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"Peace in the soul is what I believe makes it possible for one set of generous people to live like victors and another set of generous people to use their generosity to perpetuate and/or deal with victim thinking."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 122.
In the past, we have talked about generosity as a strategy fueled by victim thinking. This kind of generosity happens when those trapped in victim thinking use generosity to get the attention, the accolades and the acceptance the damaged soul is so needy of. It isn't that these people aren't being generous in applying this strategy, it is that their motives make it so they can't tap into the power behind being truly generous.
You see, there is a power to generosity that, I believe, taps into the heavenly realm. I know that sounds so mystical and beyond our natural abilities to even comprehend, but bear with me a bit as I explain what I mean by that.
Generosity is all about sharing. Generosity is really about the haves and the have not's. It is when someone who has something that another doesn't and then decided to share that thing that the power of generosity can begin to be understood. I happen to believe this is a trait that was started and perfected by none other than God Himself.
You see, God has everything. He is the ultimate example of one who would fit into the "have" category. His riches go beyond anything we could ever think or imagine. In fact, take a look at today's scripture reading as it relates to the vastness of the riches God has in Heaven.
The angel who spoke to me had a gold measuring stick to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city was perfectly square, as wide as it was long. The angel measured the city with his measuring stick: it was fifteen hundred miles long and was as wide and as high as it was long. The angel also measured the wall, and it was 216 feet high, according to the standard unit of measure which he was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city itself was made of pure gold, as clear as glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation stone was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh yellow quartz, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chalcedony, the eleventh turquoise, the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls; each gate was made from a single pearl. The street of the city was of pure gold, transparent as glass. Revelation 21:15-21 (GNT)
There's a lot of precious materials mentioned in today's reading. I don't know whether the description of this heavenly city is to be taken literally or not. Maybe it was just the author's way of trying to describe how amazing this city was - I really don't know. But for a little bit, let's consider this reading to be literal and see how it might relate to how much God has.
Let's just look at the walls for a second. Our reading today says the walls of the city will be 1500 miles square. They are some 216 feet tall and wide. Now, that's one big wall! The author of this passage says, that the walls are made out of a semi-precious stone called jasper. This stone is a beautiful quartz based stone that is used to make jewelry, among other things. Jasper sells for about $8/pound when bought wholesale. Using the measurements from today's reading, it would take approximately $14.6 trillion dollars to purchase just the stone to make this wall.
For those of us who find these numbers hard to visualize, 14 trillion is the number 14 with twelve zeros after it. To put that into a different perspective, if I were to stack 14.6 trillion dollar bills on top of each other, my stack of George Washington's would reach to the moon and back with a little left over!
No one in the history of mankind has ever had this much money, ever! And, that's just what it would take to purchase the stone required to build just the walls of this heavenly city described in our reading today. If that weren't enough, try to estimate the cost of the gold, so pure it looks like glass, that God uses to pave the streets of His city. When you do the math, this city is some 2.2 million square miles. That's just a little bit smaller than the entire country of Australia! It's going to take a lot of gold to make the roads for this city. The kinds of money we would have to have to even come close to building something so extravagant boggles the mind. When it comes to the haves and the have-not's, God is by far the biggest "have" ever known, just based on this one city He describes in our reading today.
So what does this have to do with generosity. God didn't make this city for His pleasure. It is too small for Him, and frankly, I would imagine it just isn't lavish enough to house His amazing glory. It will be Children like you and me that will get to enjoy the opulent benefits like this amazing city that God promises in Heaven. Out of His abundance, He wants to share with those of us who have less in ways that set the bar impossibly high when it comes to generosity.
Why does God want to share such extravagance with us? Is it because we have something He is missing? Is it because God is starving for attention? I highly doubt any of the victim thinking kinds of reasons for being generous I have exhibited in my life have anything to do with the reasons God wants to be generous with us. No, God's motive comes from one simple word - LOVE.
God's love for us is extravagant. It is generous beyond compare. As impressively generous this amazing and expensive city God promises is, the real generosity God has exhibited came in the form of a child. Jesus is the epitome of generosity when it comes from God's perspective. You see, the city described today, though is hard to believe, comes from God's excess. He has all the money, all the gold, all the precious jewels in the universe at His disposal. He had only one son! By sharing His son with us, we get to step into the fullness of being a Child of His in ways that we won't completely understand until we are walking those streets of gold.
In the meantime, I'm hoping we catch the fact that generosity is a powerful tool in the hands of a loving individual. Love based generosity has the power to change the world, one person at a time. That's what we get to be a part of when we can trade our victim thinking ways for victor living principals.
Next time you are tempted to share something with someone else, check your motives. Is what you are going to share coming from a place that will benefit you in some way? Are you being generous for reasons that will help quiet the victim thinking thoughts that are running through your head? If so, do something really different, don't be generous! That's right stop yourself from sharing whatever that thing is that you are about to give away. Why? Because it is time to live like the victor God has called you to be. Give out of the power of love and watch how that kind of generosity becomes something as precious a streets of gold to those you come into contact with today.
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