(Presented by Lisa Bishop)

Are you a generous person?

Proverbs 11:24-25 tells us, “One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

Be generous, your world expands. Be stingy, your world shrinks. Bless others and be blessed, help others and receive help.”

It’s the concept of reaping and sowing.

God challenges us to be generous because he wants us to receive the blessing that comes from it. We are generous because God is generous. Generosity is really a mindset. It’s an attitude of heart, a way of being, a lifestyle from which your thoughts, words and your actions flow.

In Luke 6:38 Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

When you are generous it flows from a faith and trust in God’s provision and his generosity towards you. When you are being generous you push past the barriers of your comfort zone and go above and beyond, whether you are giving of your time, your service, your hospitality, your financial resources. You don’t live from fear of not having enough.

Our culture today feeds our individualistic and consumer mindset and tries to get us to believe that we always need more, we will never have enough; and that can keep us gripping tightly to what we do have. As followers of Jesus, we live in light of biblical principles and God’s economy and from the truth that we have a generous God who calls us to imitate him.

Where have you been stingy? How have you been holding back? How is God calling you to live a lifestyle of generosity?

What are the serving needs in your church and how can you be generous with your time? How can you generously give of your financial resources to support ministries in and outside of the church? Who is a friend, family member, or neighbor that has a need you can graciously meet?

Remember that God will supply all of your needs and that you get to be the hands and feet of Jesus by supplying the needs of others. So, let’s be like Jesus and live generously.

(Click here to download the devotional for the entire week.)

(Presented by Lisa Bishop)

When was the last time you encouraged someone? I mean, more than a “good job,” or a pat on the back. Not to say those are not meaningful. But when was the last time you told someone what you valued about them and showed them genuine appreciation?

Not too long ago I was feeling a bit discouraged in my ministry. I was really questioning if my life and my work in that season was making an impact.

Have you ever wondered if what you are doing is making a difference, adding value for others? As those questions were stirring in my head I just so happened to head to the mailbox, and to my surprise there was an envelope addressed to me. I eagerly opened it to find a handwritten note from a woman specifically sharing how her life had been impacted by my ministry. Now I am not saying this to boast about myself. I am sharing this as a reminder that we all need a boost of encouragement from time to time.

First Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Encourage one another and build one another up, just as in fact you are doing.” The definition of encourage is, to inspire with hope, courage, or confidence. Paul is talking about encouraging one another in our faith yet this idea of encouragement can be applied to various people and various circumstances in life. When I was asking God about my ministry and questioning if I was in the right place, I felt like that handwritten note was an answered prayer and a reminder that God sees me. The reality is, God uses people. He uses you to encourage others and spur them on. As followers of Jesus, we have the privilege and the responsibility to build each other up.

Who can you share an encouraging word with? Maybe it’s a co-worker and you can point out what you value about working with her. One interesting statistic is that 75% of employees who quit their jobs cite lack of appreciation as a key factor in their leaving. So maybe it’s encouraging a co-worker. Or,

maybe it’s your spouse. Perhaps you have been taking what they do for granted and you want to share what you appreciate. It can be a friend, a parent, a neighbor, or pastor. To whom will you take the time to write a handwritten note, stop by the office or make a phone call to encourage?

I have a plant on a shelf in my living room that I often forget to water. Sometimes it can look a little wilted but when I water it, it perks right up. Consider that your encouragement is like that watering can. A bit of encouragement poured out can nourish a soul.

(Presented by Lisa Bishop)

If you were to take inventory of your words over the past 24 hours, would they fall into the “generous” category? The dictionary definition of generous is, “Free from meanness or smallness of mind or character. Abundant. Characterized by a noble or kindly spirit.” If you were to monitor your words, are they mean or kind? Are they generous?

Proverbs 16:24 says, “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.”

Do your words bring health to others? Are they sweet to people’s souls? Are the words you speak to yourself about yourself sweet and kind?

I was having dinner with a dear friend the other day. She was sharing all of the negative thoughts about herself that she has been ruminating on, the condemning and critical words about herself that are on repeat in her head. She made an interesting connection to the lies she believes about herself and how that impacts her words and actions towards others. It's so true when you think about it. If you have negative self-talk, it will impact the way you show up with and behave towards others. You may come across insecure, impatient, unforgiving and judgmental. What you say about yourself to yourself impacts the way you are with others. What are the unkind words you believe about yourself and speak to yourself?

