Weekly Magazine | The Joy of Giving Freely
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Dear Friends,
So many of us know what it means to give out of obligation. We tithe because we should, or we volunteer because someone asked. Somewhere along the way, joy begins to slip quietly out of the door.
This week, we’re asking what happens when generosity stops being a duty and becomes a delight. Our writers share stories about learning to loosen a grip on money, to honoring a mother whose world has been rewritten by dementia, to discovering what it truly means to give your life away in service. Together, they remind us of something we need to hear again: everything we have was given to us first.
Maybe you’re reading this in a season when giving feels costly. If the idea of open hands sounds more like a burden than a freedom right now, that’s exactly where this issue wants to meet you. Because joyful giving isn’t something we manufacture. It’s something we receive, again and again, from a God who gave first and gives still.
Come with open hands and an honest heart. He’ll meet you there.
Encouraging you in God’s truth,
Serving from the Heart | Elizabeth Murphy
What does it really look like to serve the way Jesus served? Elizabeth Murphy walks us through the heart, the place, and the expectations that shape meaningful service, reminding us that when we give our lives away, we find them more fully.
Giving the Gift of Honor | Christy Miller Bell
When a parent receives an Alzheimer's diagnosis, everything changes. Christy Miller Bell shares how she and her sister have learned to honor their mother with dignity, compassion, and love even as dementia rewrites the rules.
From Rote Obedience to Joyful Giving | Joanna Eccles
Joanna Eccles grew up treating money as her security blanket, but God had other plans. Her honest, often funny story about learning that everything belongs to Him will challenge and encourage you to give with an open hand.
Also:
Serving From the Heart
Change the World by Giving Your Life Away to Others.
By Elizabeth Murphy
My neighbor wanted her children to learn empathy and to experience a world different from their own, so she and a group of other moms made plans to serve a meal at a nearby shelter. After carefully explaining to her wide-eyed children that they would be feeding dinner to some homeless folks, she asked if they had any questions. With a fearful expression and trembling lips her son asked, “Do we have to actually put the food in their mouths?”
Learning to serve is a process. Jesus commands us to love each other deeply and to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms as He provides the strength and receives the glory (1 Pet. 4:8-11). Our part is to go where He would go, see what He sees, and then do what He would do. We were made to serve, but how?
A Right Heart
Service to others begins with loving deeply, as The Message paraphrase says, “As if your life depended on it.” That can only happen when we reach out with the true understanding that we are all alike, bearing the image of God. “Otherness” will be a barrier to the best of intentions. A wise friend once told me to speak these words to my heart at the beginning of every day and before stepping into every act of loving service: “I am like them, and they are like me. But for the grace of God, our roles could be reversed, and I could be the one in need.”
Follow Jesus’ example of taking on the very nature of a servant (Phil. 2:7). Be curious, listen before you speak, come to an opportunity with questions rather than answers, and be willing to submit to the authority of those in charge. Volunteerism is giving back on your terms, giving to someone; biblical service is about giving from someplace — a heart overwhelmed by gratitude for the gift of God’s undeserved grace. A right heart comes first.
