LIFE @ VSIG
LIFE @ VSIG
Losing LIFE with Generosity at Velocity-Scale-Impact in Mind
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David A. Sims, JD PhD AIF® CKA®
Ordinary Time, Saturday, September 14, 2024
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VSIG = Generosity @ Velocity-Scale-Impact.
Those who know me know that I like acronyms and neologisms.[1] The reason I chose VSIG instead of GVSI is because VSIG is easier to say than GVSI. But they mean the same thing.
Velocity-Scale-Impact Generosity = Generosity @ Velocity-Scale-Impact.
The VSIG flow this morning.
I woke up at 5:03 am.
My good friend and brother in Christ Ben Peays had invited me to my first Radical donor retreat (RDCL WKND). It’s at this fantastic place called the Lost Pines Resort and Spa outside Austin. We finished last night on an incredibly powerful and uplifting high note woven through Word, prayer, worship, and exhortation to give radically to the Great Commission by David Platt and his Radical team.
If you get invited to one of these, please go. You. Will. Not. Want. To. Miss. It. Trust me.
So anyway, I’m super tired last night, finally falling asleep around 11:00 am, fully expecting to sleep in until at least 7:00 am after a shorter than expected sleep the night before. But that’s not happening. My mind begins to wander into last night, which Ben and I wrapped up with a brief walk-talk and prayers.
As I try to fall back asleep, VSIG = Generosity @ Velocity-Scale-Impact popped into my head, and I knew I had to get up. Make some coffee. And write this.
LIFE @ VSIG.
I’ve recently explained how VSIG came about conceptually for me through meeting Daryl Heald back in August of 2022.[2] First time I heard the LIFE acronym was in a Generous Giving video interview of Pete and Deb Ochs (https://generousgiving.org/pete-and-deb-ochs-jailhouse-generosity).
What is a LIFE? It’s our:
Labor
Influence
Finances
Expertise-Experience
We could add “Time” and the “Wisdom” gained through time and experience. But that would make the acronym cumbersome. Of course, both are understood and woven into LIFE.
So a LIFE @ VSIG, in my mind, is a LIFE lived intentionally with VSIG as its telos, as its end game. The way we put it in our advisory practice is to Begin with the End in Mind (BEM) of becoming a generous steward who leaves a lasting legacy.
That’s impact. It’s relational impact first and foremost. It’s a profound way to leverage your Influence for God’s glory through the magnification of Jesus and the gospel.
Influentially Laboring to leverage our Finances with relational wisdom guided by our Expertise-Experience brings about Generosity @ Velocity-Scale-Impact. It changes lives. It’s LIFE @ VSIG. You can see it as a way in the 21st century to lose your life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel (Mark 8:34-35, 10:29-30).
The Holy Spirit working in God’s children through generous giving and generous living creates rippling impacts upon the God-neighbor relationality in the world, expanding God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven bringing glory to God in the church and in Christ Jesus, as Paul puts it.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
What came together this morning from last night.[3]
Pun intended, it was “Radical.”
It’s what I shared with Ben at the end of last night’s session. Thanks to my inaugural RDCL WKND (which, by the way, was excellent, enriching, and reviving in every way), here’s how I see a practical LIFE @ VSIG passion projects coming together for me.
As Ben knows, I’m passionate about Third Millennium Ministries (IIM) (https://thirdmill.org).
Biblical education.
For the world.
For free.
It’s first-class biblical education too. And right now IIIM is being used by over 2,000,000 pastors and church leaders around the world in about 24 of what are known as “gateway languages” in the world today.
For free.
IIM wants to get its curricula into all 44 gateway languages asap.
I had the privilege of forming IIIM back in 1998 and filing its Form 1023 with the IRS, helping it secure its 501(c)(3) exempt status just before moving with Tamara and our five children at the time to Little Rock to join FamilyLife.
Richard Pratt had the vision for IIIM. He was one of my seminary professors at RTS Orlando when 13 of us formed the first class in the fall of 1989. Tamara and I have been partners with IIIM ever since, but in 2021 we came much more deeply vested in it after Richard and I were reconnected through the loss of our mutual dear friend and brother in Christ, Tom Dewitt, who lost his life to COVID earlier that year.
I have a vision for, and am both believing and working toward, God using my LIFE with others’ LIFEs to help IIM expand its mission in the world at VSI. In particular, I would like to help IIIM raise an endowment of $160M, which prudently managed could fund IIIM’s infrastructure costs and free up resources to accelerate its mission over the next several decades.
Last night, I saw the same thing for Radical. It’s budget is $12M/year. To fund that at a prudently invested rate only $228,136,882 would be needed for an endowment. Let’s round that up to $230M.
So after last night’s session, and in view of everything I heard the night before and throughout yesterday, I turned to Ben and said something to the effect of: “Bro, Radical and IIIM need to be working hand-in-glove. With $130T - $180T out there in the hands of wealthy Christians,[4] I believe we can use our LIFEs to syndicate $390M to provide endowments for Radical and IIIM.”
Ben’s wife, Lynae, and their friends Health and Tabitha Hale were in on the conversation. Ben said, “Yes. We need to the same for Bless.” Heath and Tabitha founded Bless (https://bless.world). Bless is doing a mind-blowing leveraged and important work in helping reach UPGs (Unreached People Groups).
I ran the numbers. Rounded up, that would take just another $40M.
So all in we’re only looking at $270M.
With the work Ben is doing with Daryl Heald at 100Fold (https://www.100foldgiving.org), and with the major donors in the vested relational networks of Bless, Radical, and IIIM, it should be easy to syndicate $270M for those endowments.
That’s LIFE @ VSIG.
With $130T to $180T of wealth out there in the hands of American Christians, it’s going to take a lot of work and an army of servants and stewards to pull off the LIFE @ VSIG task before us.
But think about it. The way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
Bless is but one bite.
Radical is another.
IIIM is the next.
And on and on goes the feast, until the $130T to $180T is fully deployed and invested in Jesus-and-the-gospel-centered-kingdom-expanding-good-works-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven.
Ora et labora, and steward on, my wealthy brothers and sisters with “great possessions”![5]
[1] In January of 2006, I had to defend my neologism “the AAEC = the Affluent American-Evangelical Child” in my thesis defense at the University of Durham in England. I was sweating bullets, but by the grace of God the defense was successful. Eventually, I was able to publish my thesis under the title, The Child in American Evangelicalism and the Problem of Affluence: A Theological Anthropology of the Affluent American-Evangelical Child in Late Modernity (Sisters, OR: Pickwick/Wipf and Stock, 2009).
[2] “The 100Fold CFO: Charitable Family Offices and the Charitable Family Officer” (https://www.davidsimsjdphd.com/2024/09/100-fold-cfo/).
[3] Something similar happened to me in October of 2022 after I attended my first Hope Summit at Belmont University in Nashville and heard Dr. Greg Jones interview Dr. Kim Tan (). And shortly after that, my good friend the Netweaver Kay Hiramine wove a personal meeting with Kim. I woke up the next day and just had to start writing this essay “The Rights of the Poor” which I finished the next month.
[4] For more on this, see “The 100Fold CFO: Charitable Family Offices and the Charitable Family Officer” (https://www.davidsimsjdphd.com/2024/09/100-fold-cfo/).
[5] Remember: if you know Jesus you are already unfathomably wealthy and possessed with everything Christ owns. The Bible saliently points out that every believer is wealthy and rich beyond anything that can be imagined. They are so wealthy and rich it’s “unfathomable” according to Paul (Ephesians 3:8; see also Ephesians 1:3 and Colossians 2:10). The Greek word translated “unfathomable” is anexichniastos, which means beyond finding out, unsearchable, cannot be tracked out. It’s the idea that the blessings possessed now by those who believe in Jesus and the gospel of his bodily death, burial, and bodily life after bodily death are blessings of wealth and riches in Christ too deep to be measured. The finite simply cannot comprehend the infinite.
Advising the 100Fold CFO
Advising the 100Fold CFO
A Thought Experiment and Seven Questions for the Charitable Family Officer Advisor
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David A. Sims, JD PhD AIF® CKA®
Ordinary Time, September 24, 2024
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Imagine this.
You’re the trusted gatekeeping advisor to two billionaires.[1] All advice and all other advisors, whether lawyers or accountants or investment and wealth managers or insurance agents, only get through your client’s gate by going through you.
Why? Because your client trusts you, and you’ve genuinely earned their trust. That’s a good feeling and a good thing. It’s just about the highest level of fiduciary responsibility there is.
Imagine also that you’re a genuine Christian. Born again. Blood-washed, Jesus-and-the-gospel centered, faith-driven, passionate about doing your part in expanding God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. You take the Bible seriously. You see it as God’s Word inscripturated (i.e., written) by the Holy Spirit through holy men centuries ago. You love God, your neighbor, and your siblings in Christ.
