The Safest Investment You’ll Ever Make

Every Sunday of my childhood, four men stood at the front of the sanctuary holding brass plates. Before the pastor prayed over the offering, he would always tell a story.

The story was usually about someone giving their last dollar to the Lord: a single mom, a farmer in a drought, a man behind on rent. The details changed but the ending never did. They would give their very last bit, what they couldn't afford, and God paid them back. A surprise check in the mail. A job offer out of nowhere. The story always landed right as the plates started moving.

I don't know if those stories were true. Part of me thinks the pastor didn't either. Heck, maybe they were stories he'd been told as a kid, passed down like the plates themselves.

What I did know were the verses. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. Give, and it will be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, running over. I could recite them before I could explain them. In our house, giving wasn't optional and it wasn't complicated. You gave because God said to, and because God gives it back.

My parents and church taught me to be generous. I'm grateful for that. But somewhere in all those stories about surprise checks, I learned that giving was sort of like a transaction. And it's taken me just about all of thirty years to notice that nobody in the Bible's stories about giving ever gets their money back.

The verse that did the heaviest lifting in my childhood was this one:

“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

— Malachi 3:10

Test me, God says. It's the only place in Scripture where God invites it. And I heard it preached, more than once, as a financial guarantee. Tithe first, watch what happens. One pastor called it the safest investment you'll ever make.

But I never heard anyone read the rest of Malachi. The book isn't a stewardship campaign. It's a rebuke. For those that don't know, at this point God is furious with the priests for offering blemished sacrifices, furious with a people going through religious motions while their hearts drifted. The storehouse itself wasn't a building fund. Under the law, the tithe fed the Levites, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). It was Israel's safety net. When God says you are robbing me, he's not talking about his cut. He's talking about the people the tithe was supposed to protect.

So yes, test me, God says. But the test was never “give and see if you get rich.” The test was “care for the vulnerable and see if I don't keep my covenant.” Like we tend to do, we took a promise made to a community about its widows and turned it into a promise made to individuals about their wallets.

•••

There's a question buried in the first chapter of Job that I think about a lot now. God points to Job as a blameless man, and Satan answers with a sneer:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?”

— Job 1:9

In other words: of course he's faithful. Look what it pays. Take away the livestock and the land and the health, and he'll curse you to your face.

That's the accusation the whole book hangs on. And it's worth sitting with, because the theology I grew up with would have proven Satan right. If I give so that it comes back to me, then I turn God into a cosmic ATM machine. My generosity is a premium on a policy. Strip away the payout and what's left?

Job's answer, sitting in the ashes, is the most expensive sentence in the Old Testament: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” No check in the mail. No job offer out of nowhere. Just God, who was apparently enough.

•••

But here's the wrinkle.

Jesus is the one who said it. “Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.” That's Luke 6:38, red letters. I can't write a post about how giving-for-return is bad theology and quietly ignore that Jesus promised a return.

Here context did for me what it did with Malachi. Two verses earlier, Jesus says to lend “expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). The whole passage is about loving enemies, blessing people who curse you, giving to people who can't or won't pay you back. The promised measure, pressed down and overflowing, comes after you've released the expectation, not as the reason you give in the first place.

That's the untangling that took me thirty years. Scripture doesn't say God ignores generosity. It says the reward is a relationship, not a transaction. A transaction needs the payout to make sense. A relationship gives because of who's on the other side of it. My kids don't hug me because of what it earns them. And the moment they did, it would stop being a hug.

•••

Where we've landed today is a lot more freeing. We give because we want to give. Because I know none of this is actually mine anyways.

But it's also more nuanced than the version I grew up with. There have been seasons we didn't give to our local church. Seasons our giving went to nonprofits and organizations we believed in. Seasons it went directly to people we knew who had a need, no envelope, no deacon, no plate. I used to think that didn't count. I don't think God was ever doing that math.

These days the hardest thing to give isn't money. It's time. Time, talents, and treasure is how I've heard it said, and church tends to put the emphasis on the treasure. Maybe because treasure is the easiest one to hand over without changing your life. A check clears in a day. Showing up for someone could cost you your Saturday, and then maybe another one.

Regardless of what I'm giving, I never regret it. I'm thankful my parents raised me to be generous. The instinct they gave me was right, even where the math was wrong. I want the same for my girls.

But I want them to give because they know what the stories at the front of the sanctuary had backwards. God isn't standing at the end of our generosity holding a surprise check. He's standing at the beginning of it, having already handed over everything, including himself.

The good measure, pressed down and running over, was never the money coming back.

It was him.