I decided to venture my way into a new restaurant for me… one I probably wouldn’t have gone to if it weren’t for some amazing friends of mine persuading me to check it out. The place is called Ghengis Grill.  The way it works is you are given a bowl… and told to fill as much as you want in it… and thats your meal. They charge like 8 bucks for the bowl and another 1.50 for the drink… totaling… 9.50 for the bill. however, you don’t pay at a counter… in fact you eat your food first then the waitress comes and gives you your  bill.. and of course you then have to tip her.

And that brings us to the first person in this hunt to see where we fall when we are mean with “da” green. The Big-Tipper. 

You see, for me this all started at this restaurant when I realized that we are expected to tip the woman at the restaurant or the guys who serve us at chilli’s or anyone for that matter in the food industry more than what we are expected to tithe to the church.  Have you ever thought of this idea?  the idea that an 18% tip at a restaurant is just ok… but a 10% “tip” if you will… for God is all good in the hood as well.

Now, work with me here on this one because I totally understand that you are giving 18% on a $20 bill, and only 10% on say.. thousands of dollars.  The point still stands.  If you were a waitress, would you rather have a regular customer give to you a constant 15% tip? or give a 20% tip some times and other times 15% and other times maybe as low as 14%?  You would totally take the second one. We’ll what if we apply this to what God wants us to do with our lives. 

Yeah, the bible is very specific in stating that you must be faithful and committed to giving your tithe… and that can be another whole blog for another whole series… haha.  But what if we were to adopt a policy that said…. you know what, I would say that God did a pretty good job at creating me and molding me into the person that I am today, I’m going to give a bigger tip this week… maybe even 15%!!!!

And what do you think will happen? Do you think that God will say… ok… well you gave me a little bit more of what I already gave you in the first place but its still only 15%… or do you think that God will rejoice in the fact that you gave 15% to him in submission to what he is up to in your life and apply it to do so much more than you can do with your remaining 85?

I think that we have to understand that when we give more, and we give from the heart, its an expression of our love toward God. When we decide that we want to trust God with what he has entrusted with us, we realize that there is no reason to be a big tipper. 

So what does this mean for us? How can we become a big tipper?

well first I think that we have to know what we have made, and be able to know what our income is.  If your like me and you make money every once in a while when you do some random job, or you aren’t fully sure what you make because it depends when your boss puts you to work, or you don’t even have a full time job… maybe you make your tithe off of ever check you receive. Maybe it just takes you saying… alright I got a check this week, this sunday I need to make sure I give my 10%. or I need to go ahead and make the check out to the church.  or maybe it even takes another savings account where you deposit it each time you get a check and then you write a monthly check to the church. I Don’t know what is going to work for each of you… but we have to make sure that we are consistently knowing what we are giving.

 

second, we have to make sure we choose a percentage and a gift that we know we can be faithful in.  If we have decided to give 15% we have to commit to giving it, otherwise its just not worth it to us. WE have to be consistent in this but more importantly not choose something that we know we are going to fail miserably at. Stretch yourself, but don’t over do it.

and Third, I think that we need to make sure we know where we are giving our money.  I don’t necessarily think that you have to give al 22% to the church.  However, I do think we are called to give 10% to the church, but maybe the other 12 goes to an organization that shares the gospel in south america, or maybe its an organization that equips people to be world changers, or any other group. ministry that empowers people/missions that you are passionate about.  Maybe its a high school FCA, maybe its a college ministry, maybe its your friends mission trip, or maybe its just as simple as giving it to buy the supplies for the local soup kitchen.  It doesn’t matter.  As long as we continue to give from the heart, and continue to love with our money we can know where we are giving what we give.

 

I just challenge you to this end… to strive to become a “Big-Tipper”. Just imagine what life would be like as you begin to live on less and less and give more and more. God can do sooooo much more with your 85% than you can do with your 100%. 

 

Jump.

Stretch yourself.

Trust.

 

Give. 

 

become a big-tipper.

 

L.

 

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I have no clue what happened last weekend to the blog… I don’t know if you saw it but it was all messed up.. I went to go post the last entry and the whole thing went bananas.

I finally got the last entry up late yesterday, so for that I apologize.

with that said… I had an idea…and it was birthed out of the concept that I had… that too many people are just simply… mean with the green stuff in our wallets. Me included!  I just get to the point when I am so over worried about what i’m going to buy next, or the big thing Im saving up for.  and so God challanged me… as he does with almost every story that makes it to the blog…

He asked me… what if I were to live in a way that wasnt so much mean with the green but to figure out a way to be keen with the green… and then I thought… wouldnt it be a pretty cool deal if everyone was keen with the green too? I mean… imagine a place where people are eager to give money and our possessions to organizations and groups in a way that cause the world to be impacted for the Glory of God. 

So.. in my feable attempt to get creative…if the title name wasnt enough for you… i figured we would look at each of these from the aspect of specific people… in the next 5 weeks…. hopefully you will see what type of person you want to become.  As good as it would be to become all of these peple… and I think that is a great thing to strive for…. I think a more reasonable attempt would be to master one or two of these character traits and not try and fail at all of them by not being able to focus on one or two…  

here is kinda he overview of peope we will look at… the first week I want us to look at the “big-tipper.”  This is a person who focuses his/her life to making sure they leave a big tip at the alter. We will look at this crazy idea that most people tip the waitress at chilli’s at a higher percentage than you tip the creator of the universe… and what it means to give a “tip” to God. 