For you, the Bible bears authoritative and final witness to God’s Word incarnated, Jesus Christ, the uniquely begotten Beloved Son in whom God is ultimately well-pleased. It shows you the path to follow in life to true worship of God (what biblical theologians call “orthodoxy”) and to true love of neighbor as oneself (what biblical theologians call “orthopraxy” or “orthopraxis”). You know the Bible says that you can’t have one without the other. You cannot say you love Jesus and not do what he says, in other words. You know that it’s impossible say that God’s love abides in you if you “have the world’s goods” and see your “brother in need” but close your “heart against him.” You know you must love in both “deed and truth” and not just “with word or with tongue” (1 Jn 3:16-17).
Right?
Now imagine that one of your billionaire clients is a believer in Jesus and the gospel of his death, burial, and bodily life after bodily death and the other is a non-believer. And let’s say each of them ask you, their most trusted advisor, the following question: “If you had my money, what would you do?”
What do you think of this response?
If I had your money, I wouldn’t be talking to you, or anybody else. I’d build a castle on an island with a moat and make sure I was left alone. That would be the ideal lifestyle for me. But that might make you miserable, so let’s focus on your life and the outcomes you want to achieve. It doesn’t matter what I would do. What really matters is what’s best for you, your family, and your business. So let’s talk through how each of the different possibilities affects your life. Then you’ll be able to choose the possibility that will work best for what you want to achieve.[2]
I’m guessing you’re thinking what I’m thinking: “That’s not what the Bible would counsel me to say. And I certainly wouldn’t express my vision, freedom, and responsibility for such wealth like that!”
But here are a few questions for us trusted gatekeeping advisors to ponder:
- What vision do you have for your life, whether you have that wealth or not?
- What would you do with the freedom and responsibility that comes wich such wealth?
- What does the Bible counsel me to say in response to such a question?
- Does the Bible counsel me to say one thing to the believer and another to the non-believer? If so, why? And where? What texts would you use?
- What response would please God most?
- How would Jesus respond?
- What is my greatest risk as a Christian advisor in getting the answer wrong?
My next essay explores answers to these questions from Scripture with Jesus and the gospel in view as the sun in the solar system of life.
Ora et labora, brothers and sisters advising the wealthy!
[1] Or, say, to someone who has a 9, or an 8, or a 7 figure net worth. In relative terms, High Net Worth persons or couples (HNW) have between $1M and $10M of liquid or investable net worth. Very-High Net Worth persons or couples (VHNW) have between $10M and $30M of liquid or investable net worth. Ultra-High Net Worth persons or couples (UHNW) have over $3OM of liquid or investable assets. Opinions vary regarding billionaires, but obviously to be a billionaire you have at least a net worth of $1B (combined of both liquid such as cash and investments and illiquid assets such as real estate). Billionaires are described variously as “Super Rich” or “Uber Net Worth” (UNW) planetary inhabitants. In the United States, they are esteemed as integral members of the American upper class, the American elite. According to the last count by Forbes, “there are a mere 735 billionaires in the U.S. The millionaires are more plentiful—almost 22 million.” https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/how-many-billionaires-and-millionaires-live-in-the-u-s/.
[2] This is precisely the advice that the self-proclaimed and self-aggrandizing “Expert Private Wealth Advisor P. J. DiNuzzo” commends in his book, The DiNuzzo “Middle-Market Family Office” Breakthrough: Creating Strategic Tax, Risk, Cash-Flow, and Lifestyle Options for Successful Privately-Held Business Owners and Affluent Families (New York: Morgan James Publishing, 2022 Kindle Edition), 59.
100Fold CFO
The 100Fold CFO
David Sims, JD PhD AIF®
Thesis.
The 100Fold CFO can help liberate Christian billionaires (and other wealthy Christians[1]) to believe and obey the call of Jesus in the 21st century to dispossession, liquidation, and donation of their wealth for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized on the underside of humanity, thereby losing their lives for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, inheriting eternal life, entering God’s reign in their lives both now and in the future, and hastening the end game that will inaugurate the new beginning about which Jesus spoke toward the end of his earthly ministry: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14).
The issue.
Depending on who you talk to, there’s an estimated amount of wealth, right now, in the hands of Christians living in the United States somewhere in the range of between $130 to $180 trillion.
Yes, $130T to $180T.
What can be done to get it moving at velocity, scale, and impact (VSI) such that the light of the gospel manifests from the good works done by God’s children in the world today and glorifies our Father who is in heaven?[2]
How the “100Fold CFO” idea came about.
It first came to my mind in a conversation with Daryl Heald, perhaps the greatest generosity catalyzer of our generation. He was sharing his 100Fold vision and experiential perspective regarding the trillions of Christian capital not moving at VSI (the first time I had heard that concept) for good in the world. Daryl was, and is, burdened to help God’s children experience the liberating joy of generosity and generous living. He’s one joyfully free cat if you ask me.
As we sat there talking at the departing flight drop-off spot, right up to the point he had to run through TSA pre-check, the “100Fold CFO” popped into my head.[3] We agreed that the conversation would continue.
The problem.
Wealth is stuck in the hands of Christians. It’s not moving at VSI for good as it should. It can be viewed as a wealth norovirus that has been described popularly as “affluenza”[4] and biblically as a kind of spiritual-moral disease that chokes out gospel freedom and good works.
Jesus put it this way to his 1st century audience and also to us affluent Christians in the 21st: “And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mk 4:18-19).
Christian billionaires and wealthy believers in general are faced with a problem. Wealth constipation. What’s needed is some good ole gospel ex-lax.
Forbes got it right for the most part back in October 2023:
Instagram. TikTok. The technology and business section of every newspaper. All of these outlets feed the American public a nonstop stream of the world’s wealthiest people, from their lifestyles to their latest obsessions. And while they might seem like they’re everywhere, America’s richest are few in number.
Well, the billionaires at least. As of 2023, there are a mere 735 billionaires in the U.S. The millionaires are more plentiful—almost 22 million. But being one of America’s wealthiest won’t solve your every problem. Even billionaires struggle, which is why it’s important to chart a path toward your own definition of wealth.[5]
I’m not sure how many of these American billionaires are believers. It’s hard to find solid estimates. But I know there are quite a few and that many of them are doing incredibly great things.[6]
For Christian billionaires, Forbes is both spot on and spot off.
Spot on: “being one of America’s wealthiest won’t solve your every problem.” Wealthy folks have problems that the surviving and struggling to survive don’t have, that much is true. It’s what’s known as “first world” problems of affluence. Navigating those waters and charting a path can be difficult and fraught with pain. The Charitable CFO can help wealthy Christians anticipate the storms and set a course to true freedom for the sake of Jesus and the gospel in the 21st century and beyond.
Spot off: Forbes missed it for Christians who take Scripture seriously when it advised, “chart a path toward your own definition of wealth.” Charting a path toward your own definition of wealth? That’s really is not an option for Christian billionaires and other wealthy Christians. At least it’s not an option if you believe the Scriptures, which define wealth quite clearly for God’s children.
You see, the Bible makes three things very clear:
- God owns everything: our time, talent, treasure, bodies and souls, our very breath, the world and all it contains.[7]
- We’re God’s stewards.[8]
- We’re called to develop and prepare the next generation of stewards for a life of faithful stewardship of what God owns.
Believers have a wealth-defining path already laid out for them in Scripture. Jesus makes it clear that to be his disciple three life habits must be evidenced and practiced: (1) deny yourself; (2) take up your cross; and (3) follow him (Mark 8:34). He makes it even clearer in the following verses that to be his disciple means to lose your life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel (Mark 8:35-38). Interestingly, the phrase “for My sake and for the gospel’s” is repeated in Mark 10:29 after the sad and disheartening exchange the rich man had with Jesus.
The Bible saliently points out that every believer is already wealthy and rich beyond anything that can be imagined. They are so wealthy and rich it’s “unfathomable” according to Paul (Ephesians 3:8; see also Ephesians 1:3 and Colossians 2:10). The Greek word translated “unfathomable” is anexichniastos, which means beyond finding out, unsearchable, cannot be tracked out. It’s the idea that the blessings possessed now by those who believe in Jesus and the gospel of his bodily death, burial, and bodily life after bodily death are blessings of wealth and riches in Christ too deep to be measured. The finite simply cannot comprehend the infinite.
The problem is that Christians in the United States (and elsewhere, I suppose) don’t believe this, both functionally and practically. They just don’t really believe that they already are unfathomably rich and wealthy. They certainly don’t feel it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. As God’s children, all of us are rich beyond comprehension.
Why don’t we believe and feel it?
It’s got to be because, relatively speaking, we’re not. At least compared to the 735 billionaires and 22 millionaires Forbes tells us are swimming around in their surplus wealth right before our very eyes on every screen we see, don’t you think?