What mean words do you find yourself thinking about or saying to others? Proverbs 18:21 is a familiar verse. I think it is one most of us can rehearse yet are we heeding these words of wisdom? Are you practicing these truths daily? “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose” (Proverbs 18:21, MSG).

Your self talk will either lead to you poisoning yourself or believing truth about who you are and bring you life. Your speech towards others will either kill them and cut them down to size, or give life to those in your midst.

Do people experience God’s grace because you avoid being harsh with your words? Do people experience God’s kindness because of the tone of your voice? Your words and the way you communicate them is important. You get to choose your words. Choose wisely. Be generous with your words and bring health and life to those around you.

(Presented by Lisa Bishop)

In Ephesians 3 Paul prayed the following prayer over Christ followers. These are familiar verses in the Bible but take these truths in and let Paul’s prayer sink into your heart and soul.

I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God (Ephesians 3:16-19, NLT).

Do you know how wide, long, high, and deep God’s love is for you? Paul goes to great measures to attempt to capture the vastness of Jesus’s affection for his sons and daughters, for you. He wants your roots to grow down into God’s love, to experience the magnitude of Christ’s love so that you will take hold of the fullness of life and the power of God at work in you. I don’t want to live thinking that God’s love for me is lukewarm, or that in some way I am unlovable. Do you?

If you live from a place of being unlovable, if you buy into the lie that God does not really love you or that there is some way you have to earn his love, you are giving the enemy a foothold, a strategic position from which he can advance and multiply his lies. Satan’s greatest attempt is to convince you that you aren’t loveable. This leads to isolation, fear, anxiety, and addiction. When you are not fully convinced of God’s love for you, you will go looking for love in all the wrong places.

When you feel unlovable, stand firm in truth. Remind yourself of Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3. And, recite these words to yourself, “I am convinced that Jesus’s love for me is gigantic and generous. I trust in God’s love for me and my roots are deeply grounded in his love. The love of Jesus gives me strength. My heart trusts in him.”

Let this be a reminder to you to trust God’s generous love for you.

(Presented by Lisa Bishop)

When you hear the word generosity, what comes to mind? We tend to think of generosity in terms of money or giving of our material blessings. And while that is true and as followers of Jesus, we are called to be generous with our finances, generosity has far greater meaning than money.

Consider this: Generosity is a mindset. Being generous is an attitude of heart. It’s a way of being, a lifestyle from which your thoughts, words and your actions flow.

Are you living with a mind and heart set on being generous? Are you living a lifestyle of generosity?

It will be difficult to live a lifestyle of generosity if you have a scarcity mindset. When you don’t think you have enough of something, the tendency will be to hold what you do have with a tight grip. I have often found myself living from scarcity rather than living from the truth that God is generous. He does not withhold anything good from me. He does not withhold anything good from you.

Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (ESV).

I love the reminder of the truth that God is a generous God. We see more evidence in Philippians 4:19 which says, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (ESV).

Notice the apostle Paul’s words “my God will supply every need.” I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is supplying your every need. You ask for things and pray for things that do not get answered in the way you want or the timing you anticipate and then you decide that God withholds good things.

But God doesn’t withhold. He cannot go against his nature. You have to train your mind and heart to look for his provision in every circumstance and realize while it may be packaged differently than you would have imagined, God is always providing. He is always supplying for your every need because that is who he is.

Is there an area of your life that you feel God is withholding something good from you?

Take time to talk to Jesus. Share your disappointment. Rehearse what is true, that God doesn’t withhold from you. Ask him to help you see and experience his generosity and all of the ways he is providing for you in this season.

My first great gift idea is the gift of a listening ear. Do you know how many people there are in this world—in your life—that would love to have a listening ear for Christmas? Someone who simply will give them time and let them talk about whatever is on their heart.