Next I want to explore the “investor.” this is the one who is more focused on what making disciples in christ than making money. How are we paid? …. and are we investing with the right bank? what is it that we are investing our time and money into… making money, or making kingdom bound lovers of the king

the third week, I want to explore the “banker.”  We all know that bankers loan out money to people all the time.  The money they loan however isn’t really even the bankers money to begin with.  So for us, what does it mean to understand that we are in a world where God has just given us money to use while here on earth, we are the bankers in this case, and we have the responsibility to use the money that isn’t even ours to make the greatest impact.

The fourth week I want to open up the idea of us trying to become a “Realtor.” Real Estate Agents are always wanting to know if we are Buying or Selling.  With this in mind, we need to know if we are trying to buy or sell? if we are selling… to try and piggyback off the previous week’s, you can’t be trying to buy much… like a boat, a third house, a few condos, a new car, big screen, personal jet, and the like.  This world is full of people who are buying and selling… you cant sell to someone who is selling… and you can’t buy from someone who is buying. We just have to figure out how to become strategic in what we sell, and what we buy.

 

And in the last week, I want to look into the toughest one of them all… and if we can master this, all the others will come into play.  The “Widow.” Obviously looking at the biblical story of the widow who gave her whole earnings of two gold coins. and quite simply… this just means that we live in a way that evreything we do to earn, make, save, or spend our money is in a way that is glorifying to God.  This means that we want to live in a way that glorifies the God of the universe and have people see a radical difference in the way we use the green stuff in life, by sacrificing all that we have.

 

so… I challange you to jump on board with an open mind, and a eager heart to know how we can change from the ordinary ways of the world by being mean with green to a lifestyle that is keen with the green.  I want us to live in a place that has that attidute, and passionatly pursues a lifestyle like that on purpose for others.

 

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This weekend… if you don’t notice it already, is tacked with a name… of passionate purpose.

You think about the cross… you think about the savior… and you think about the Resurrection.  All these things were done with a purpose from God… a divine plan well thought out before you or I were even a possibility. And then you look at the whole course of history… the whole story… if you will [as the last entry was about] you look at the big picture of it all… it screams the word PASSION. and it has nothing to do with the title of the movie… the Passion of the Christ.

So… i think we are all on the same page here to understand that concept that this weekend to come is one that is titled…Passionate Purpose. Lets take this one step further… and apply to our lives.

What can you be passionate about?  just about everything… weather negative or positive… agree or disagree… we can be passionate for just about everything. So then… the next question is what can we be purposeful about? now this takes us to another level of ability…. because you  may not actually be able to be purposeful in the way you look at internet pornography, or the manners in which you deceive people near you, or cheat at work, or lie and steal. 

so can WE be those two things?  Passionately Purposeful? 

sure.

if we decide that our lives are designed to be a part of God’s story.. we can be both passionate and purposeful! It may mean that you do things to help you resist temptation… maybe it means to bring your flaws into the light… maybe it means an accountability partner to walk with you through life… and maybe it means just finding comfort in uncomfortable situations. For some, it could take a passion to purposely invite your neighbors to church this sunday. For others it could be as simple as passionately and purposefully going to church this sunday. I don’t know what the specific thing is for you… but we need to figure that out.

Our savior lived a life that was both passionate about his creator… living ever second eagerly waiting to live with him in eternity… all the while being as purposeful as possible, and connecting with the right people at the right time… We can certainly strive to do that same thing… 

so this week/weekend… be passionate. be purposeful. and be a son and daughter of Christ.

L.

 

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So I took some time off… but this was what I would have posted for last week, and be on the lookout for something else to make up…

 

 

I was caught off guard the other day while reading. I mean… I’m going along and reading about how Paul and Barnabas were going from city to city sharing the gospel with people.  They were just on one of their trips! and in the last two verses of this story.  Mind you they have taken most of the whole chapter to talk about the story in itself… but in the last two verses they read this:

 

 Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

 

my first thought… “HOLD UP!!! Stop the train!!!!!! Back that up…”  your telling me that Paul is preaching the gospel… and had them won over… then gets STONED… falls down almost to death… and just gets back up to walk right back into the city?”  What the heck!

 

And then I started thinking about how this is such a tiny detail into what went on in this story.  and I realized that if this story happened to me and I was retelling it to someone… I would have focused on the whole stoning part… and not the whole telling about the town and telling about the way they won the crowd over.

 

But then you start realizing thats why I’m not in the bible… and thats why I’m on this journey to figure out how to become as holy and as passionate as possible. I mean.. take the last time you shared the gospel with someone… what did you walk away with?  did you remember how they listened intently… or how it felt like a complete disaster.  What did you remember about your buddy’s new roommate… the way he talks with an accent or how he has such a similar background as you and struggles with the same things as you?

 

The issue that I think God has been challenging me with lately is the whole idea that in life, we focus so intently on the small and tiny details  that we miss the big picture that God wants us to be apart of.  I mean, what would this world look like if we all were so focused on the bigger picture of God… we wouldn’t have issues at work, we wouldn’t have the urge to cheat for a test, or not show up to bible study.  We wouldn’t have a desire to miss digging into the word everyday.

 

What I really want from people is an urgency to be a part of something much bigger than themselves.  I want to be a somebody that challenges people to that end… If I’m going to do something as crazy as that… I can’t loose focus by getting caught up in the small stuff of losing a battle.

 

So the next time that you feel like you have just entered a city and been stoned… or the next time that something slips and falls in the way of what God’s bigger picture is of that… just keep going… and don’t spend time focusing on the small missed or overlooked detail.

 

all you need to do is to get up and go back into the city… all in two verses.

 

 

− Born Big −

 

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