Boomers and GenXers, Yers, Zers, and Alphas all live in a culture of wealth, luxury, and excess that was pretty much unimaginable to previous generations of Americans, except for the uber-minority privileged Super Rich born into it. Now, however, if you’re born in America, you might think it’s your right to be Super Rich or you might be duped into dreaming and believing that it’s the key to happiness.
That’s a problem, no doubt.
But it’s not necessarily the problem the Charitable CFO addresses.
The problem wealthy Christians have is the problem of affluence. It’s the problem of being truly free to follow the call of Jesus to lose their lives for his sake and the sake of the gospel, which means, I contend on the authority of Scripture, a life of faithful obedience to love God supremely and neighbor as self, which go hand in glove.
What does that mean in the 21st century?
How do wealthy Christians possessing $130T to $180T in wealth chart the right path to true freedom in Christ for the good of others and glory of God?
100Fold in the Bible.
The Greek word translated “hundredfold” is hekaton. It appears seven times in Scripture.[9]
Think about it: hekaton is a great word. $130T – $180T is a heck a ton of wealth!
And a hekaton (100Fold) of wealth confronts 100Folders with both opportunities and problems.
Just ask the “man” with “great possessions” who came to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark seeking an answer to a vital, burning question: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mk 10:17, 22).
The man had a great opportunity to “inherit eternal life” by pursuing true freedom in following Jesus and building wealth that will last forever. Jesus made it plain to him, answering honestly and bluntly.
How could he do it? By believing and obeying the call to discipleship Jesus made to him that was to be demonstrated in dispossession, liquidation, and donation to the poor. The call to discipleship for this man was to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Jesus in this very particular manner (Mk 8:34, 10:21). In exchange, he would “inherit eternal life…have treasure in heaven…[and] enter the kingdom of God” (Mk 10:17, 21, 23).
But, dishearteningly and sorrowfully (Mk 10:22), this man of great possessions and wealth found himself quite unfree to inherit, unfree to experience what he sought from Jesus and what Jesus was offering, both now and in the future: a 100Fold inheritance.
How so?
First, Jesus shocks his disciples after looking around and says: “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk 10:23, emphasis added).
Second, Jesus put it straight to his “amazed” and “exceedingly astonished” disciples who had “left everything and followed” him, who understandably asked with incredulity, “Then who can be saved?” (Mk 10:24,26):
“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mk 10:29-31).
No doubt in this exchange when the disciples heard “for my sake and for the gospel” they also heard echoes of what Jesus said earlier in his ministry about the cost of discipleship: “If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever…loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:34-36).
What does it look like for Christian billionaires (and other wealthy Christians) to lose their lives for the sake of Jesus and the gospel in the 21st century along the road the rich man in the Gospels was called to walk? The 100Fold CFO provides a practical biblical-theological means of walking into a path of future stewarded good works (1 Pet 4:10; Eph 2:10; 1 Tim 6:6-19).
The 100Fold dilemma and 100Fold CFO solution.
The rich 1st century man in the Gospels was not free to follow Jesus because his “great possessions” possessed him.
He suffered from a condition known as dyshekatontaplasiona, also known by its abbreviated form, dyshekatonitis.[10] It can be fatal if not transformed for the sake of Jesus and the gospel.
I believe Christian billionaires (and other wealthy Christians) in the 21st century are presented with an unprecedented opportunity to joyfully and wholeheartedly say Yes to Jesus, unlike the rich man who said No and walked away disheartened and sorrowful from the person and work of Jesus to which he was called.
The 100Fold CFO opens the present and future to this possibility. I explain its three components below: BEM, SODAF, FOHOS. But before doing that, I need to tell you how I got onto it all.
The 100Fold idea.
I first heard the “100Fold” idea from Daryl Heald, a generosity guru living on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I’m blessed to know Daryl and consider him a dear friend and brother in Christ.
I also came to learn about VSI in the generosity space from Daryl. He’s a visionary who only works on VSI projects that have high probabilities of successfully moving the needle of expanding God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven by doing those good works that God has prepared beforehand for those created in Christ Jesus to walk into the future and do for God’s glory “in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever” (Ephesians 2:10).
The proof of success is in the pudding of generosity projects that Daryl has led or catalyzed in his five decades of life. Case in point: Generous Giving and Generosity Path movements begun in 2000 (https://generousgiving.org/team-and-board/daryl-j-heald, https://www.generositypath.org/about).
Another case in point: one of Daryl’s other current VSI kingdom-expanding projects is LeaderCare (https://leadercare.us), which Daryl’s 100Fold project is funding (https://www.100foldgiving.org/about-us). Daryl and our mutual friend Kay Hiramine invited me to participate in it a couple of years ago. I have the privilege of serving in the financial flourishing component of this VSI project
This is another example of Daryl’s heart for God and heart for God’s people, which are inseparable according to Scripture (1 John 4:21). Daryl loves Jesus and the gospel and believes what God says in the Bible about stewardship and responsibility, acting on it with the full assurance of faith that God is at work in him to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil 2:13).
The 100Fold CFO’s history.
It was August 2022 on the way to the Bill and Hilary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas.
We had been meeting for the first time the day before. And then on the ride to the airport the next day, we had a long discussion on generosity among the uber-wealthy that has continued episodically since. We sat outside the airport talking until Daryl realized he had to run to catch his flight. I was squeezing a good deal of generosity juice out of him up to the last minute, as I had been the past couple of days.
Meeting Daryl and getting my brain around what he’d been cooking up since 2000 with Generous Giving was life-giving and coherency-creating. It helped coalesce practically what I have been wrestling with since 2000 academically and professionally. Meeting Daryl came about from Kay’s introduction. This is just one example of thousands of why Kay is known as the uber-Netweaver, the Holy Smoker who spins up more “holy mischief” (as Kay likes to put it) than any human being I know.
As it is with Kay, it seemed then and seems now like Daryl is another brother and friend in Christ I’ve known for many years. As I reflected on what this generosity guru began in 2000 and has journeyed into e/Evangelical[11] affluence in the U.S. and around the world since then, it began to strike me that I had begun a different but parallel journey into that same space and in the same year at the University of Durham in England.[12]
This essay, in one sense, is about the ongoing journey of these parallel paths and how, at least in my mind, they converged on that ride to the airport in August 2022 and have been intersecting ever since.
Christian affluence is stuck.
It was stuck then. It’s stuck now. It’s not moving at velocity, scale, and impact (VSI), as Daryl likes to put it.
At least not yet.
That’s what Daryl’s 100Fold vision and project is all about. Leveraging Christian wealth at VSI. That’s what Daryl was cooking up in his mind in 2022 (and probably way before). He is bringing it to the table of Christian affluence in 2024.
“There’s so much wealth out there,” he told me at lunch in Chattanooga a few months back. So true ($130T – $180T).
Yes, trillions. And it is stuck. It’s not moving at VSI. If Daryl has his way, and if his 100Fold lead steward, Ben Peays, has anything to do about it, things just might change over the next decade or two. Who knows, Daryl and Ben might be God’s enema boys to get the affluenza norovirus infecting American e/Evangelical Christians flushed out.
I don’t know about you, but as a 21st century Jesus-and-the-gospel follower (Mk 8:31-35, 10:29) I wouldn’t want to be caught dead with trillions of dollars stuck in my pocket. Not in light of texts like Luke 12:13-21 and 16:19-31 or Matthew 25:31-46. Biblical texts like these comfort the afflicted and, at least should, afflict the comfortable. Assuming we’re awake to God’s heart and mind for the poor and afflicted at our doorsteps and on our screens in the world today (many if not most of whom are our brothers and sisters in Christ), these words of Jesus serve as affluence buzz kills that can awaken us affluent e/Evangelicals in the U.S. out of our mind-numbing affluenza. Or at least they can, if we allow them to. That’s a pretty big IF.
Think about it. Would you want to be caught dead with trillions in your pocket when you breathe your last breath? With anything in your pocket, for that matter?
Hope you don’t. This is one reason both personally and professionally I practice BEM.
Please allow me to make my case for the 100Fold CFO to show you how we can do just that. Die with nothing in our pockets. Die with everything we have leveraged for those “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Why? Because we are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works….”
The 100Fold CFO idea is birthed.
Daryl shared a couple of stories with me on the way to the airport that morning, each arising out of a Journey of Generosity (JoG) he had led. As always happens when you lead a JoG, those attending with uber-wealth inevitably want to talk, to seek counsel. They want to know what they should do. Their hearts have been stirred. They seem to sense that something is amiss. It seems like a deep vital interest, a hunger and thirst has begun to be stirred up within them.
It’s almost like they’re having an internal dialogue, simultaneously asking and saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? All these good deeds I’ve done, all the commands of God I’ve kept. What do I still lack?”
In one of the JoGs, a couple who attended sought a private audience with Daryl. Something was stirring in them. They wanted counsel at the start of their 7th decade, not sure how to go about the task of generosity in their remaining time on earth. They didn’t know where to start.
