“Giving is the greatest pleasure in life.” - Julius Rosenwald

No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, we all want to live like this. We all want to be people who bless others with that level of impact, joy, and dedication.

As we read in proverbs earlier, we want to be a soul of blessing. As inspiring as that story is, and just as much as we might aspire to be that type of person, there is an equal counter-motivator we deal with.

Giving feels like losing.

Whether we are in touch with the feeling itself or not, I imagine if you did a quick inventory of your heart, you would find resonance there. Giving—for many of us—feels like a loss.

We might feel we are losing out on something we want or think we need. We might feel a loss of a greater sense of security. Or perhaps a loss of control. Whatever it is, when faced with the prospect treating our resources the way the Bible describes, our immediate feeling is often... loss.

To some extent this is natural, when we go to the store and give our money, we get our bags immediately. We see where the $100 or more went.

Giving to God might not immediately yield a return, so it might feel like you didn’t get anything back.

Even though God promises that everything we give to Him will be returned in exponentially greater ways, our inability to delay gratification has hamstrung us.