What’s in It for Me?

Dannah Gresh: Randy Alcorn says generosity is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Randy Alcorn: Giving is simultaneously a solution to God’s glory, not only for the good of other people, but for our own good and our children’s good as well.

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for November 30, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Gratitude.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, I’ve been loving this conversation with Randy Alcorn here on Revive Our Hearts this week. Randy is an author. He’s published so many books. I don’t know how one person can write so many books! They’re all worth reading, just taking me deep into the heart of God on subjects like heaven, on Christian stewardship, some wonderful novels that will penetrate your heart and warm your heart and make you think.

Randy, we’re so grateful to have you with us here on Revive Our Hearts this week.

Randy: Always great to be with you, Nancy.

Nancy: And I haven’t mentioned yet that Randy was married for forty-seven years to another Nanci, Nanci with an “i.” Randy, I never had the privilege of knowing your wife, but I have followed your journey and hers through four years of cancer, and her homegoing to that place that you’ve written about so beautifully over so many years, but that now means more to you and to all of us because she’s there.

Randy: Amen!

Nancy: So, we’ve been so blessed to follow your heart in releasing her to the Lord and how she walked through that time of pain and suffering and knowing that, unless God intervened, she would be soon in heaven.

You and Nanci also have two grown daughters and two sons-in-law, both named Dan, and five grandsons—am I right about that?

Randy: Absolutely right, and they’re all a delight to me.

Nancy: Nanci called them “the boys.”

Randy: Yes. The boys. She always called them the boys. Two of them are on a high school tennis team that I am an assistant coach for. What a joy that is. I keep in touch with those that are in California, a thousand miles away. But the other two live around the corner, and that’s kind of fun.

Nancy: I’m sure that it is.

So, Randy doesn’t just sit in his study and write books. He lives. He’s pastored for many years. He’s been very active in the pro-life movement and has been an icon and a pacesetter in that movement.

But, Randy, I’m just so thankful for the way the Lord has used you and is using you. And on no topic has that been any more true than as it relates to the topic of giving.

I’m thinking of that passage we referred to in 2 Corinthians, chapter 8, where the apostle Paul says to the Corinthians believers, “See that you excel in this grace of giving.”

Randy: Yes.

Nancy: Like, “Don’t just be so-so about it. Don’t just be like everybody else on it. Excel. Go beyond. Surpass. Run toward the goal. Excel. Do more in this grace of giving.”

And the book you’ve written, called The Treasure Principle, gives us some how-tos and some ways of thinking that will help us to excel in this grace of giving.

We’re making this resource available to any of our listeners this week who make a donation of any amount to support the ministry of Revive Our Hearts.

Included in this book is a section called “Radical Liberating Questions to Ask about Your Giving.” That’s an important section. And then some questions and answers about “The Treasure Principle,” things that you heard from people after you wrote the original version, and you have addressed those questions.

Randy: Yes.

Nancy: So, today and tomorrow we want to just unpack some of what is this “Treasure Principle,” and what are some of the keys that will unlock in our hearts joyful giving and help us to excel in this grace of giving?

So, Randy, get us started. I know some people have heard you talk about this, but a lot haven’t. I feel like we can’t hear about it too much. We can’t hear about it enough. It’s all the way through the Scripture, and why are we only doing three or four programs every once in a while on giving when it’s the Scripture is so full of this concept?

So, “The Treasure Principle,” if somebody asked you in a paragraph what is “The Treasure Principle?” how would you explain it?

Randy: What I call “The Treasure Principle” is based squarely on Matthew 6:19–21 where Jesus says, 

Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt, where thieves break in a steal; but store up for yourselves [lay up for yourselves] treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So, Jesus is tying in to what we should all know. You can’t take it with you.

Nancy: Yes.

Randy: But He adds a corollary to it, and it’s absolutely life changing when we grasp what He’s saying: yes, you can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.