Following his notoriously frustrating post-JoG Socratic method, rejecting the temptation of being didactic and providing answers, Daryl asked open-ended questions.
“What’s your secret sauce in business?” Without a thought, the husband clicked off a list of a dozen or so steps he took to build a business that free cash flows $500 million a year. They were multi-billionaires.
Daryl asked me, “What do you think they give each year?”
“Are they believers? Generous?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, $50M a year.”
Not even close. It whittled all the way down to $3M a year. Say what? I thought you said they were generous.
A real modern-day Socrates, Daryl asks me another question: “Why do you think their giving is so low?”
“Uh, I don’t know, Daryl. Tell me.”
Instead of telling me, he went on with his story.
He told me they asked him: “What do you think it will take to create a plan of generous dispossession and donation at the same velocity, scale, and impact that your business has?”
Crickets.
They had no idea what to do or where to start. Their children were already uber-wealthy from the surplus family value and their successes in businesses and careers with no real interest in helping mom and dad figure out how to spend the rest of their lives giving their wealth way, much less to the poor.
They were stuck. What to do? To what end is all this wealth?
I said to Daryl, “What needs to be created is something like a ‘Charitable Family Office’ – a CFO paradigm and methodology. For those less evangelically inclined it could be called the ‘Philanthropic Family Office’ or PFO.
He smiled and gave me a look that said, “Yep, I’m way ahead of you.” We talked some more and then he bolted out of Ginny to catch his flight.
Over the next several months and years, I’ve come to learn that 100Fold was the vision Daryl had back then and is now beginning to instantiate. It’s coming to life. And I’m just now getting caught up to write about the 100Fold CFO.
What is the 100Fold CFO?
Put simply, it’s a legal, financial, tax-efficient means of dispossession, liquidation, and donation of wealth that can set 21st Christian billionaires (and wealthy Christians) free to give to the poor and follow Jesus in the way of the cross.
The 100Fold CFO can set uber-wealthy Christians free to complete in the 21st century what began in the 1st with the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus and his consequent reception of the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father and pouring out of God’s empowering presence in the world upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. An empowering presence in the world today whether true Jesus-and-the-gospel centered orthodoxy and orthopraxy is found.
This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing (Acts 2:32-33)
The three components of the 100Fold CFO.
The three components I have developed apply to all Christians, and it is the work my team and I have the privilege of doing with our Christian clients.
We view ourselves as “servants of Christ” who is at worth in them and as “stewards of the mysteries of God” in partnership with them as they walk into the good works prepared beforehand for them to do (1 Cor 4:1, Eph 2:10, 1 Pet 4:10). And we take Paul seriously when he says, “In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy” (1 Cor 4:2).
This is the biblical fiduciary standard. It shows us what is ultimate to God and therefore should be ultimate to us. Put simply, what is ultimate to God and should be ultimate to us are the person and work of Christ Jesus and his gospel. This person and this factual reality of good news for the world are what God ultimately treasures. We know this is true because God, for the first and only time in human history, said this about Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). In other words, the person and work of Christ (i.e., Jesus and the gospel) are supreme, are ultimate in God’s affections and will. Everything else is penultimate and must serve that which is ultimate to God.
In our practice of advising believing clients, we take the phrase “stewards of the mysteries of God” to mean stewards of the ministry and message of Jesus and the gospel for which our clients are called to lose their lives under their unique facts and circumstances (see Mark 8:31-38, 9:31, 10:29, 10:32-34; 1 Cor 15:1-4). It is a very fact-driven contingent method, process, and system. For wealthy Christians, the complexity and magnitude of issues seem to increase in proportion to the magnitude of wealth. This makes great sense given the story of the rich man in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And we see it worked out practically in what we do, the goal of which is to develop generous stewards who leave lasting legacies.
Component #1 – the telos: BEM. Begin with the End in Mind.
All too often we are so wrapped up in the present and where we want to get that we forget to think about the future. But both God and the Bible exhort us to think about the future. A lot.
Most financial and wealth advisors are trained to provide and habitually practice providing advice that begins with the present and works toward the future.
We flip that on its head and begin our planning process by helping our wealthy clients begin with the future and work back to the present. We help them imagine being at the point of breathing their last breaths. I tell them to think about that scene on the Titanic where the elderly couple is lying down in their cabin holding hands, preparing to die together. They had given up their seats on the lifeboat so that others could live their lives before them. They were at peace and ready to die together.
Strangely, this approach is liberating for our clients. Thinking about how they want to breathe their last breath, where they want to be when they do, with whom they want to be, and what they want to own when they enter into that long sleep awaiting bodily resurrection when Christ returns, seems to bring them a sense of peace and release.
Teleology, or teleological ethics, is the theory of morality that derives duty or moral obligation from what is good or desirable as an end to be achieved.[13]
From the historic orthodox Christian theological-ethical vantage point, the telos for Christians is this: glorify God through good works.
By “historic orthodox Christian theological-ethical vantage point,” I mean Christian orthodoxy (right belief/faith/trust) and Christian orthopraxy (right faithful practice). They cannot be separated.
You cannot say you love God and hate your neighbor.
You cannot say you love God and care nothing for the poor.
But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth (1 Jn 3:16-17).
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself (Js 2:15-17).
In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:35)
You just can’t.
This essay is a call to us 21st-century affluent believers to do what Paul says we should be doing habitually on every point of faith and practice: “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” ( 2 Cor 13:5).
Throughout the centuries, this ultimate theological-ethical telos for Christians has been revealed in Scripture in multiple ways.
Here is a sampling from the New Testament:
Jesus
Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Mt 5:16).
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets (Mt 22:37-40).
Looking at him, Jesus showed love to him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me’ (Mk 10:21).
And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.’
(Lk 4:17-19)
And He raised His eyes toward His disciples and began saying, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Lk 6:20).
‘No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’ Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were ridiculing Him. And He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of people, but God knows your hearts; because that which is highly esteemed among people is detestable in the sight of God’ (Lk 16:13-16).
James
My brothers and sisters, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and is dressed in bright clothes, and a poor man in dirty clothes also comes in, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the bright clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters: did God not choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the good name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as violators. For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all….So speak, and so act, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom….What use is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself (Js 2:14-17).
John
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him? Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
Paul
And now I entrust you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands served my own needs and the men who were with me. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this way you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:32-35).
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Eph 2:4-10).
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs….As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life (1 Timothy 6:6-19).
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, eager for good deeds (Titus 2:11-14).
The process: SODAF
Simplify.
Organize.
Delegate.
Automate.
Fractionalize.
Billionaires by necessity must simplify, organize, delegate, and automate their processes for creating and managing wealth and the risks attendant thereto. They establish what is known as a “family office” with a staff of accountants, attorneys, asset managers, administrative assistants, etc. Typically, there is a gatekeeper adviser entrusted by billionaires with the primary responsibility of running the family office.
The thing that crystallized from my conversations with Daryl that day and is corroborated in the multi/fractional family office practice I manage for my clients as their gatekeeping fiduciary is that the very same processes, systems, disciplines, and practices applied in creating and managing wealth and risks must be applied to the CFO. This is how we will get Christian wealth moving at VSI.
One principle that has come to me in the process of pursuing fiduciary excellence over the years is fractionalization. This is a distinctive usually not found in the traditional family office. A commitment to fractionalizing ownership is a key step to enjoying the liberating power of generosity and to establishing the CFO. Cultivating and maintaining a mindset of fractionalization in the CFO running the CFO is crucial to accelerating VSI Generosity (VSIG).
What does it mean to fractionalize? Simply put, it is the intentional process of divesting private ownership into charitable ownership. It is revealed in Scriptures such as Mark 10:30 and Acts 2;44-45 and 4:32-45.[14]
The mindset of fractionalization in the CFO running the CFO is cultivated and transformed through deep immersion in Scripture and seeing the link between “good works” in the New Testament and helping the poor on the underside of humanity. It starts with asking and choosing to believe that it truly is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) and that we can be content if we have food and clothing (1 Tim 6:8; Heb 13:5-6; Mt 19:19-34; Dt 10:12-22).
The commitment of the CFO running the CFO is to transfer wealth to a charitable framework established with the primary goal and purpose of generosity at VSI. Whatever “food and clothing” means for the CFO running the CFO can adequately be provided through a private operating foundation or other charitable structure. Freely chosen net worth and income goals or “financial finish lines” are steps to stewardship freedom.[15]
The system: FOHOS
FOHOS is short for the Family Office and Holdings Operating System. It incorporates BEM and SODAF. It is designed and staffed accordingly. Everything is oriented and focused on the future that is in God’s good hands with the consciousness that time is limited and the VSIG of wealth is the goal. The end game is to leverage wealth for good works helping the poor, oppressed, marginalized, weak, hopeless, etc., to end of making Jesus and the gospel known in the world today. Not just cash gifts and grant-making to feed and clothe the poor, but as importantly kingdom-expanding and kingdom-impacting investments that create opportunities for God’s children to participate in meaningful and life-sustaining work in businesses established and run by Christian owners and CEOs who view their business as ministries and missions.
