Next Steps Initiative — Generosity

A sermon on money, named plainly as such, but framed from the start as a heart issue rather than a fundraising appeal. The argument: Jesus taught on money more than almost any subject because what we do with our resources reveals where our trust lies. From Genesis 1:27 and John 3:16, the teaching contends we were created in the image of a God who gives, so generosity is meant to be our normal way of life. Sin distorts that, making us greedy and entitled and recasting a generous God as a selfish one. The tithe is reframed: God entrusts the nine and asks obedience with the one. Drawing on 1 Timothy 6, Malachi 3, and a candid testimony about early financial struggles, it presents five principles for handling money God's way, with the promise that generosity, lived out, points people to God rather than to us.