In other words, you can take earthly treasures, instead of just storing them up for yourself, for your consumption and your saving and setting aside, and storing them up in barns, or however you want to put it . . . Instead of that, taking it and giving it to God’s kingdom purposes where the temporary treasure that you can’t hold onto anyway becomes eternal treasure that can never be taken away from you, that you will never lose.

Nancy: Yes.

Randy: It’s such a powerful concept. So he’s challenging us to invest our lives in eternity. So, yes, we live in the dot that begins and ends. It’s brief, this life on earth. But from that dot extends a line that goes out for all eternity.

So, if you’re smart, you’re going to think in terms, not of living for the dot, but living for the line, living while you’re in the dot in light of the line that will go on forever.

So what can I do with God’s money, which He has entrusted to my care, to my management today? What can we do with it that will be an investment in eternity that will far outlast this life?

So we’re not thinking all the time . . . A financial counselor could say, “Well, don’t think in terms of what you can do with your money this week. Think of what you can do with it in the years to come. Think of how that money can be paying off for you in another twenty, thirty, or forty years.”

Except what Jesus is saying is, He’s taking it a step further than that. Think in terms of how it’s going to be paying off in another twenty, thirty, or forty million years in the kingdom of God.

And, by the way, in this passage, Jesus is not simply appealing to right and wrong. He’s primarily appealing to smart and stupid. He’s not just saying that it’s the wrong thing to do, to store up treasures for yourself on earth. Well, of course, He is saying, “Do not do it.” So, yes, He’s saying it’s wrong.

But His argument for “do not do it” is that it’s stupid. In other words, it makes no sense. You are going to be parted from those treasures. They’re not going to last. They’re going to be taken from you, or you’re going to be taken from them. There’s no permanent relationship between you and these earthly treasures. But there is a permanent relationship between you and treasures in heaven, eternal rewards.

 

So, when Jesus says, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” That sounds, by definition, selfish. Right? But the great thing is we’re storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven in a way that is in the best interest of those around us and is an expression of our love for God. So we’re loving God, and we’re loving people, and we’re storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven all at the same time.

We don’t have to worry, “Oh, well, that’s a bad motivation. That’s selfish.” Well, it wouldn’t be selfish in the wrong sense, since Jesus is appealing to it.

Nancy: This is a whole different way of thinking than what most of us are ever oriented toward. And it just seems to me, Randy, that most people, maybe even I would say, most Christians, don’t give much thought at all to what’s going to happen to what they have when they’re gone.

Randy: Right. We are to think and live in light of eternity. We are to set our minds above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. We’re to remember that we are but dust, that our days are numbered in this world, as Psalm 90 and other passages tell us.

So, how can I live today in a way that is going to result in eternal difference, eternal impact? Paul describes the churches that he writes to as his treasure and his crown.

We know that treasures in heaven, some of them at least, are ruling in God’s kingdom. “As you’ve been faithful in a little, I will put you over much. Some will rule five cities and some will rule ten cities.” (see Luke 19:11–27)

Which, by the way, when you think of heaven in those tangible ways, it’s a real place. It’s the new earth. Then you think of the kings of the nations of the earth bringing their treasures into New Jerusalem, and you think literally of people who have been humble servants in this world, behind the scenes . . . I think many of those will be the ones that are ruling over God’s kingdom. It will be a privilege to serve under those people.

Nancy: Yes.

Randy: You know, sometimes I think we don’t think enough about what it’s going to be like to sit at banquets on the New Earth. After the resurrection, we’ll be eating and drinking, and we know this from Jesus. “A ghost does not have flesh and bones as I have.” (see Luke 24:39) He really is a risen person with a risen body, and He’s eating and drinking with His disciples.

Seven or eight times in the gospels it talks about sitting down in His kingdom, and they’ll come from the east and the west, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—we’ll all sit together at banquets. I think that He’s going to be in charge of the seating arrangements.

And we’re going to be sitting next to people that sometime God used us in their lives:

• To help them.
• To feed them.
• To keep their children alive.
• To help their children be healthy.
• To help them hear the gospel for the first time.
• To get the Bible into their heart language.