Our first-century brothers and sisters in Christ were known for their good works helping the poor that magnified Jesus and preached the gospel. The first four centuries of Christian history provide ample evidence of this fact.[16]
The FOHOS can help solve what I call the wealthy Christian’s kingdom FOMO, the affluent Christian’s nagging sense, “what am I still lacking?”
CFOs running CFOs understand that preaching the gospel without meeting the needs of the poor on their doorsteps and screens leaves a gaping black hole in the gospel. It sucks light and light out of the gospel. They realize that preaching the gospel through meeting the needs of the poor on their doorsteps and screens collapses the black hole and manifests shining lights of good works in humanity that glorify their Father who is in heaven.
The fundamental operative principle of the CFO FOHOS is to apply all the expertise, energy, creativity, innovation, technology, investment, time, staffing, etc., to the CFO as was applied to the businesses, ventures, investments, etc., that created the wealth in the first place.
With $130T to $180T of wealth out there in the hands of American Christians, it’s going to take a lot of work and an army of servants and stewards to pull of the VSIG task before us.
Ora et labora, and steward on, my wealthy brothers and sisters with “great possessions”!
And let these words of Jesus cook in your noodle for a bit as you consider BEM and SODAF with your FOHOS: “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!…. Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23-25).
And with the words of Jesus about the “kingdom of God” ringing in your ears go to Matthew 6:19-34 and meditate on two basic questions: “Am I looking at the birds and considering the lilies in my life? Am I free from the anxieties of affluence in my life?” I encourage you to Think Birds and Lilies.
[1] In relative terms, High Net Worth persons or couples (HNW) have between $1M and $10M of liquid or investable net worth. Very-High Net Worth persons or couples (VHNW) have between $10M and $30M of liquid or investable net worth. Ultra-High Net Worth persons or couples (UHNW) have over $3OM of liquid or investable assets. Opinions vary regarding billionaires, but obviously to be a billionaire you have at least a net worth of $1B (combined of both liquid such as cash and investments and illiquid assets such as real estate). Billionaires are described variously as “Super Rich” or “Uber Net Worth” (UNW) planetary inhabitants. In the United States, they are esteemed as integral members of the American upper class, the American elite. According to the last count by Forbes, “there are a mere 735 billionaires in the U.S. The millionaires are more plentiful—almost 22 million.” https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/how-many-billionaires-and-millionaires-live-in-the-u-s/.
[2] Mathew 5:16; Ephesians 2:10; 2 Corinthians 4:4-6.
[3] The “100Fold PFO” popped into my head at the same time: “100Fold Philanthropic Family Office.” The concept and practical outworking of the PFO are conceived differently in my mind, so I write about that in a separate essay titled, “The 100Fold PFO: Philanthropic Family Offices and the Philanthropic Family Officer.”
[4] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza.
[5] “Here’s How Many Billionaires And Millionaires Live In The U.S.”
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/how-many-billionaires-and-millionaires-live-in-the-u-s/. See also https://www.statista.com/statistics/220093/number-of-billionaires-in-the-united-states/.
[6] Those in the know might be able to read through the most recent list put out by Forbes in its “World’s Billionaires List: the Richest in 2024” and let us know. See https://www.forbes.com/billionaires. You can also have some fun and check in periodically here https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#259bdce13d78 for “daily updated net worths of all 2,781 billionaires” tracked by Forbes.
[7] It’s quite logical according to the redemptive-historical arc of Scripture: God in Christ created everything and therefore owns everything. Things got mucked up by the Fall. God in Christ redeemed everything through the death and resurrection of his beloved son, Jesus. God in Christ will come again, “bringing heaven to earth” and “setting the world to rights” as N. T. Wright likes to say. See Colossians 1:13-19 for a succinct summary of all this, but there are many other places in Scripture where it can be found. Keep in mind God’s end game in the world today, as it has been since the death-resurrection-ascension of Jesus and outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (Eph 3:20-21). See that? God intends, and will, get glory for himself “in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Amen? Amen! The 100Fold CFO provides a navigation chart into these gloriously liberating waters.
[8] As one of my theological mentors, Dr. R. C. Sproul, put it in our Systematic Theology 1 class in the fall of 1989: “We are dependent, contingent, and derived creatures. Everything we are and will be, both now and in eternity, is entirely and sovereignly made possible by, and dependent upon, God in Christ. Whatsoever comes to pass is specifically ordained by God.”
[9] Genesis 26:12; Mark 4:8, 20, and 10:30; Matthew 13:8 and 23; Luke 8:8.
[10] See my essay titled “100Fold Fun: A Joyfully Serious Essay on Affluence and Liberty” in which I coin this neologism and try to illustrate the 100Fold and dys100Fold concepts from Scripture in a fictional story about a 100Folder’s transformation, https://www.davidsimsjdphd.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/SIMS-100Fold-Fun.pdf.
[11] This denotation is my way of delineating “evangelical” and “Evangelical” from each other. The former means Jesus-and-the gospel-centered orthodoxy and orthopraxis along biblical-redemptive-historical orthodox lines set out in texts such as Mark 8:31/9:31/10:23-14 (and parallels in Matthew and Luke); 1 Cor 15:1-4; James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:16-18, etc. It is distinctly different from “Evangelical” which signifies Western, social, cultural, economic, and political descriptors through various academic and media voices. For a fuller treatment of these delineations see my discussion in chapter 1 of The Child in American Evangelicalism and the Problem of Affluence: A Theological Anthropology of the Affluent American-Evangelical Child in Late Modernity (Sisters, OR: Pickwick/Wipf and Stock, 2009).
[12] See ibid.
[13] https://www.britannica.com/topic/teleological-ethics.
[14] Space does not allow me to go into the many other New Testament and Old Testament texts that support my spiritual-theological-moral thesis of biblical fractionalization. See my essay titled, “Liberating Affluence: Biblical Fractionalization in Scripture.”
[15] See, e.g., https://www.ncfgiving.com/stories/how-we-set-financial-finish-lines-and-you-can-too/ and https://www.ncfgiving.com/stories/enough-should-you-set-a-financial-finish-line.
[16] Helen Rhee’s excellent work in Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), provides ample evidence. See also Paul S. Chung, Church and Ethical Responsibility in the Midst of World Economy: Greed, Dominion, and Justice (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013).
The Morning Star is Coming
The Morning Star is Coming
David A. Sims, JD PhD AIF® CKA®
18th Saturday in Ordinary Time, August 10, 2024
The dream at my happy place.
In February 1985, a little more than a year into law school at the Levin College of Law on the campus of the University of Florida, I was radically saved in Gainesville, Florida. I was reading the Bible in the book of Isaiah. And somewhere around 4:00 am, verses 59:1-2 changed my life forever.
Up to that time, I had been living a well-seasoned and well-practiced reprobate lifestyle. I won’t gore you with the details but by then suffice it to say that I knew what slavery to sin was. I’ve never forgotten it. Never will.
The enslavement started not long after my confirmation at Asbury United Methodist Church in Maitland, Florida, around the time I turned 12 in 1973. It officially ended when I met with Dennis Delacure, the very same minister who confirmed me in the faith, a couple of weeks after I was born again in 1985. We met at his office in First United Methodist Church, 419 NE 1st Street Gainesville, Florida 32601, for well over 2 hours. I told him everything I’d been up to since my confirmation. All the ugly stuff, all the gunk and junk. All the stuff about which I was ashamed and guilty. I have two distinct memories from my confessional time. Reverend Delacure’s face. It was jolly and seemed to be glowing red. And when I walked out into that sunshiny Florida spring day, all creation seemed to be singing. It was like my senses were fully alive and in tune for the first time in my life since reaching age 12. The smells were glorious. The birds were melodious. The light and grass and trees and shrubs and flowers were pulsating. The rose petal I touched felt otherworldly. And then I went and ate a Fred’s gator tail sub. It tasted better than the first time Tamara and I shared one in 1980 at the start of our first semester at UF.
Perhaps a few days after my conversion, maybe weeks, I can’t recall, I had two mystically memorable experiences on two separate nights, both around the same time of the morning I was saved. They were so real that it’s like I just woke up to them now.
The first was a dream. The other was an inexplicable wake-up from a deep sleep.
This story is about the dream. I’ll tell the other story another time.
The dream went like this.
I’m on New Smyrna Beach, Florida. My happy place. I’m right here1 on the glorious Atlantic ocean’s edge where the tide is rolling in and out. Our feet are getting wet with the tides. That ocean, right there, is one of the top five happy points in my happy place. I cannot count the number of times I’ve frolicked and body-surfed like a porpoise right from that very entry point into the water. I cannot count all the times I swam in the ocean from another point about a mile south from there at the condo my folks owned when I was growing up. I love New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
And in the dream, I’m right in front of the home where I get to stay when I’m in NSB. My mother-in-law’s beach house. It’s happy for so many reasons.
