Values

<Insert faith based statement around work ethic, morals, and conduct>

Vision

<Insert faith based direction and goals for my life>

Faithful Wandering

Below is a smattering of thoughts, quotes, and reflections on various topics of faith and how the truth of scripture impacts how I live.

Generosity

As someone with a passion for personal finance and investing, with a deep belief in God and a desire to obey his word, it's extremely important for me to understand what God's word has to say about money, both how I earn it, but maybe more importantly, what I do with it.

I am far from done growing and understanding God's plan for giving and generosity in my life, but included here are the ways I spend money in this category of life. My hope is to continue to grow in and pursue generosity and hospitality as a foundational aspect to the ministry of my home.

God has called us to be cheerful givers (2 Corinthians 9:7) and for those who have been blessed financially to do good, be rich in good works, and to be generous and ready to share (1 Timothy 6:17-19).

Monthly Giving

These are set on autopilot to be distributed each month. Therefore the amount is consistent and measurable, and I will generally review/revise the giving once a year. These numbers can change as my income, life circumstances, or convictions change.

Discipleship Network - Supporting the church (55%)

A laborer is worth his wages (1 Timothy 5:27), taking part in the relief of the saints (2 Corinthians 8:3-5), and contributing to the needs and work of the church (Romans 12:13).

The Hope Clinic - (10%)

To look after widows and orphans in their distress (James 1:27) and honoring my father and mother (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16, Proverbs 31:31).

Dynamic/Spontaneous Generosity

These categories of giving are flexible and dynamic, changing based on need, season of life, and availability. I've never set aside a specific amount for these, as it's a goal of mine to make and take as many opportunities to be hospitable and meet the needs of the church as I can. Not setting aside an amount may not be a practical long term strategy, so I will be continually reevaluating my approach to these categories.

Hospitality (18%)

Breaking bread together with glad and generous hearts giving praise to God (Act 2:44-47). Welcoming people into my home and providing meals or taking the meal to them (Romans 12:13). Participating in meal trains (Matthew 25:35-40, Galatians 6:2), and showing double honor (1 Timothy 5:17-18).

Meeting needs in the church (17%)

Bearing one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2), sharing with those in need (Ephesians 4:28), meeting physical needs (James 2:15-16), or showing double honor (1 Timothy 5:17-18)

There aren't always clear financial needs in the church, and different seasons of life may afford you less time to bring people into your home, but these are particularly joyful opportunities to give and be a blessing. It's hard not to praise God when he uses you to foster unity and provide for His household.

At various times in the past I've given to mission organizations, individual missionaries, and Christian nonprofits, but over the last couple of years my views on these have changed. The criteria I use for evaluating the opportunities has narrowed greatly along with my convictions, so I've mostly moved away from them.

I'm exploring another category of giving such as "Investing for the needs of the church" where I may set aside some amount of money each month into a brokerage account that is dedicated for church use. This seems like a good opportunity to utilize my interest and research in finance to serve the church and to potentially meet a much larger need in the future, if present needs remain smaller.

Following God's example of generosity is a life long journey and looks different in every season of life. Hopefully you find some of these things to be helpful or, at the very least, thought provoking!

The Church is a family

-- Current Topic of Study --

A reflective word

Stop and smell the flowers; appreciate the fleeting gift of beauty that God has placed before you. Be reminded that for all our human efforts to create and innovate, we've produced nothing that can stand to the beauty of the smallest flower, an effortless work of a perfect creator.

A Few Musings

”Distractions are the numbing agent of the masses, A bitter drug, allowed to linger in our system as long as nothing would seek to push us beyond our shallow thoughts. Concerns of calendar and bank account are the gateway to deeper addiction, action without purpose or direction. Temporary absent minded relief. A few weeks of broken routine leaves a clear mind, yet ever more persistent is the calling to useless distraction. One battles between what is difficult and what is easy, and rarely presents or produces that which is meaningful.”

