I have been writing about money since the earliest days of this site. That’s not because I claim any special expertise, but because the Bible speaks about it with surprising and telling frequency. Money has a unique power to reveal what is going on in our hearts and to show whether we are truly trusting God or quietly trusting wealth. Little wonder that so many of the questions readers send my way are questions about money: Do I have to give? How much? To whom? And am I ever allowed to just enjoy it?
This page gathers the best of what I’ve written on money, giving, and generosity into one place. Whether you are just beginning to consider what faithful stewardship looks like or you are eager to grow in the grace of giving, I hope it will serve you well.
Whose Money Is It?
Everything the Bible says about money rests on one foundational truth: it isn’t ours. In Master Your Finances I lay out this principle of stewardship:
The bank account may be in your name, but it’s not actually your money. The deed to your home may have your first and last name printed at the top, but your house doesn’t truly belong to you. You came into this world naked and empty-handed, and you’ll leave this world naked and empty-handed. All that you enjoy between birth and death is a gift. It belongs to God but is assigned to your care.
To live as a steward is to maintain a constant awareness that “money is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.” One practical way to keep that awareness alive is to interrogate every purchase, and in 4 Really Good Money Questions I commend the four questions John Wesley asked of every expenditure, beginning with the most searching one of all: am I spending this money as if I own it, or as the Lord’s trustee?
Do I Have to Give?
If it is all God’s money, then giving is not optional, but one of the chief purposes for which he entrusts money to us. In Money Matters: Do I Have to Give? I trace the Bible’s teaching from the firstfruits and the tithe to Jesus’ simple assumption—when you give, not if—and then turn to the heart behind it all:
He wants us to give freely. And we can do this when we understand, again, that it is all truly his. If it all belongs to him, if he is the owner and we are the steward, we should be grateful and amazed that we can keep any of it! God could easily demand every bit of money we earn; that would be his right as the owner.
“We are to give willingly and cheerfully and as an act of worship.” And for those who are new to the faith or new to giving—those for whom giving seems to defy every principle of sound personal finance—I wrote Let God Prove Himself:
God cannot prove himself if you will not give him the opportunity. But he can and will prove himself once you create the context. He will prove that he will provide not despite your generosity, but because of it. Because when it comes to God, the normal, accepted, and seemingly common-sense principles of finance just don’t add up.
Give Enough That It Matters
Then comes the question everyone asks: how much? My short answer, from How Much Money Am I Supposed to Give Away?, is this: enough that it matters.
How much am I to give? Enough that it matters. Enough that I am sacrificing some comforts and some experiences I would otherwise enjoy. What the Lord teaches those who give this way is that the joy of giving, both now and eternally, far outweighs what we could have had instead. We don’t give because God needs our money; we give to show our gratitude and our dependence, and in return he returns joy.
In Money Matters: How Much Do I Give? I explain why I take the Old Testament tithe as a baseline rather than a ceiling. “In an age of law, 10% was simple obedience.” I also explain why giving is meant to be felt:
If you aren’t feeling your giving, if you aren’t having to put other plans on hold because of your giving, you are probably not giving enough. There is a special kind of thrill that comes at the end of a year when you look at what you have given that year and see sacrifice. You can see that you could have had a new computer or a new kitchen or a new car, yet you’ve chosen to serve and honor the Lord. That is God-honoring sacrifice. God loves that. God blesses that.
Joy Is for the Generous
Sacrifice sounds grim, but the strange arithmetic of God’s economy is that giving multiplies joy. In Joy Is for the Generous I look at 1 Chronicles 29, where the people of Israel rejoiced precisely because they had given so freely toward the temple:
Money may not be able to purchase the greatest and deepest joy, but it can still generate it. The joy is there for the taking. The joy is there for the giving. The joy is for the generous.
The lottery commercials have it exactly backward, as I argue in Could You Use Some Joy Today?: “The truest joy and the most lasting joy—the joy that bridges earth to heaven—is the joy of giving.” Of course, this kind of giving comes at a real cost, and in The Cost of Radical Generosity I count it honestly: “The Christians I know choose to downgrade their lifestyle in order to upgrade their giving.” And that is no loss at all: “You can’t keep up with the Joneses when you’re committed to radical generosity, and I think that’s exactly how God intends it.”
Rich Folk Like You and Me
Most of us assume the Bible’s warnings to the rich are meant for other people. In Learning to Be Rich, I suggest we widen the lens:
When I compare myself to my neighbors and the other residents of my city, it’s clear that I’m poor. But the more I broaden my view through history and geography, the more I see that I am rich. In fact, the more I see that we are all rich. And if that is the case, there may be parts of the Bible we’ve been convinced are meant for other people, not for us.