I often think of elderly people who we sometimes overlook in our busy lives. Does an elderly person you know come to your mind right now? What about making an opportunity to sit down with them, have a cup of coffee, and just listen. Even if you don’t personally know someone like that, you could visit a nursing home and make yourself available to someone there. Often those in nursing homes have few if any people in their lives who visit them. Can you imagine how thrilled they would be for you to simply say, “How’re you doing? Tell me about yourself.”  It would be the best gift you could give them. And you’d be surprised how interesting and entertaining their stories can be.

Maybe there are some children or teenagers in your life that would love to have someone to talk to. Why not give them a listening ear for Christmas? If you know someone who has experienced a significant loss lately, they would usually love a listening ear. You might feel like you don’t know what to say to them, but the thing is, you don’t have to say much of anything. Just listen.

It won’t be hard for you to find someone who needs a listening ear; why don’t you give it to them? It will make Christmas for them.

James 1 tells us we are to be quick to listen and slow to speak. So, great gift idea number 1 is “Give a listening ear.”

Here’s idea number 2: Give a helping hand. Jesus said that whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant (Mark 10:43). We are called as Christ-followers to serve as he did. So, what acts of service could you do this Christmas for some unexpecting person? Just one intentional act of offering a helping hand could absolutely make someone’s Christmas the best ever.

It might be something you do for a sick or disabled person you know. It might be doing some shopping for or with a widow or widower you know. Or just someone who is lonely. You could design a card that said something like: “My gift to you this year is to do something that would be helpful to you.”  You might even give them a list to choose from, such as cleaning their house, cooking a meal, taking them shopping, washing their car—and any number of other acts of service from which they could choose.

In Acts 9:36 we read: “In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor.”  Always doing good and helping poor people! What a reputation to have! There are lots of ways to help poor people these days. You could serve a meal at a shelter, or volunteer at a charity.

How about babysitting for an exhausted single mom so she can have a night or day to herself? Many cannot afford babysitters, and that would be a very helpful gift.

There are so many creative ways to give a helping hand, and so many needy people. I have no doubt that you can come up with the perfect gift for someone you know. All it takes is a little time and a caring heart.

Here’s suggestion number 3: How about giving forgiveness? Are you harboring something in your heart against someone? Have you allowed a root of bitterness to grow in the soil of your soul because someone has hurt you? Don’t you think it would be a great Christmas if you decided to give up that resentment and offer forgiveness?

Perhaps they have never asked you to forgive them. That does indeed require a very special gift of forgiveness from you. But here’s the thing—withholding forgiveness causes you far more harm than it does the other person.  It’s like taking rat poison and expecting the rat to die. So, in effect,

Leave it better than you found it. That’s a Boy Scout slogan. I’ve never been a Boy Scout, but I’m sure I could benefit from making that a personal goal—to leave everything better than I found it— a personal goal.

I’ve talked about a leaving our jobs better than we found them, leaving our relationships and environments better than we found them and leaving our churches better than we found them.

I want to tell you about my friend, Cynthia, who definitely left a situation at her work so much better than she found it. Some years ago, she worked in a department where one coworker made it very clear that she and Cynthia could never be friends because Cynthia was African-American. It’s hard to believe that someone would actually say that, but this person said those very words to Cynthia.

Thankfully, Cynthia was able to get beyond her hurt feelings and respond appropriately to this situation. She prayed about it, and got the idea to start what she called “Project Love.” Now, she didn’t announce to her coworkers that she was starting “Project Love,” she just decided to do it. Besides being kind and considerate on a daily basis, she decided to invite each person in her department to have lunch with her as her guest. So once a week she would deliver a written invitation to a coworker, including this woman who said they could never be friends.

Well, who can refuse such an invitation? So, the two of them went to lunch, they began to get to know each other, this woman saw how wrong her attitude was and what a good friend Cynthia would be, and before long they became friends. Now this woman openly and proudly claims Cynthia as a friend, and though they no longer work together, they keep in touch.

Cynthia left that place and that relationship so much better than she found it. She could have responded with anger and bitterness, but she chose to respond in love. That’s the power that we have as believers because we have the Holy Spirit within us to enable us to do what otherwise we would find impossible to do.

I hope you’ll remember this simple slogan: Leave it better than you found it. It’s one way to show God’s love to others.

(Click here to download the devotional for the entire week.)

