giving — specifically about a collection he's been organizing for the struggling believers in Jerusalem. But what he writes in the process goes far deeper than a fundraising appeal. He gets at something that cuts right to the heart of what it means to live in relationship with a generous God. This week I want to focus in on just two verses from 2 Corinthians 9, but before we get there, I want to spend some time on the foundation that makes those verses make sense.
Stewardship Starts With a Recognition
Here's the core of what stewardship actually is: it's a recognition. It's the recognition that God has not simply handed us things and walked away. He has entrusted things to us. That's a different relationship than ownership. An owner can do whatever they want with what they have. A steward holds something on behalf of someone else — carefully, responsibly, with the original owner always in mind.
Now, I know that can feel a little abstract. So let me bring it down to earth with something that generated a lot of controversy when it was first said, but that I think has a genuinely good point buried inside it. When President Obama was president, he gave a speech about the success of businesses in the United States, and he made the argument — uncomfortable as it was for a lot of people to hear — that business success isn't built solely by the individual. It's built on a whole infrastructure that everyone shares: roads, transportation systems, communication networks, bridges, the legal frameworks that make commerce possible. None of those things belong to any single business owner. They belong to all of us, collectively, and we all get to use them.
Now, was that a politically charged moment? Sure. Did a lot of people react badly to how it was framed? Yes. But strip away the politics and there's something true there that's worth holding onto. The lone self-made person who built everything entirely from scratch, owing nothing to anyone — that's not really how any of this works. We are all, in some sense, beneficiaries of systems and structures and relationships and histories we didn't create.
And that's just at the human level. When you start thinking about it theologically, the picture becomes even clearer. You didn't create yourself. You didn't choose your natural gifts. You didn't manufacture that mind of yours or build those hands from nothing. Maybe you've spent years developing your skills, and that matters — hard work and discipline are real things, and God honors them. But if you peel the layers back far enough, every single capacity you have to work, to think, to love, to earn, to create — it all comes from somewhere. It all comes from Someone. Everything you have and everything you are comes from God. Full stop.
And here's the beautiful thing that follows from that: because God has been so lavishly generous with us, we are invited — urged, even — to give back to him joyfully and generously, so that other people can experience the same love and mercy we've received. That's the whole arc of stewardship. It starts with receiving, and it flows outward into giving.
What Paul Actually Says
So with that foundation in place, let's look at the two verses I want to focus on. In 2 Corinthians 9, verses 6 and 7, Paul writes:
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Paul reaches for farming language here, and I think it's worth staying with that image a little longer than we might be tempted to. Imagine two gardeners. One plants two tomato plants. The other plants twelve. Come harvest time, who do you think is going home with more tomatoes? It's not complicated. More seed in the ground means more potential for growth, more abundance at the end of the season.
Or think about investing — which is really just a modern version of the same concept. If you put money into the market and let it work over time, a larger initial investment has the potential to generate a larger return. That's not a guarantee, and Paul isn't making a prosperity gospel argument here. He's not saying "give more so God will make you rich." The harvest he's talking about is the kingdom harvest — the fruit of lives changed, community strengthened, the gospel carried further because the church was resourced to carry it. The point is that generous sowing leads to generous reaping, and stingy sowing leads to a thin harvest.
But then Paul pivots immediately to something that might seem to cut against the farming logic. He doesn't say, "So give as much as possible to maximize the return." He says each person must give as they have decided in their own heart. Not reluctantly. Not under compulsion. Why? Because the motivation matters just as much as the action. God is not interested in money extracted from people through guilt or arm-twisting. He is looking for hearts that give freely, lovingly, because they understand what they've received.
The Heart Behind the Gift
That phrase — "as he has decided in his heart" — is worth unpacking carefully. Paul is saying that giving is, at its core, a heart decision. It flows from what you believe about God, what you've experienced of his generosity, and how you understand your own life in light of his grace. When you look at who God is and what he has done for you, and your response is to say "I love you, Lord, and I want to give back to you from everything you've entrusted to me" — that's the kind of giving Paul is describing.
In the Old Testament, when God's people drifted from him, one of the things he said again and again was that their hearts had grown far from him. They were going through religious motions — offering sacrifices, keeping certain rituals — but their hearts weren't in it. The form was there; the substance was gone. And God was unimpressed. He didn't want their empty ritual. He wanted their hearts.
There's a striking passage in Ezekiel — Ezekiel 36:26 — where God promises to take the hearts of stone from his people and give them hearts of flesh. That image has stayed with me. A heart of stone can't really feel the weight of what it's holding. It can't be moved. It can't be tender. It goes through the motions of life without actually being alive to what's happening. A heart of flesh, on the other hand — that's a heart that can be touched. That's a heart that responds. That's a heart that can feel gratitude and act on it.
And honestly, that's what happens to us sometimes in our relationship with the things of this world. Our hearts get calloused. The weight of financial pressure, the scramble to make ends meet, the constant noise of a culture that tells us we never have enough — all of it can work on us quietly until we find that our grip on our stuff has gotten tighter and our sense of God's generosity has gotten dimmer. It's not dramatic. It's gradual. And that's exactly why Paul frames this as a heart matter. Because the issue of giving is really an issue of the heart, and the heart needs tending.
When we give back to God, we're not just moving money. We're making a statement about who we trust. We're declaring that our lives belong to him, that our security is in him, that we believe he is who he says he is. It's an act of surrender as much as it is an act of generosity. We're giving him ourselves.
No Arm-Twisting. Full Stop.
I want to be very direct about something, because I think it matters. As a pastor, I'll be honest with you: when you start talking about money and church, there is a temptation to lean into guilt. And I understand why that temptation exists, because sometimes people respond to it. You paint a picture of the need, you let the discomfort of that need sit in the room, and some people open their wallets because they feel bad. It works, at least in the short term.