It’s where I met my wife for the first time, in the very same spot on the beach. Yellow bikini and all. That was the summer of 1980. Eight children, seven grandchildren later, that memorable meeting and the dream are as real to me as anything else right now. More real than this cup of green tea I’m drinking (sip).
I’ve had so many incredible memories there with Tamara, our children, her mom and dad and stepdad (Tam’s dad passed away prematurely in 1988 a couple of months before our firstborn, Micah David, was gifted to us), with family and friends. My children love it there as well. And two of my four daughters are getting married there soon (October 2024, April 2025)!
__________________________
1 https://www.google.com/maps/place/1807+Beacon+St,+New+Smyrna+Beach,+FL+32169/@29.057199,80.9067996,18.06z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x88e729797e1c49ad:0x707470e58e677466!8m2!3d29.0570125!4d80.9066302!16s%2Fg%2F11c4ssx5r8?entry=ttu.
Anyway, here’s the dream.
It’s dark before sunrise. Not much moon, but plenty of glorious stars in the sky, so the breakers and their white foam are somewhat visible. You can hear and smell the ocean living before you.
Facing east, listening to the waves and wind, I find myself holding hands with Tamara on my right and realize that I’m holding hands with someone on my left whom I don’t know. But then I realize that Tamara is holding hands with someone to her right and the person to my left is holding someone’s hand to his or her left (I don’t recall whether it was a man or woman to my left, but I know it was an adult) and on and on it goes from there as far as I can see.
To my left, the north, are the jetties. A rock outcropping at the north end of NSB, the southern lip into the Intracoastal waterway created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1935. The northern jetties lip is south Daytona Beach.
As far as I could see to my left, and as far as I could see to my right, there were people holding hands, looking east.
We started singing hymns and praise songs. It seemed like it went on for quite some time.
All of a sudden the singing slowly died down. We all began to focus on a small, single light way out on the horizon that just appeared. It looked like it was standing still. But pretty soon we realized it was moving toward us. Fast. It was just about to reach the breakers, seemingly 20 feet or so off the water’s surface when the brightness splintered.
The light raced into our eyes, down into our chests. And we were all yanked up into the sky. It was a scary feeling. It didn’t hurt but looking back it felt something like the combined feeling of taking off in an airplane at the velocity of punching a Tesla.
And that’s when I awoke.
The yank in the dream yanked me awake, and I found myself pulled forward sitting up with my forehead about to touch my knees. Thank goodness I was young and in good shape. Otherwise, it might have thrown my back out.
I sat there for a moment wondering what the heck had just happened. Then I laid back down and fell into a deep sleep.
That morning, I got up wondering about the dream, ate some breakfast, and headed to my class on the law of torts.
Slowly, the dream faded in my consciousness but would periodically surface and move into my thoughts during the days that followed.
The morning star rises.
Over the next weeks, as I was reading in 2 Peter 1, I discovered something that caused the dream to come alive:
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts….
Full stop. What does that mean? I wondered.
I spent the next hour or so looking for what else the Bible had to say about the “morning star” and what I found blew my mind.
It still does.
A few days ago, the memory of this dream came back to me amid one of my frequent early morning sleep interruptions at age 63. It kept me from going back to sleep, so instead of fighting the thoughts back to sleep I went with them. As I often do in such sleepless periods with thoughts flowing, I opened my Notes app and created a new note: “The Morning Star – NSB.” It was wonderful thinking about NSB and that dream.
They were happy moments laying there in the dark of our room with Tam next to me sleeping away. Joyful thoughts thinking about the summer of 1980, beginning our relationship, smitten, inseparable that summer, heading off to UF that fall together. Getting to know her mom and dad, her brothers and sister. We all grew up about a half mile from each other. They lived in Bretton Woods, and I lived in Druid Hills. They dubbed their neighborhood sports teams, “the Bretton Woods Bulldogs.” I forget what we called ours. But we used to play sandlot football against each other growing up and had wrestling matches in the “sand pit” near their hood.
I knew Tamara’s two older brothers, Garth and Kevin, distantly during those days and knew her older sister, Kyra, a little better. We had Geometry together when I was in 10th grade and she was in 11th. Tamara and I rode the school bus together one time when she was in 9th and I was in 10th grade, and she tells a funny story of me flirting with her that day. But for some reason, we never connected until that summer of 1980. I always say she was off chasing either the surfer boys or high culture boys at our high school, both of whom were rare species in that day and time. So, I think she finally decided she had to lower her standards and gave me a chance.
But I digress. Where was I?
Oh, yes, the dream back in 1985 and my discoveries about “the morning star” present in Scripture back then.
Revelations from the book of Revelation, back into the Old Testament.
I learned that there are two other places where the Greek words for “morning star” come together in the Bible. Both are in the Revelation (i.e., Apocalypse) to John.
Revelation 2:26-29
[26] The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, [27] and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. [28] And I will give him the morning star. [29] He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Revelation 22:16
[16] “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
Wow. Jesus is the “bright” morning star and somehow, he gives the morning star (gives himself?) to the one who “conquers” (or, overcomes NASB) and keep his “works” (or, deeds) “until the end” – which I guessed then and am pretty convinced now means the end of time, which starts when he returns.
When I saw this in Revelation, I thought to myself, “Is that the light we saw in my dream? Was it Jesus in the dream, the bright morning star on the horizon who somehow splintered into rays and gave us at the dawn of day the morning star rising in our hearts?” I’ve wondered this ever since, with long periods when I never thought about it or gave it a second thought.
But recently, on the morning of August 8, 2024, around 1:25 am or so, I remembered the dream and dove into the “morning star” Scriptures again, and it’s been a fun journey giving rise to this story.
Sometime later in 1985 I realized through study and reading commentaries that there are two places in the Old Testament – one in the Law (the book of Numbers) and the other in the Major Prophets (the book of Isaiah) foreshadowing what Peter and Jesus say about the “morning star” – fulfilling, as Peter says, the prophetic word of God given centuries before. Peter puts it this way:
And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed,…knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:19-21
These two OT prophetic loci reference “star” and “light” in ways that the NT picks up in various ways, particularly coalescing them in the “morning star” texts found in 2 Peter and Revelation.
Numbers 24:15-19, Balaam’s Final Oracle, is the first:
[15] And he took up his discourse and said,
“The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor,
the oracle of the man whose eye is opened,
[16] the oracle of him who hears the words of God,
and knows the knowledge of the Most High,
who sees the vision of the Almighty,
falling down with his eyes uncovered:
[17] I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of Sheth.
[18] Edom shall be dispossessed;
Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed.
Israel is doing valiantly.
[19] And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion
and destroy the survivors of cities!”
The beginning of the fulfillment of Balaam’s prophetic vision in Numbers 24:17 is found in Matthew 2:1-2 explicitly:
The Visit of the Wise Men
[1] Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, [2] saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
Secondly, the major prophet Isaiah gives us the other prophetic OT lens through which we see the resurrected Jesus as “the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
Isaiah 60:1-3
The Future Glory of Israel
[1] Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
[2] For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will be seen upon you.
[3] And nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your rising.
The LORD (YHWH) here in Isaiah is Jesus, God’s Beloved Son, the bright morning star.
He, the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:5), shines upon those who believe, brings his glory upon them.
And he shines in them when he gives them the morning star, by which it now seems to me that he brings about in the transfiguration-transformation-metamorphosis of our mortality into immortality (1 Cor 15:50-55).
Put another way, it comes about through “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).
Back to the future in 2 Peter.
Let’s go back to the future in Peter’s second letter:
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Back to the future?
Yes.
This is an eschatological text pointing to the future (“coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”).
What we miss, if we’re not careful, is that Peter’s reference to the transfiguration of Jesus recorded for us in Mark 9:7//Matthew 17:5//Luke 9:35 brings us both back and forward in time: back to the future, so to speak.
It brings us back to a dramatic event in space-time when God the Father bore witness to Peter, James, and John about his Beloved Son.
And when Jesus is transfigured-transformed-metamorphosed in the presence of Peter, James, and John – before “he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory” – it is as if both the Father and the Son are unveiling the future not only to Peter, James, and John, but also to us who read and believe this 1st century account in the 21st century.
It's like both Father and Son are showing us what will happen when Jesus, the bright morning star, returns distributing the morning star in the hearts of those who believe, those who have overcome and faithfully kept the deeds of Jesus (Rev 2:26), those who are working and waiting for Jesus to bring heaven to earth and, as N. T. Wright is fond of saying, to “set the world to rights.”
Transfiguration to the morning star, “in the twinkling of an eye.”
So here is where I end up, and where I end.
It’s been 39 years since I had that happy, mystifying dream on NSB at my happy place.
