Walk In Love
In a recent interview, sports broadcaster, Jon “Boog” Sciambi, admitted to Dan le Batard that therapy, meditation, and life experience had helped him discover that, in order to find peace in his life, he had to change. He said, “I was confused into thinking that I could think my way into right acting, and it’s not that. You’ve got to act your way into right thinking.” You can watch the whole interview, which touches on topics ranging from the joy of broadcasting the World Series to the need for prayer in moments of stress, here.
The Christian faith, drawing upon its Jewish roots, embraces this truth wholeheartedly. When God commands that we are to worship in a particular way, interact with our neighbors in a particular way, and structure our families in a particular way, God is not merely reminding those with a vibrant faith how they should live but inviting those who want to know God more fully how to adopt a way of life that will instill that deeper relationship within them. Similarly, when Jesus tells his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, he is not prescribing the final step in their spiritual maturity but identifying where that process of maturation must begin.
Consider how radical and countercultural this claim really is. We cannot think or believe about God those things that we want to think and believe until we find ways to practice them. Only in the doing does the concept take hold in our hearts. Prayer is not reserved for those who already know God; it is a gift for those who seek to know God. If we want to know the magnitude of God’s love for us, there is no better way than to seek to love others as we have been loved. Those who yearn for confidence in God and God’s promises discover a new depth of faithfulness when they practice that radical dependence in their daily lives.
As Boog Sciambi reflected, we cannot think our way into living a peaceful, fruitful, and faithful life. We must put those things into practice in order for them to become our way of thinking. In other words, there is no amount of reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and meditating on the divine life that will grow your faith until what you hear and read become actions—only then will belief follow. That is the universal pattern of faith: hearing leads to doing, and doing leads to believing.
Every year, you hear me talk about financial giving as a spiritual practice. When Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” he was not giving preachers like me a tagline for a stewardship campaign. He was identifying the principal way that our financial lives can instill faith within us. Jesus did not care about raising money for churches, and neither do I. But I do know that how you use the resources God has given you has the power either to grow your faith or stunt its growth. That is what I care about most—your spiritual growth and the spiritual growth we experience together as a community of faith.
This year’s annual giving program focuses on a familiar sentence of scripture that is often said right before the offering plates are passed through the congregation: “Walk in Love.” In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul offers a lengthy discourse on what the Christian life should look like. He tells them to seek unity despite all their socioeconomic and cultural divisions. He reminds them to forsake whatever pagan practices interfere with their life in Christ. He insists that the love that Christ has shown the world must be govern all their personal and professional relationships. And, right in the middle of it all, Paul encourages the saints in Ephesus to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Paul’s exhortation to walk in love is striking because it is delivered not only as a necessary consequence of the Christian faith but also as the means by which that faith is instilled in the hearts and minds of the Ephesians. The relationship between belief and practice is always reciprocal. The invitation Paul gives in the same verse of scripture is that we would be “imitators of God, as beloved children.” The peace and confidence that are promised to Christians are obtained not through a purely intellectual engagement with the Way of Jesus but by walking that way, sometimes literally, until the steps we take have shaped our minds to become the mind of Christ.
This fall, you are invited to walk in love and put into practice what you seek to believe in your heart so that that belief might take hold more fully. Whether you choose to share your gifts with St. Paul’s or with another parish or organization through which you take part in God’s work in the world, there are three financial steps you can take to grow your faith in God.
First, make your relationship with God your top priority by deciding to make a first-fruits gift to support God’s work in the world. Instead of waiting until all of your bills are paid and your retirement contributions are made, decide what your financial contribution to God’s work in the world will be as the first step in making a household budget.
Second, make your gift a direct reflection of God’s goodness in your life by making a proportional commitment of your income. Decide to give back a certain percentage of what God has given you. Trust that the size of your gift does not matter as much as the portion of your financial resources that your gifts represents. Again, it does not matter whether you give to St. Paul’s or somewhere else. What matters is making a practical commitment to God that fosters spiritual growth.
Finally, make a gift that is sacrificial and, thus, reflects the sacrificial love that God has for you. Using examples in scripture, we teach that the tithe or 10% is the normative practice of financial giving for Christians. When you give the first 10% of your income back to God, it leads you to make other financial decisions that inculcate your dependence on God’s goodness in every aspect of your life. A tithe is not overly burdensome, but it does require faithful intention, which is, of course, the point. And, if you cannot give 10% back to God this year, make a commitment to growing your gift by 1% of your income each year until you can.
If the thought of giving a tenth of your income to God scares or frustrates you, that is understandable. If the invitation to sacrificial, proportional, first-fruits giving seems like an institutional ploy to raise money for the church and its leaders, I get it. All I can say is that I have experienced personally the liberating and life-giving spiritual impact of financial stewardship in my life. Only by practicing the spiritual discipline of giving back to God have I discovered how to trust that God’s goodness will always be enough for me and my family. I crave the same peace and confidence in my life that you seek in yours, and I have found that peace by putting into practice what I want to believe in my heart.
Walk in love. Trust that walking in love will teach you that you are loved. The only way to make God’s love real in our hearts is to practice it in our lives. During the next several weeks, look for steps you can take to make real and tangible the faith that you seek.
On Sunday mornings during October, we will hear some brief talks about stewardship as an invitation to a spiritual practice. Our Celebration Sunday will be October 27, when we will share a fancy breakfast and gather to celebrate all that God has given us. On that day, you will have the opportunity to make a commitment to God as an estimate of your giving to St. Paul’s in 2025. Between now and then, think about your giving as an opportunity for spiritual growth—as a practical way to grow your relationship with God. With that in mind, whatever you give will be something to celebrate.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