And they’re going to say, “Thank you,” to us.

And on the other hand, we’ll be sitting next to people that we’ll say:

• “Hey, you taught my Sunday school class.”
• “Mom and Dad, you raised me in a Christian home.”
• Or, the friend that first shared the gospel with us.
• People in our church.
• Pastors of our church.
• Lay people in our church.
• People in our communities.
• People that we played sports with that poured into our lives and had an impact on us.

And we’re going to be able to say, “Thank you.” That will be part of our treasure in heaven, that we have taken earthly treasures that we could have used for all kinds of things. You know, there’s no end to the number of things, you’ve probably noticed that, that we could all spend money on.

I was just talking to somebody the other day and he said, “Well, we just have a trust fund that’s come my way. Suddenly we’re entitled to it, and we can actually spend it any way we want. We’re just thirty years old, and it’s ten million dollars. What would you recommend doing with it?”

And I asked, “Well, do you need this money in any sense, any of this money?”

“Oh, no. We’re doing great. We make a lot of money. We’ve got a nice home and all of that.”

And I said, “Well, I think the best thing and the safest thing and a great thing would be simply to give it all away. I mean, why? Do you need it? No. You don’t. You said that. So why not give it all away? Certainly, the vast majority of it. I mean, give it away where it’s needed right now to support God’s work all over the world.”

Remember, the longer we hold onto things, the longer we hold on to money, the more likely we will never end up giving it, even if that’s our eventual intent.

A lot of people will say, “Oh, I’m going to invest this in something, and it’s going to really pay off. Then I’ll have more money to give to God later.”

And you know what happens sometimes? Well, sometimes those investments don’t work out and the money is lost—the stock market takes a huge dip, whatever it might be. But other times, the heart is changed because, remember what Jesus said? “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

He doesn’t say, “Where you intend to one day put your treasures, your heart will be.” But, “Where you do put your treasures, your heart will be.”

So I tell people, “Look, if you want a greater heart for missions, a greater heart for your church, give more to missions. Give more to your church. Give more to Christ-honoring ministries that reach people all over the world for His glory. And we will celebrate this, and we’ll never have regrets.

Do any of us ever imagine that we’ll stand before the judgment seat of Christ, (which, that part is true, we will) but that He will look at us and say, “You know, I have this against you, (like He said to some of the churches in Revelation) you just gave too much. I mean, you just gave too much.” I do not think any of us are in danger of that. There will be eternal consequences, positively, of investing our lives forever in the things of God.

And, honestly, the single-most stupid thing we can do with our money is just hang onto it, like Scrooge did in The Christmas Carol. He’s a miser. And you know what word we get from miser? Miserable. He’s a miserable man while he’s hanging onto it.

But then a conversion happens as a result in the story of those three ghosts, spirits, that come to him. And at the end of that time, what he experiences is a conversion. He’s running through the streets, giddy, and happy at the privilege of giving away.

I have a book called Giving Is the Good Life. And that is the good life. Treasures on earth will not last. Treasures in heaven are going to last forever.

Nancy: Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that the things that are earthly treasures:

• They can be stolen.
• They can get broken.
• They can burn up.
• We see natural disasters.
• We see storms.
• We see theft and looting.

These things that take away people’s earthly treasures, they’re not safe. They’re not secure, no matter how many locks we can put on the door or how many security systems we may have.

If that’s where our treasure is, then we really are insecure people no matter how many locks we have because those things are temporal. By definition, they’re not eternal. They don’t last.

And so, people who are putting their hope or their focus, all their attention, their desires, their appetites, their longings on a new kitchen or a new house or a new car or more of this or more of that, Jesus said to beware about this insatiable desire for more. That’s the definition of the biblical word, “covetousness.”

Randy: Yes.