So what do the rich and godly look like? In How To Be Rich I walk through Paul’s instructions in 1 Timothy 6: “We are not to be known for our extravagant wealth but our extravagant deeds—deeds done for the good of others and the glory of God.” And if you have ever daydreamed about all the good you would do with a windfall, I Wish I Was Rich punctures the fantasy: “Generosity isn’t about how much you have, but what you do with the bit you do have.”
You already have enough money—enough to do what God means for you to do, enough to prove your loyalty to him and your disloyalty to money. You already have enough to make a difference in lives and ministries. You already have enough to be as generous or as stingy as you would be with billions.
More recently I have been thinking about what faithful stewardship means at the far end of life. In The Color of Money is Gray, I rethink wealth and inheritance for the next generation.
The Path to Contentment
Behind so much of our trouble with money lies discontentment—the conviction that the solution to our unhappiness is always more. But as I write in The Path to Contentment, “true contentment rests with what it has, not with what it desires”:
That’s because at this very moment your discontentment is not actually with what you have, with what you have accomplished, or with what you have earned—your discontentment is with God and with what he has provided. Ultimately, your discontentment is Godward. And such discontentment is not resolved by being given more. The only “more” you need is more of God’s Spirit, God’s values, God’s character. It’s sanctification you lack, not success. It’s holiness that stands between you and contentment, not accomplishment.
Between the Miser and the Spendthrift
It would be easy to conclude that the safe path is simply to spend as little as possible. But money can master us from either direction. In Two Ways to Dishonor God With Your Money I describe the twin dangers of treating money flippantly and obsessing over every cent:
Somewhere between those two opposites lies a smooth middle in which we relate to money healthily and well. We acknowledge that money matters and that we are accountable to God for the ways we use or misuse it.
The harsh reality is that “we can be mastered by our money by spending too much or too little, by thinking about it too often or too seldom.” I return to this theme in How Much Money Is God Not Concerned About?—“The miser is no less a sinner than the spendthrift!”—and conclude that “God loves a cheerful giver and, I’m convinced, a cheerful spender and saver too.” My family has even coined a little phrase to keep ourselves sane before the endless flow of bills and expenses, which I explain in It’s Only Money: “Just like we can make money into a god when we are profligate, we can make money into a god when we are frugal.”
Don’t Forget to Enjoy It
One final word, because faithful stewardship is not austerity: “You are allowed to enjoy your money.” God is the one who richly provides us with everything to enjoy, and in When Was the Last Time You Just Enjoyed Your Money? I make the case for the slightly-too-expensive cup of coffee and the extravagant bouquet of flowers:
And here’s the neat thing: The better you manage your money as God’s money, the greater your enjoyment of these little pleasures. When all you want to do with your money is seek indulgence, it will deliver ever-diminishing pleasures. But when you faithfully steward it, those small pleasures are far richer and far sweeter.
Start Here: Essays on Money and Generosity
- Master Your Finances. The full framework in one place: stewardship, the Parable of the Talents, and practical first steps.
- Money Matters: Do I Have to Give? What the Bible teaches about giving and the heart behind it. (Part 2: How Much Do I Give?)
- How Much Money Am I Supposed to Give Away? My short answer: enough that it matters.
- Let God Prove Himself. Counsel for young or new Christians learning to become cheerful givers.
- Joy Is for the Generous. What 1 Chronicles 29 teaches about the connection between giving and joy.
- Could You Use Some Joy Today? Why the lottery commercials have it exactly backward.
- The Cost of Radical Generosity. A pity party at a soccer game, and the lifestyle generous Christians gladly forgo.
- I Wish I Was Rich. You already have enough money to be as generous or as stingy as you would be with billions.
- Learning to Be Rich. Why the Bible’s words to “the rich in this present age” are for you and me.
- How To Be Rich. Living the lifestyle of the rich and godly according to 1 Timothy 6.
- The Path to Contentment. Why “more” is a thankless master, and where contentment actually begins.
- Two Ways to Dishonor God With Your Money. The twin dangers of flippancy and obsession.
- The Bible’s Three Big Lessons on Debt. Be cautious going in, know its weight, and pay what you owe.
- 13 Ways You Waste Your Money. A practical audit of the little money-wasters that add up.
You can browse everything I’ve written on the subject in the money topic archive.
Explore More
If you would like to go deeper, I have gathered my favorite books on the subject in Books I Recommend: Money—brief, trustworthy titles on stewardship, giving, and generosity. And my Book Recommendations pages gather my favorite books on more than forty other subjects besides.
This guide is one of a series. You can find them all on my guides page.