But that is not the good and godly way. That is not what God is after. Paul says it plainly: not reluctantly, not under compulsion. No guilt trips. No arm-twisting. God does not want a gift that was pried out of someone's hands by making them feel terrible about themselves. That's not worship. That's coercion with a Bible verse attached.
And yet — I also want to be honest about the reality we're navigating. The ministry of this church is significant, and significant ministry costs real money. Right now Gloria Dei is operating with a budget somewhere around $800,000. And as we head into budget season, the initial numbers are coming in somewhere north of a million dollars for next year. That's not frivolous spending. That's staff who dedicate their lives to this work. That's building and systems and programs that serve real people. That's missionaries and community ministries and the ongoing work of bringing the message of Jesus to people who need to hear it — including, at some point, to you and to me.
The need is real. I won't pretend otherwise. And the temptation when the need is real and the number is large is to say, "Come on, you have to give — look at what's at stake." But that's not the path. The path is to tell you what God says, to tell you what's true, and to trust that the Spirit of God can move in your heart without me having to manipulate you. That's the deal. I'm going to be straight with you, and then I'm going to trust God with the rest.
The Hilarious Giver
Now, here's something that genuinely makes me smile every time I think about it, and I hope it'll make you smile too. When Paul says "God loves a cheerful giver," the Greek word behind "cheerful" is the word from which we get our English word hilarious. Hilarious. God loves a hilarious giver.
I find that both wonderful and a little convicting, because I'll tell you what — when I sit down with people and the conversation turns to money and giving and pledges, there is not typically a lot of laughter in the room. The mood tends to get serious pretty fast. And I get it. Money is serious. But Paul is reaching for a word that carries joy, gladness, delight — even a kind of exuberance. He's describing giving that doesn't feel like pulling teeth, but more like releasing something with an open hand and finding that it feels good to let go.
How is that even possible? How do you get from the weight of financial anxiety to the lightness of cheerful, almost laughing generosity? Paul's answer is love. It's moved by love. Giving is an expression of grace — the grace we've received overflowing outward toward others. When you really understand what God has given you, when you feel the weight of his love and his sacrifice and the gift of being called his child, the response that wells up is not reluctance. It's gratitude. And gratitude, when it's healthy, becomes generosity.
Now, I want to be realistic here too, because not everyone is going to feel that joy immediately. Sometimes we do the right thing before the joy shows up. I've been there. I've done what I knew was right and found that the warmth of it came later, not in the moment. That's okay. We don't have to have perfect feelings to take faithful steps. But the goal — the thing we're aiming for — is the kind of giving that flows from a full heart, not a reluctant hand. And that's worth praying toward.
What's Keeping You From Cheerful Giving?
Let me ask you a question, and I want you to actually sit with it rather than just read past it: What keeps you from cheerful giving?
There are a lot of possible answers, and none of them are stupid. Maybe it's ingratitude — not in a dramatic way, but just the slow drift of taking things for granted that you once recognized as gifts. Maybe something happened to you in the past, something connected to money or to church or to people who handled one or both of those things poorly, and that experience left a mark. Maybe you've made some decisions with your finances that have put you in a genuinely tight spot, and the idea of giving feels impossible because there doesn't seem to be anything left to give.
Maybe — and this is worth being honest about — you're not sure you see the value in what your church is actually doing with the money it receives. That's a fair question to ask. It deserves a real answer, not a deflection. If you have doubts about whether the ministry of this church is worth supporting, let's talk about that. Come find me.
Or maybe it's something subtler: a heart that has quietly become more focused on the things of this earth than the things of heaven. Not because you made a decision to be that way, but because the world is loud and relentless and it's easy to find yourself organizing your whole life around things that won't last. That's not a character flaw — it's a human condition. But it's worth naming.
I'm not asking you to perform an answer to any of these questions. I'm asking you to actually pray about them. What motivates you to give? What holds you back? What would it look like for you to give intentionally — whether that's a percentage, a tithe, a specific commitment — with joy in your heart rather than a knot in your stomach? These are the questions worth bringing to God, because he already knows the answers. He just invites us into the conversation.
And here's the anchor for all of it — the reason any of this is possible at all. Hebrews tells us that Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2). He gave everything — not reluctantly, not under compulsion, but out of love, with his eyes fixed on the joy of what his sacrifice would accomplish. He redeemed us. He made us his. And that gift — that unimaginable, undeserved gift — is the ground from which all of our giving grows.
Open Hands
So here's where I want to land. Stewardship is not primarily about budgets, though budgets matter. It's not primarily about percentages, though percentages can be a helpful and biblical framework. It's about the posture of your hands. Are they clenched, holding tightly to what you've convinced yourself is yours? Or are they open — held out, upward, recognizing that what fills them came from somewhere beyond you, and can be released back into something bigger than you?
God has been generous with you. Extravagantly, almost ridiculously generous — with gifts and abilities and relationships and the very breath in your lungs and the redemption of your soul. He asks us to respond in kind, not because he needs our money, but because the act of giving forms us into people who look more like him. Generous people. Joyful people. People who hold the things of this world with an open hand because they know where real treasure is found.
Pray about this. Ask God to show you what's in your heart, and ask him to make it tender toward his purposes. Ask him to replace whatever calcified resistance has built up with something soft and responsive and glad. And then, as he leads you — give. Give freely. Give bountifully. Give with the kind of joy that the people watching might almost mistake for something like laughter.
What would it take for your giving to feel less like an obligation and more like a delight? That might be exactly the question worth sitting with this week.
Transcript generated with A.I. Original script by the author.
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