And now I’ve come to believe that the transfiguration of Jesus was a foreshadowing of the future promise to us that will come when he returns, because he is risen bodily from the dead, because he is alive, and God has promised it by raising him from the dead.
I believe that those who are alive when he returns will receive the morning star of transforming life and will be metamorphosed into immortality as 1 Corinthians 15:50-55 tells us, with new bodies encasing new central nervous systems and everything else new, when Jesus brings heaven to earth in fulfillment of all the prayers we’ve prayed (“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”) and all the promises God has made to us in Christ.
The Bible is clear that when he returns we will be like him. Somehow, it’s going to involve light, the bright morning star giving us the morning star rising in our hearts when the day dawns. Get ready. The Morning Star is coming. Jesus is going to wrap up the world and set it to rights.
I can’t wait. Come Lord Jesus!
The Rights of the Poor
The Rights of the Poor
David A. Sims, JD PhD CKA®
First Sunday in Advent, November 27, 2022
The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor, the wicked does not understand such concern (Proverbs 29:7, NASB).
A righteous man knows the rights of the poor, a wicked man does not understand such knowledge (Proverbs 29:7, ESV).
Introduction
The poor have rights. The God of creation and new creation in Jesus Christ invests them with rights as divine image-bearers regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, creed, or any other human category of distinction or discrimination. God reveals the rights of the poor generally in creation and specially in the sacred writings of Jews and Christians embraced worldwide and across the millennia.
The pressing questions today are whether those in authority, those with wealth, and those with influence will continue the work of investing time, talent, treasure, and influence to protect, enforce, support, and strengthen those rights and whether they will work to rectify ongoing violations of those rights wherever they are found. These are profoundly crucial and far-reaching questions in the 21st century.
What are the rights of the poor?
Here’s how the States Parties of the United Nations frame the poor’s rights:
- every human being “has the right to a standard of living adequate to himself and his family, including food, clothing, medical care and necessary social services.” Article 25 of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948).
- every child (i.e., every human being under the age of legal majority) has an inherent right to life, including health care, nutritious foods, and clean drinking water. U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
Rights asserted, if they are just, should become rights realized. The rights of the poor need further realization in 2022 and beyond. Further support. Further development. Further instantiation. There is much work to do. And there is great hope for making significant progress in the decades to come.
But the sobering reality confronting us now is that from 2017 through 2022 as much as 80 percent of the world’s population have lived (and still live) at some level of poverty and approximately 400 million children currently live in poverty.
This is not the way things should be (Deuteronomy 15:4). But of course, it is the way things are (Deuteronomy 15:11). And this is why God prescribes in his Law and throughout the Scriptures how his people should relate to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-11; Proverbs 29:7, 31:8-9, etc.; Luke 4:18, 7:22, etc.; James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:16-18; etc.).
What is poverty? Relative, absolute, and extreme poverties.
Poverty is the lack of basic life necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, access to essential healthcare, and the absence of fundamental securities the affluent take for granted. Poverty occurs in severe, moderate, and situational circumstances locally and globally.
Today, in the Web 2.0 era morphing to the Web 3.0 era of human history, poverty is a “glocal”1 issue touching upon every human being on the planet. It is simultaneously global, out there, and local, right outside our front doors and at just about every traffic intersection.
Some experts talk of “poverties” instead of – or perhaps in elucidation of “poverty” – distinguishing between absolute, extreme, and relative poverties.
Absolute poverty2 has been described in various ways in economic and monetary terms over the last 80 years in the affluent west (e.g., the absolute or abject poor are those living on less than $1US, $2US, $5US, etc., per day). Hunger. Premature death. Shockingly high mortality rates in infancy and during the first 5 years of life. Intolerably high.
Relative poverty is usually described in economic and relational terms. It is form of deprivation caused by the lack of healthy and nurturing caregivers during the first two decades of life, particularly the first ten years of life. Never enough money. Those malingering in relative poverty know going hungry, they know and experience food insecurity, the anxieties and fears and depression of wondering if they will have meal tomorrow, much less a healthy one. Access to healthy food options are limited for those entangled in the complex webs of relative relational poverty. Major life disruptions caused by divorce, out of wedlock births, abuse, neglect, etc., are very common.
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1 An adjective defined as, “of or relating to the interconnection of global and local issues” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/glocal (accessed 11/9/2022) and “reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glocalization (accessed 11/9/2022).
2 Often discussed along with “extreme poverty” in the literature, but the two are not the same.
Many experiencing relative poverty have known absolute poverty and fear returning to it. Many fall into relative poverty from the middle class due to unexpected life events such as premature death or incarceration of parents, disease, disability of a parent, unemployment, or divorce of parents.
The Encyclopedia of Global Justice helpfully parses “absolute” and “extreme” poverty this way:
Absolute poverty means poverty defined using a universal baseline with no reference to other people’s income or access to goods. The failure of meeting this baseline thus means that the individual is poor. Absolute poverty is typically discussed in the context of extreme poverty in developing countries, although absolute and extreme poverty are not synonymous concepts.
Absolute poverty can be defined as the state in which a subject lacks the means to meet his or her basic needs. Such basic needs are often listed in international poverty reduction programs, and usually include food, water, shelter, basic education, and basic medical care. Extreme poverty is typically defined as a state in which a person lacks access to all, or several, of the goods needed for meeting these basic needs.3
Relative, or relational, poverties are very bad, really damaging, and terribly saddening.
Absolute poverties are worse.
Extreme poverties are horrifically worse. It’s just not the way things should be.
Christians, God, Jesus, the gospel, and the poor.
Few Christians living in western affluence get this. Fewer still ever feel, smell, see, touch, or taste it. Few have shared a meal with the poor in her family’s hovel, shaken a poor person’s hand, listened to their stories, loved them.
This is one of the primary reasons social impact leader, investor and venture capitalist, Dr. Kim Tan,4 encourages every person wanting to join the good fight of faith in the bellum on poverty, in the “social holiness” venture of impact investing with patient equity capital to go and see and smell the slums.
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3 T. Eskelinen, Absolute Poverty, in Chatterjee, D.K., eds., Encyclopedia of Global Justice (Springer: Dordrecht, 2011) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_178 (emphasis added).
4 See https://springhilluk.com/about-us; https://faithangle.org/speaker/dr-dato-kim-tan; https://www.thewowfactorpodcast.com/show-notes/kim-tan-founder-of-the-transformational-business-networkepisode-87.
Otherwise, the horrors of the poverty and poverties in the world will never sink into our bones as God desires. If we never engage the poor, transformation of beliefs and practices in relation to the problem of poverty in the world around us does not happen.
Take a trip to Nairobi. Visit the infamous Kibera slum, virtually if not in person.5
Or visit any underserved, poor area nearby. They are not difficult to find.
See, feel, hear, smell, and touch what God sees, feels, hears, smells, and touches every nanosecond of every day. Talk to the poor. Shake their hands. Look them in the eye. Smile. Listen and love. They are our neighbors.
Jesus linked the gospel of his death, burial, and resurrection to his ministry to the poor:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18, ESV).
“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them” (Luke 7:22, ESV).
God’s mission of justice/righteousness and new creation inaugurated by the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and current kingly session of Christ at the Father’s right hand is inextricably linked to ministry to the poor.
Now. In the 21st century. In our human space and time.
Christians who understand God’s call in Christ to join the poor in solidarity and embrace the inextricable link between stewarding the gospel of God’s Son and concern for the poor are taking action upon the words of Jesus in the 21st century. They know the rights of the poor. They are the ones demonstrating with shining particularity the righteousness of God “from faith to faith” today.
Christians in the affluent west, particularly those swimming in the various streams of the Reformation, love the doctrine of God’s justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone revealed in the Scriptures alone. Saint Paul puts the link between the gospel and righteousness this way:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’ (Romans 1:16-17)
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5 “A walk through the biggest slum in Africa” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PmCimD1MMc (accessed 11/7/2022).
Paul knew the rights of the poor. He knew God’s Law, a Pharisee of Pharisees. Knocked off his high horse of knowledge that “puffs up” by the risen Jesus, he was made righteous by grace through faith in the person and work of God’s beloved Son. He lived righteously out of that “alien” righteousness. Surely, he knew Proverbs 29:7 and took it seriously: the righteous man knows and is concerned for the rights of the poor. This is made clear in Galatians 2:10, where he recounts that “James and Cephas and John” reminded him and Barnabas to “remember the poor” in their ministry to the uncircumcised Gentiles, of which he says, “the very thing I was eager to do.”
Jesus, of course, as the only perfectly righteous human to walk the earth, was a righteous man who knew Proverbs 29:7 as well.
But he was more than that, much more.
