Excellence in Giving

Excellence is arresting. Like beauty, it stops you in your tracks, and you look at it with wonder. We celebrate excellence in music, sports, art, drama, etc. We actually pay money to witness excellence, to listen to excellence, and most of us (if things have gone well with us) have been shaped by some form of excellence in parenting and nurturing. We don’t think of excellence in terms of care, but we should.There is another place we don’t usually think about excellence and that is in giving. I hadn’t either, till I was pondering these sermons on giving and saw it for the first time. I have read it and preached around this passage a lot, but never really thought about it till a few weeks ago. Paul actually exhorts people to excel in giving. Yes, he says to excel in working hard, but he then says to excel in the grace of giving.You ever thought about that? Well, this Sunday we will talk about it and what this might look like. I know it is Fall Break time and many will be out, so if you are out, I encourage you to give this a listen. Giving is at the heart of spiritual formation and being a disciple of Jesus. We can no more be indifferent to our money than we can a life of prayer. Giving is the heartbeat of God and, as such, the heartbeat of the Gospel.So where do we start? Glad you asked, as this Sunday we will talk about the habit of giving — how giving becomes a habit of grace and then a habit of delight!Blessings,Jim