How’s your church doing? Since I’ve been on staff at my church, I’m well aware that churches that thrive and do well are those who have lots of involvement from the congregation. I’m proposing that we adopt the Boy Scout mantra to leave things better than we found them, and I was thinking how much better our churches would be doing if every church member took that seriously.

You know, it’s not difficult to find things wrong with your church. It’s full of people—people who make mistakes, people who don’t have it all together, many are new believers with lots to learn. So, you won’t have trouble finding something about your church that you don’t like so much. But if it’s a Bible preaching church, under godly leadership, and that’s where God has put you, then you have to ask yourself what you’re doing to make it a better church.

I think of a woman who was in our church until God called her home—we called her Miss Shirley. Miss Shirley never held an office in our church, but few people have benefited the church like she did. For years she made it her job to greet someone new every Sunday, invite someone new to sit with her, get to know them, and just share God’s love with them. One of my friends tells how when she started coming to our church, she was very wounded and was trying to just isolate herself from everyone, but Miss Shirley found her, sat with her, invited her to a Sunday class, and eventually helped her get involved and find healing. Miss Shirley definitely left our church better than she found it.

Just ask yourself: If you dropped out of your church today, would it leave a hole? Would your service to the church be missed?

God created us for community; we are one body in Christ, and we need each other for fellowship, for healing, for growth, for accountability. I hope you are very much committed to your church and you can say for sure that you are leaving it better than you found it.

The Christian Working Woman, began in 1984 to challenge workplace Christians to see their jobs as assignments from God, not just a place to earn a living. And the way we live on those jobs has a greater impact for the Gospel than anything else.

I’m taking a phrase from the Boy Scouts and applying it to our lives. It is: Leave it better than you found it. I’ve talked about leaving our jobs better than we found them and leaving our relationships better than we found them.

Now let’s think about leaving our environment better than we found it. There’s a lot of concern about what’s happening to our environment, and we should be good stewards of God’s universe, that’s for sure. Which means we recycle as much as possible and do whatever we can to make our physical world better than we found it.

Then there’s our more personal environment: our living space and our working space. I have a friend who decided she could do something for the environment. She got tired of how messy and unclean public washrooms tend to be. So, she decided that she would try to leave any washroom she used better than she found it. When she told me what she was doing, I realized I had never even thought of taking that kind of responsibility—to leave a public space better than I found it. But if we all did that, we’d live in cleaner, nicer environments, wouldn’t we? Our streets and roadways wouldn’t be cluttered with trash.

Someone has said that cleanliness is next to godliness, and while I’m not sure that can be supported biblically, there’s no doubt that we should care about cleanliness for ourselves and for others. So, why don’t we just decide to leave our environments—wherever they may be—better than we found them.

Leave it better than you found it! What a good idea. I’m taking a look at how we, as Christians, can leave things better than we found them. I talked about how to leave your job better than you found it and now I encourage you to consider how to leave your relationships better than you found them.

Relationships are the sandpaper of life, are they not? We all need to live in relationship with others, and yet getting along with the people in our lives can be the toughest assignment we have. So, how can we leave our relationships better than we found them?

Let’s start with what we call the Golden Rule, which Jesus gave us when he said, “Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated by them—this is the essence of all true religion” (Matthew 7:12 Phillips). Jesus says that we should take the initiative to improve the relationships of our lives, not wait on the other person to do it. Has someone treated you ill lately? If so, are you willing to put this Golden Rule into practice and respond to them the way you wish they would respond to you? If so, you will definitely improve that relationship.

Here’s another relationship principle from the Bible that will definitely leave a relationship better than you found it. From Philippians 2:3-4:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Putting others first is a sure winner when it comes to improving relationships. I remember when I read that passage and just shook my head because I couldn’t figure how in the world I could ever live up to it. Consider others better than me? That doesn’t come naturally for me, how about you? So, I just began to pray and ask God to show me how to put this into practice. God showed me that it begins with an attitude of the heart—consider others better than yourself, think of others in that way. I find that if I change my thought life and truly remind myself that others are just important as I am and what they’re doing is just as important as what I’m doing, then I can start to truly look to their interests, and not just my own.

Well, if we practiced these two principles in our relationships, there is no doubt we’d see great improvement, and we’d leave them better than we found them.