”Gone are the days of thoughtful letters written to those most important to you; no longer do we approach the mailbox with baited anticipation, rather disinterest knowing all we'll find are bills and advertisements. A generation more content to post images of a passing life with simple messages of virtue, but no true understanding of purpose or meaning. They walk around devoid of hope, more interested in what feels good than what is good. We are a generation of ambition, always on the grind to achieve more, make more, be more, but what for? When we take the time to think beyond the here and now, to where we are going, we are faced with a question of existential proportion...”

”Is it a small thing in your eyes to be beloved of God, to be the son, and the spouse, the love, and the delight of the King of glory? Christian, believe this, and think on it: You will be eternally embraced in the arms of that love that is from everlasting to everlasting, of that love that brought the Son of God's love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory. This is the same love that was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crucified, and pierced. This is the love that fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, and died. This is the love that will eternally embrace you. Oh, the blessed meeting when perfect created love and most perfect uncreated love meet together!

Know this, believer, to your everlasting comfort, that if these arms have once embraced you, neither sin nor hell can ever pluck you from them (John 10:28-29). The sanctuary is inviolable and the rock impregnable to which you have fled. You are safely locked up for all eternity. You no longer have to deal with a shifting, unfaithful, inconstant creature but with him in whom there is no varying nor shadow of change, even the immutable God (James 1:17). If your happiness lay in your own hand, as in Adam's, there would still be room to fear, but it is in the keeping of a faithful Creator. Christ has not bought you at so dear a price to trust you with yourself anymore. His love to you will not be as yours was on earth to him: seldom and cold, up and down, mixed with burning and quaking, with a good day and a bad. No, Christian, he who would not be discouraged by your enmity, by your loathsome, hateful nature, by all your unwillingness, unkind neglect, and grudging resistance will not cease to love you now that he has made you truly lovely Indeed, you may be as confident as Paul was before you that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39).”

Richard Baxter - The Saints' Everlasting Rest

Meaningful Quotes

O
O
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O
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"My Lord, I find that nothing else will do,
But follow where thou goest, sit at thy feet,
And where I have thee not, still run to meet.
Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,
Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,
If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true:
Thou art my life, O Christ, and nothing else will do."

"Two things at once, thou know'st I cannot think.
When busy with the work thou givest me,
I cannot consciously think then of thee.
Then why, when next thou lookest o'er the brink
Of my horizon, should my spirit shrink,
Reproached and fearful, nor to greet thee run?
Can I be two when I am only one."

"I am but as a beast before thee, Lord."--
Great poet-king, I thank thee for the word.--
Leave not thy son half-made in beastly guise--
Less than a man, with more than human cries--
An unshaped thing in which thyself cries out!
Finish me, Father; now I am but a doubt;
Oh! make thy moaning thing for joy to leap and shout."

"Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!
Sunset faints after sunset into the night,
Splendorously dying from thy window-sill--
For ever. Sad our poverty doth bow
Before the riches of thy making might:
Sweep from thy space thy systems at thy will--
In thee the sun sets every sunset still."

George MacDonald - The Diary of an Old Soul

O
O
O

"Appreciative love gazes and holds it's breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all."

"Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the "fear" of God could have meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the "love" of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed."

"Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. There's no living with it till we recognize that one of its functions in our lives is to play the part of buffoon."

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin or your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves

"Since I came to India I have been brought to the truth that I trust will keep away discouragement forever. There is a quietness and confidence which is strength. There is a realization that 'God worketh in you' and a quiet yielding to that working. There is a conquest of Canaan in this life. It is a land of milk. and honey, but it is possessed by a fight that calls out our best. Every place on which one plants his foot is his, but the battle is the Lord's. It is glorious to fight with Him on our side. This is the conquest of the ages and for it, the full armor is to yield to the Lord and trust His blood for everything. How easy the way! Ours by prayer and ours at what a price!"

John Hyde - The Life and Letters of Praying Hyde