Nancy: It’s an old-fashioned word, but it means just not satisfied with what you have, having to have more. And Jesus said “beware of it,” because it’s so destructive. Not only are you running high risk that you can’t hold on to them forever, you may not even be able to hold onto them until next week. But also, they can be so corrosive on our own souls and our own affections.

So, giving toward the Lord’s work, giving toward eternal ventures, efforts . . . When I’m thinking about who’s going to be sitting at the table with us in heaven . . . Randy, you told us a couple days ago about when you were just a young believer in high school and how the Lord prompted you to give toward the persecuted church and their suffering.

Now I’m listening to you, and I’m thinking, Who is going to be at the table sitting with you when you were a teenage kid giving to support and help care for these persecuted believers? Maybe it is people you’ve never met in this lifetime. Maybe people who are already in heaven. But you’ll be sitting together, and they’ll be saying, “Thank you for caring. Thank you for supporting. Thank you for making it possible and encouraging me to stay faithful to Christ, making it possible for my family’s needs to be met while I was in prison.”

I mean, just imagine the stories that will be told and that are being written right now that we can’t see, but we will see, and we will celebrate when we’re together with them in heaven.

Randy: Exactly. That’s something that Nanci and I talked about a lot over the years. Some people know how many books have sold and the millions of dollars that have come in and royalties. They know that we’ve chosen to give them all away, and they’ve said to us, “Do you realize what you could have done with that money?”

They just start adding it up. It’s just almost inconceivable to them that we just haven’t gotten a bigger house, and more houses, and we don’t spend a lot more money on clothes and stuff and everything else.

Now, we live a middle-class life in America, which is an abundant life materially. Okay, so we have not taken a vow of poverty. That’s not the problem for us. But when they ask, “Do you realize what you could have done with all that money?”

My answer is pretty much always the same. “There’s absolutely nothing we could have done with that money that would have brought us more joy than what we did do with it, because we can see how we’ve invested in the lives of people. And even when we can’t see it, we can imagine whole translations that are in people’s heart language through money we’ve given away because of those royalties.”

Then, in addition to that, the money that we give away to our church through, not the royalties, but just through our income. And all the things that we’ve done over the years and the difference that it has made in other people’s lives. It’s so joy giving. It’s so life giving.

And, you know, we’ve had people that just say, “Well, I feel sorry for your kids, because you could have spent this money on them, and you could have lived a more wealthy life.”

Really? A more wealthy life than middle-class America? Sure, we could have, but would that actually have helped our kids? Or would it have hurt our kids?

I’ll never forget when people were feeling sorry for our kids. When our youngest daughter Angie was still in high school, and her sister Corina was off in college—both girls loving the Lord with all of their heart, and Angie was still a junior in high school—there was a house that had just been built very near us.

It was the nicest home by far in our area. Now, this takes you a long ways back into what would have been the late nineties. It was in a gated community that we just don’t even have in our area normally. But it was for sale, and the house was $500,000—half a million dollars.

Now, that was in a time where probably our house was worth $120,000 maybe. And the new houses being built in the community, I mean, the very nicest ones were in the $300,000 range. I know in some parts of the country, that’s outrageously cheap for a house and all that, but give time and inflation and everything else and realize that we’re in Oregon.

But it was just this gorgeous house. Huge. A beautiful view of Mount Hood. All these great things about it. Angie was admiring it, and I was admiring it. And she said, “Wow, Dad! That house is really something!”

And then I looked at the price, which I hadn’t seen, and I said what it was. It was a shocking amount of money to her as it was to me. But then it just occurred to me. I said, “Angie, do you realize that with the royalties that came in last year (it was a good year for royalties), we could have taken those royalties, and if we had kept them, we could have bought this house outright for cash?” Because that’s how much money came in from the royalties.

And she said, “No kidding, Dad?! Really?”

And I said, “Yes.” And then I said, “Well, Angie, do you wish we would have taken that money and bought this house?”

And she said to me, it was just one of the great joys of my life as I remember it. She laughed first, and then she said, “Dad! It’s just a house!” She knew exactly where that money had gone in God’s kingdom. “It’s just a house!”

