So now that you’ve budgeted for giving God your FIRST ten percent, and you automated it so that it is given whether you remember your checkbook or not and whether you are at church or not, what’s next?!

The easiest – yet hardest – step. That’s what! Trust.

Jesus talked about money and possessions more than heaven and hell combined. He told a rich, young, successful leader that he would have to sell everything he had to follow Jesus. Jesus praised an old widow for giving her last two pennies to the offering. He even purposelly sent his disciples out on mission without any money in their pockets. Why did he teach all of this and more?

Jesus wanted these people – and he wants you and me – to trust him more than our money. And he promised that if we did, he would take care of our needs. He said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

If you have a problem giving to God what he asks of you financially, Jesus teaches that it boils down to an issue of trust. It’s as if you are saying, “God, you can’t really have all of me because I don’t trust you enough to take care of me.” Or for many of us, what we’re really saying is, “I’m not willing to sacrifice my wants for what you ask of me, Jesus. Thanks for sacrificing for me – but I’m just not willing to do the same for you.”

As we take this Generosity Challenge together, I am praying for you like crazy to take this big step of trust. Because I know what you will see is God take care of you like never before, and grow you like never before.

If you haven’t officially signed up for the Generosity Challenge, go here and do it now! From this point forward you’ll receive weekly encouragement, updates, and info about how your sacrifical giving is changing lives. The next 90 days are going to change our church and your life! I can’t wait to see it happen.

On Monday, the Generosity Challenge kicked-off with an honest discussion of why it’s so important to put God first in the area of finances. As God Himself said, we are robbing him when we don’t give back at least a tenth of what he gives to us first! (Malachi 3:8-10)

So today we take the most practical approach yet to the Generosity Challenge. One of the greatest hurdles to people being committed to giving God a tenth first is simple discipline. So in step two, we help you make that much simpler!

Step Two

It’s happened to all of us. It’s 2012, which means the only time you have cash is that lucky day you find a $20 bill in your coat pocket from last winter, and the only time you have a checkbook is when you need to level out the wobbly kitchen table. Then Sunday rolls around, it’s time to give God my tithes, and all I have is a debit card and some crinkled up receipts. And – if you’re like me – even if I did carry a checkbook or a wallet full of Benjamins, missing Sundays would make it hard to keep up. You know how it is: The kids get sick right after vacation, which also fell right after Aunt Bessie’s funeral, so we’ve now missed church three weeks in a row. And we’re three weeks behind on our giving.

So what’s the best solution? We call it “Automate the Important”. The best way to stay disciplined and guarantee God gets my first ten percent, is to treat it like I do my mortgage payment, gym membership, or utilities bills: make it automatic. If I’m willing to automate those other things, shouldn’t I automate what is most important?

As you take this Generosity Challenge seriously, I encourage each of you to Automate the Important. Once you’ve determined how much ten percent of your family’s income is and how often you will give (once a week, two times each month, or once a month), go to onelifeknox.com/give and set it up to be automated. My family made this our method of giving over two years ago, and we love knowing that God get’s our best and our first without having to remember our checkbook each week, and even if we are out of town or sick and don’t make it to church.

There’s only one step left after this one, so I’m trusting and praying that you have budgeted to give your ten percent and that you’ll now take the next step of Automating the Important! I’ll keep praying for you until you get the third and final step on Friday.

An overwhelming majority of our church committed to joining the Generosity Challenge this past Sunday – a 90 day “test” to see if God will really take care of us when tithing. The rules are simple: give God your FIRST ten percent over the next 90 days and if he doesn’t provide all your needs, OneLife will give every penny back to you. No questions asked.

We all committed together saying, “I’m all in!” and committing to take this chance in response to the idea that Jesus sacrificed for us and called us to do the same. Sacrifice is giving up something we love for something we love even more. We all love our money and stuff, but we love seeing lives changed through the Church even more! It is this kind of sacrifice that will allow us to start our second campus, other future campuses, and partner with church planting around the world.

If you signed up for the Generosity Challenge, you’ll be receiving a series of practical emails and encouragement over the next 90 days, along with healthy accountability so you can track your giving. If you did not sign up or were not at church yesterday to do so, go to www.onelifeknox.com/generosity to sign up today!

Step One

The first step toward completing the Generosity Challenge is to budget for it! Believe it or not, you don’t have to pray long for God to tell you how much you should give. It’s all throughout His Word! The first tenth of everything he gives to us is to be given back to him. If you’re like me – that sounds like a lot. And it is! Because he wants us to depend on HIM, not our stuff. So here are some practical steps to budget for giving God your 10%.

