Leaving A Lasting LegacyParaugs

You Can Choose How God Will Bless Your Life Generosity determines the blessings in your life. Proverbs 22:9 says, “Blessed are those who are generous” (NLT, second edition). I’ve seen that time after time in my own life and in the lives of others. Tom Holladay, a pastor at Saddleback Church, says that the time he and his wife saw most in their married life how God blesses them through generosity was when they lost it all. Years ago a levy near their house broke, and nine feet of water flooded their house. Everything was lost. All they had left was the car they were driving and the clothes on their backs. Tom says: “We had more than tithed all of our lives. I’m a pastor. I wasn’t going to challenge other people to follow Jesus in a way that I wasn’t going to follow Jesus. So why would God let that happen to us? “Over the several months after our house flooded, we saw God bless our lives in ways that we’d never seen before. Even through their own difficulties, people from all over the country came in and rebuilt our house and supplied all the things we had lost. Before I was on staff as a pastor at Saddleback, people from that church took up an offering for me to buy books for my pastor’s library. Now every time I go look in my library, I see the books bought by Saddleback Church because they loved me before I came. That’s a blessing I wouldn’t have had otherwise. God blesses us in the ups and downs of life through our generosity.” Jesus said in Luke 6:38, “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full — pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” God’s saying you get to choose. You get to choose how he will bless your life. As you give, you will receive.