That is just a wonderful reminder that in no way . . . I never believed what other people sometimes thought, which is that somehow we’re doing an injustice to our children because we were giving away all the royalties from the books and giving away substantial amounts of money from other contexts as well.

No, that is not any great sacrifice. But even if it was a great sacrifice, wouldn’t that sacrifice be worth it?

Nancy: Yes.

Randy: First Timothy 6 talks about the temptation and snare of wealth and the senseless, harmful desires and the love of money and the craving and being pierced with many pangs, early in chapter 6 where it’s warning us about the love of money. And what strikes me is how self-destructive materialism is.

God is not simply saying, “You will displease Me if you do this.” He’s saying, “You will ruin your lives. You will be destroyed. You will wander from your faith. You’ll be pierced with many pangs”—destruction, all of this. I mean, “You’ll fall into temptation and into a snare. Don’t do that to yourself, and don’t do that to your children.”

Realize this: the call to giving solves two problems, not just one. Giving solves the problem of people who are poor and need help and provision and who are gospel poor. They’ve never heard the gospel. They need the Bible in their own language. Giving to missions groups that need financial support to reach people with the gospel, that’s our privilege.

 

So, that problem is solved when we give, or certainly we work toward a solution when we give—every time.

But giving doesn’t just solve the problem of people who don’t have enough, it also solves our problem of having too much. So, giving is simultaneously a solution to God’s glory, not only for the good of other people, but for our own good and our children's good as well.

Nancy: Wow. I love that. It’s an indicator of where our heart is, what’s in our heart, what our affections are. And Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Randy: Yes.

Nancy: And if your treasure is limited to what’s here on earth, what’s temporal, what can be taken away from you, then your heart is going to be shriveled up. It’s going to maybe be destroyed.

And you mentioned your children. We want to talk on the next program about how to think about the next generation—investment in your children, inheritances. People are asking these kinds of questions today.

I want to just take one moment here to maybe have you emphasize, Randy, when we talk about materialism, we talk about temporal values, about our treasures being limited to what’s down here on earth. We’re not just talking about people who have a lot of money, thinking, “Well, they must be materialistic.”

You can have a materialistic, earth-bound, temporal-valued heart if you can barely meet your bills and obligations. It’s really not a matter of how much you have, but where your heart and your giving are. Can you just talk about that for a moment?

Randy: It’s absolutely true that a poor person can be as materialistic as a person with greater wealth. Now, we shouldn’t minimize, of course, the problem that wealth presents. When Jesus said, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25 ESV) It takes a miracle of transformation in the heart. A lot of that transformation comes as we give away money.

But, back to the poor person. They can be preoccupied with material things. They can just long to have more and greater technology and more gadgets and things to play with and shoes and clothes. The poor people really can’t even afford them, but this is what they’re learning to value because of the commercials they’ve seen from the Western world.

It’s not just here. It’s everywhere. Kids that are malnourished carrying cell phones. I mean, the kids themselves are not getting enough to eat, and somehow they have access to a cell phone, and maybe wearing a t-shirt from an NBA team in the U.S. It’s like, “How is this even possible?”

It’s such a strange world. People can be just as generous when they’re poor as when they’re rich, and even more generous—just as the poor widow who gave everything she had, and the Macedonian Christians who gave out of their extreme poverty. They proved to be the greatest examples in Scripture—these poor people.

Certainly, people can have access to a lot of wealth and have a right and godly perspective. But you meet people who say, “I live on 50% of my income.” I don’t mean people who are boasting about it. I mean people who are hesitant to even share that. 

At generous-giving conferences where I’m counseling people and dialoguing with people, it’s like, “Okay, but how much is that 50% that you’re keeping, how much of that is necessary?”

We all have to examine our hearts and how it is affecting us and how it is affecting our children.

Let me make one last comment about children. With all the people who question, “Hey, are you taking good care of your children and giving them the kind of inheritance that they deserve?”

