Most people define generosity by the size of the gift given. The bigger the gift, the more generous the giver. But in actuality, generosity has very little to do with the size of a gift, and everything to do with the intent of the giver’s heart.
The generous give with birthing a new thing in mind. And their gift is usually the size of a seed in comparison to the thing it births. Their generosity is literally a seed planted in a life that births something in THAT life, not in the life of the generous one. A generous gift generates something. That’s what generosity is; it’s a generator. It generates, or creates, or produces something. For someone else.
When we give to get a harvest for ourselves we are not being generous, we are being sowers, farmers in the natural (honoring divine principle and example). We are generating something for ourselves. And we are also being covetous in the spirit, using another person’s life as a means to our desired end.
We must be careful not to reduce human beings to just soil. Remember we are all soil with spirit (Gen 2:7). When we use each other as soil to sow into we recognize only a part of our design, half of our humanity. I disrespect you, and diminish you, and discard you when I treat you like just soil. When I sow into your life I’m literally treating you like a piece of dirt.
Notice that Jesus never sowed money to get a financial harvest. He’d never reduce people to just dirt. He gave to the poor as a loan to the Lord (Pr 19:17), knowing that it would store up treasure in heaven. He showed us how to be generous, by generating new life for others through his greatest gift, his life on the cross (Eph 2:8).
When was the last time you were really generous? What did you give? What did it generate? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