1. Determine needs versus wants. Nearly every American family has “fat” in their budget. These are things we really don’t need, even if we might think we do. For example: we don’t need cable TV, smart phones, internet at home, meals at restaurants, vacations, sports tickets, multiple cars, new clothes, Dollywood trips, hair and nails done up just right, and the list goes on and on. Are these things bad? NO! God wants us to enjoy life and his creation! But they become bad when our first tenth goes to pay for them instead of going back to God. In fact, God says it even harsher. “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings.” Malachi 3:8. By paying for other things with God’s 10%, he says we are robbing him.

2. Give to God FIRST. Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God” and THEN all the other things will be added to you. If you take the Generosity Challenge seriously, you will give FIRST instead of paying bills, buying things, or investing. Then you’ll do everything else with the 90% that’s left over and watch God take care of you like never before!

For so many people, this is a radical idea. That’s why we are giving you the opportunity to test God and see if he doesn’t take care of you. I know he will, and I can’t WAIT to hear your stories of how he does!

The blog has been silent for a couple weeks because things at the OneLife office have been crazy! But crazy in an incredible way. There are so many stories of changed lives that I could fill an entire novel with them. On top of that, we are gearing up for a summer that will impact our community and get us ready for the fall (yeah, we’re already thinking about the fall!).

One thing we are doing for the summer is getting into the 21st Century with online giving. If conversations at your house are at all like mine, some of the most used words are “Where’s the debit card?!” because we never have cash and “Have we paid that bill yet?” because only one or two aren’t paid automatically each month. So when it comes to our generosity to the church, why should we expect things to be much different?

So we are making a push to encourage anyone who calls OneLife their home to Automate the Important. If generosity is important to you – and I sure hope it is since Jesus said our heart and treasure will be in the same place – then I encourage you to automate it! Our tech team has done an amazing job developing a system that is easy to use and will allow you to set recurring gifts weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly. Just like you do it for bills and mortgage payments – do it for church!

I encourage you to take just a minute (because that’s all it will take!) and set up your generosity to be automated. You won’t have to remember cash or checks on Sunday mornings or feel guilty if you forget (and trust me, it’s even happened to us!). Harrison and I have automated our giving to be automatically given each month, and it is a great feeling to know that our generosity will continue to impact many lives without me having to remember each week.

See for yourself how easy this is at www.onelifeknox.com/give and set up your online giving account today so you can Automate the Important!

When generosity increases in a church, does it accomplish more than just padding a bank account or raising salaries? I’ve learned the answer is a big, fat YES!

A few short months ago, our 13-month old church was struggling financially. Attendance and ministry need had outgrown giving in a big way. The words “spending freeze” had become so common around our office that we actually started wondering if this was a church or the dang Weather Channel.

After a couple months of just hoping it would miraculously turn around, I decided we just needed to work on it. So we did. First up was a Christmas offering that we dreamed of reaching $10,000 (considering last year’s brought in a whopping $800, this was quite a stretch!). Lots of prayer and tons of hard work later we shattered our goal of $10,000 and topped $16,000!

Let the party begin. We had arrived!

That is, until January rolled around, our foot came off the gas, and we successfully had the worst financial month in our now 17-month history.

At that point we could just continue our spending freeze and hope for change to happen, or we could get intentional and strategic. So back to work we went, being intentional and strategic about creating a culture of generosity in our church. Vision casting, teaching, follow-ups, and online giving got our full attention. And the results have been nothing short of the miracle I was hoping for months ago.

Over the past three weeks we have seen the highest attendance, highest giving, and – most importantly – the most people to come to Christ in a three-week time period since our church began. Is it a coincidence that as generosity has increased so, too, has life-change and attendance? Not a chance.

When OneLifers become generous, spiritual maturity increases and they are more bought in to the vision. When spiritual maturity and buy-in increases, momentum increases. People don’t miss as many Sundays. They invite more friends. They pray for their church. The Gospel is spread, and lives are changed.

Creating a culture of generosity is about much more than numbers and dollar signs. It is truly about life-change and spreading the Gospel. But it takes work – work that’s definitely worth it in the end.

Thank you, OneLifers, for working to be a generous church!

* Special thanks to Casey Graham and The Change Group for helping me so much over the past few months to grow in this area! If you are a pastor or church leader, definitely check him out.