Well, you know what? Our children are going to get an inheritance, but not nearly as much as we could leave, or as I could leave now that my wife Nanci is with the Lord. They’re going to get enough to really help them, but not enough to hurt them.

And meanwhile, they have grown up in a home where somehow, by God’s grace, they value the things of God’s kingdom, and they themselves are generous givers.

I have to say, I feel by God’s grace, we’ve been able to not just give our children an inheritance, but we’ve been able to pass on to them a heritage of Christ-centered, godly living, generous living. And that’s all relatively speaking. Believe me, there are people far more generous than we have been. But we have enjoyed the fruit of generosity, not just in the private peace and satisfaction of our own lives, but as we have seen the great work that God has done in our children. We thank Him for that.

Nancy: Oh, I can’t affirm enough, as a daughter, thinking back to my dad’s and my mom’s example of open hands, open heart. Our home was open. Hospitality, generosity, it was a way of life.

I will say, as I’m listening to you today, Randy, I’m thinking about how much I owe to my parents for that way of thinking. We lived in the Philadelphia mainline. A lot of kids had things we didn’t have. A lot of kids went to expensive schools that my parents said instead, “We’re going to put our children in Christian schools” (that was early in the Christian school movement). They weren’t as highly respected back in the day. They certainly weren’t as expensive as some of the other private schools. That was just how a heart for Christ and for eternity dictated and governed and led them in how they spent their money, how they used their stuff.

We had a lovely home. But my dad always said, “This home is not for us. This home is for God to use to bring people to Christ.” Thousands of people came to know Jesus in that home, in a couple of different homes we lived in in that area.

My love for Christ today, my heart for serving Him, my love for His Word, my desire to give, to be generous, to lay down my life, to serve Him as long as it’s physically possible—until my last breath—all of this is the fruit of generous parents who put God’s kingdom first and loved Him most.

I don’t know what my dad sees or knows from heaven today, but one day we will all know in full. I think that my parents can only rejoice that they made choices that seemed counter-intuitive, went against the norm of people who could have made different choices if their business had been as successful as my dad’s was at the time.

But to see him willing to lose in order to have eternal and spiritual gain . . . My life, and my brothers’ and sisters’ lives, and now ten grandchildren and great-grandchildren, are the fruit of those investments that my parents were making for a time that my dad would never live to see. But God saw, and God knew.

So, Lord, we thank You for the grace of giving, for the privilege of receiving all that You have given to us and then being channels of blessings into the lives of others.

As we come into this year-end time where lots of ministries will be particularly expressing the needs that they have to continue the work that You’ve given them to do, I pray, Lord, that You’d give us hearts that are happy to give, eager to give, joyful to give, intentional and proactive in our giving. May we not just be waiting for organizations to send us an appeal, but saying, looking around and saying, “Where are the needs? How can we invest in eternity? How can we send treasure on ahead rather than holding onto things that we cannot take with us?”

So, Lord, embed deeply into each of our hearts, and more deeply in my own and Robert’s as we seek You on our giving, this “Treasure Principle,” that it all belongs to You. We are making choices now that will have impact for all of eternity. We give You thanks in Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Amen.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been praying we would grow in the joy of giving generously. She’s been in conversation with Randy Alcorn, who’s the author of a powerful book by the title, The Treasure Principle. Listen to the subtitle, Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving.

And, get this, today and tomorrow, as a thank you for your donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts, not only will we send you a copy of The Treasure Principle, but your donation will also be effectively doubled.

That’s because some friends of Revive Our Hearts have come alongside with a matching gift. They’ve said, “We believe so much in what God is doing through Revive Our Hearts that we want to be a part of it, and we want to encourage others to support Revive Our Hearts, too.” So, they’re committing to match your donation dollar for dollar.

To give, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to ask about the book by Randy Alcorn when you call.

Randy will be back to help us discover more keys to “The Treasure Principle.” I hope you’ll join us for that tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth calling you to joyful giving as part of the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness you’ll find in Christ.

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