Extravagant generosity is at the heart of the Christian story:

• God greated a beautiful abundant world

• God created us in his image

• God gave us a purpose, to care for his world.

• God loves us despite our sins

• God became human in Jesus

• Jesus died on our behalf and rose again.

• God invites us to share in the new life won by Jesus.

• God invites us to be called his children.

• God lives with his children by his Holy Spirit

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"God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.

But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant.

So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death,

now God’s wonderful grace rules instead,

giving us right standing with God

and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 5: 20-21

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God's generosity is on everybody, not matter who you are:

• God gives us air we need.

• God sends sun and rain to make our food grow

• God provides the plants from which we make our medicines.

• God places us in families and communities.

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"For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good,

and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike." Matthew 5:45b

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In other words, everything we have is God's. He made it. He gives it to us to care for. He calls us to be generous with it.

Whether we have a lot, or a little - we are generous in proportion to what God has given us.

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Now I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters,

what God in his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia.

They are being tested by many troubles, and they are very poor.

But they are also filled with abundant joy,

which has overflowed in rich generosity. (2 Cor 8:1-2)

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Here is a prayer that we often use in churches when we thank God for the money people have given. It is based on a verse from the bible (1 Chronicles 29:14):

Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,

the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;

for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.

All things come from you,

and of your own do we give you.

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It also wont escape anyones attention that the world is unfair.

This is not God's good plan for the world, and so he calls us to live differently so that no-one need to go without.

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If you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord—
    and he will repay you! (Proverbs 19:17)

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So, why do Christians give (and so should you)

Because God is generous, and we are called to be like Him.

Because in being generous we are showing that our trust is in God alone.

Because in sharing our abundance, nobody will be lacking.

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Thank you for your generous giving to the glory of God, and the work of His Kingdom here.