He became poor, redeeming both poor and rich alike and thereby making all “rich” in relation to God and each other (2 Cor 8:9). As God’s beloved Son, Jesus fulfilled the rights of the poor in his fulfillment of the Law, Psalms and Prophets through the gospel of his death, burial, and resurrection (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39). This is the transformative, hope-inducing “already” of redemptive history’s the “already, not yet” that moves God’s people into good works on behalf of the poor (Titus 2:11-14, 3;14; 1 Tim 6:18-19).
The “not yet” is seen in the problem of poverty and poverties in our world today, which unequivocally manifest the deleterious effects of living in a fallen, groaning cosmos as the tension in texts such as Romans 8:22-23 and Deuteronomy 15:4, 11 demonstrate.
Those who want to help alleviate the suffering of those in poverty must join in the groanings of creation revealed in, among other things, the inconsolable groanings of the poor. We must somehow figure out how to get it into our bones, under our skin, just as Jesus and Paul and the apostles and hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters in Christ have done throughout the centuries and are doing today.
Who are the poor?
The poor are those who know the groaning of creation and the groaning inwardly that comes with their poverties. What many of us western, white, evangelical,6 Bible-believing, Reformed Christians7 neither realize nor experience is that millions upon millions of the poor in the world today are our Christian brothers and sisters, sitting right outside our gates (metaphorically speaking, and in some instances literally outside the secure, guarded gates of those with high, very-high, and ultra-high net worths8).
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6 This much maligned word, malignantly co-opted in American media and politics, needs clarification and defense today. For me as a practical theologian, it means Jesus-and-the gospel-centered orthodoxy and orthopraxis along the lines of biblical-redemptive-historical orthodox lines set out in texts such as Mark 8:31/9:31/10:23-14; 1 Cor
The poor in our world today are those who live in poverty and in their particularized poverties. They are everywhere. They are not hard to find or see. They are everywhere. They are, in a truly biblical sense, our neighbors. We literally can do good to them and for them whenever we want (Mark 14:7). The problem lies mostly in the wanting, because we have the poor neither in our consciousness nor our consciences. Worse, most affluent Christians make no effort to get the poor into their consciousness and therefore never become conscientized to the problem of poverty in their world and the poverties of the poor surrounding them.
We would do well, I suggest, to take a fresh look at the poor through the lens of the Scriptures. Here are three places to start.
First, take a look at how James defines the poor: “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5).
God chose the poor in the world to be (1) rich in faith and (2) heirs of the kingdom.
We should read that carefully again.
God chose the poor in the world to be rich in faith.
God chose the poor in the world to be…heirs of the kingdom.
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15:1-4; James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:16-18, etc. It is distinctly different from “Evangelical” which signifies western, social, cultural, economic, and political descriptors through various media outlets. For a fuller treatment of the delineations between “evangelical” and “Evangelical” see my discussion in chapter 1 of The Child in American Evangelicalism and the Problem of Affluence (Sisters, OR: Wipf and Stock/Pickwick, 2009).
7 The religious-socioeconomic-subcultural context from which I write.
8 According to Investopedia, high net worth individuals (HNWIs), very-high net worth individuals (VHNWIs) and ultrahigh net worth individuals (UHNWIs) are defined as those with $1M - $4M, $5M - $29M, and $30M of liquid/investible assets, respectively. As of 2021, the United States had the highest numbers of all three categories. See https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hnwi.asp and https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/ultra-highnet-worth-individuals-uhnwi.asp (accessed November 9, 2022). The number of rich people in the world today is staggering, particularly in view of the number of people living in poverty. The other category of rich people today are the “super-rich” persons. “From 2020 to 2025, the ranks of the ultra-wealthy will grow by 27%, according to Knight Frank. Asia will see the most growth (39%), followed by Africa (33%). The U.S. will continue to have the most UHNWIs by 2025, adding 24% super-rich individuals.” Knight Frank, “The Wealth Report 2021,” page 83 (accessed November 9, 2022).
Say what?
Rich in faith.
Heirs of the kingdom, heirs of God’s reign and rule.
They have inherited and will inherit God’s kingdom?
We do well to let James 2:5 hang in our Christian consciousness and hopefully simmer into our consciences. I commend further reading along these lines in the footnote below.9
Second, let’s look at the relationship between Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16.
Jesus tells us that Lazarus was “laid” at the gate of Dives. The rich man ignored him, neglected him. I encourage you to read Luke 16:19-31 carefully, meditatively, prayerfully. Invite Holy Spirit to speak to you from this text, to bring to your consciousness what God would have you hear and know and do in your particular 21st century “glocal” (global-local) context.
Oysterband captured the unbelieving heart of Dives quite well with these 1990 lyrics:
thou art none of mine, brother Lazarus
that lies begging at my door
no meat, no drink I’ll give to thee
nor bestow upon the poorthen Lazarus laid him down and down
even down at Diverus' wall
some meat, some drink, brother Diverus
or with hunger starve I shallthou art none of mine, brother Lazarus
that lies begging at my wall
no meat, no drink I’ll give to thee
but with hunger starve you shallthen Lazarus laid him down and down
even down at Diverus' gate
some meat, some drink, brother Diverus
for Jesus Christ His sakethou art none of mine, brother Lazarus
that lies begging at my gate
no meat, no drink I’ll give to you
for Jesus Christ His sake10
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9Timothy Black, The Gospel as Social Revolution: The Role of the Church in the Transformation of Society (Reach Africa, Inc., 2020); Kim Tan and Brian Griffiths, Social Impact Investing: New Agenda in Fighting Poverty (London: Transformational Business Network, 3d ed., 2022); Kim Tan, Jubilee and Social Justice: A Dangerous Quest to Overcome Inequalities (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2021); Kim Tan, The Jubilee Gospel: The Jubilee, Spirit and the Church (UK: AbeBooks/Authentic Media, 2008).
10 “Dives and Lazarus” http://www.oysterband.co.uk/lyrics/songs/Dives_and_lazarus.html (accessed 11/3/2022).
Third, read Matthew 25:14-46 carefully. Reflect on it. See the link between talent (i.e., entrusted wealth) stewardship and the final judgment.
And do not pass over quickly verses 31-46. These verses comfort the afflicted and afflict (or at least should afflict) the comfortable. Pay particular attention to the words of Jesus in verses 40 and 45:
And do not pass over quickly verses 31-46. These verses comfort the afflicted and afflict (or at least should afflict) the comfortable. Pay particular attention to the words of Jesus in verses 40 and 45:
“Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did not do it to me” (Mt 25:45).
Then, in light of these words of Jesus, let the words of James and John sink in:
“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14-17).
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16-18).
The poor are our “glocal” neighbors. It is important to remember that each person experiencing poverty has his or her own story. We should listen. We should help.
Each person malingering in poverty in any form has dignity, worth, and value. They are God’s image bearers. And many, if not most, are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
The Fight Against Poverty: 1948 – 2022
Since 1948, the States Parties to the United Nations Charter have invested significant energy, time, and financial resources toward realizing the rights of the poor.
Significant progress has been made since 1990. But much more is needed.
The World Bank’s 2022 report titled, “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course” sums up the fight against poverty between 1990 – 2020 as follows:
COVID-19 marked the end of a phase of global progress in poverty reduction. During the three decades that preceded its arrival, more than 1 billion people escaped extreme poverty. The incomes of the poorest nations gained ground.
By 2015, the global extreme-poverty rate had been cut by more than half. Since then, poverty reduction has slowed in tandem with subdued global economic growth. The economic upheavals brought on by COVID-19 and later the war in Ukraine produced an outright reversal in progress. It became clear that the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 would not be achieved. Given current trends, 574 million people— nearly 7 percent of the world’s population—will still be living on less than US$2.15 a day in 2030, with most in Africa.
In 2020 alone, the number of people living below the extreme poverty line rose by over 70 million. That is the largest one-year increase since global poverty monitoring began in 1990. Looking at poverty more broadly, nearly half the world—over 3 billion people—lives on less than US$6.85 per day, which is the average of the national poverty lines of upper-middle income countries. Using that measure, poverty persists well beyond Africa. The prevalence and persistence of poverty darken the outlook for billions of people living around the world.11
Dr. Kim Tan of the Transformational Business Network has made the salient point on numerous occasions that the continent of Africa has received the equivalent of six (6) Marshall Plans post-World War II. Aid and charity have not been the most effective means of alleviating poverty. It has certainly helped, but the track record in Africa belies its efficiency, sustainability, and long-term efficacy.
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11 World Bank. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-1893-6. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/37739/9781464818936.pdf).
What is needed is investment. Social impact investing, in the vein of the Transformational Business Network and similar organizations and networks around the world that are proving that providing what Dr. Tan and Lord Brian Griffiths describe as “patient” private equity and venture capital results in sustainable and profitable (yes, profitable) solutions to poverty.12
More on this practical, proven, and inspiringly hopeful movement below.
Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind our shared recent history. Inordinate adverse impacts on the poor have been caused by the convulsive crises of 2020 (COVID-19 pandemic), 2021 and 2022 (economic shutdown, supply chain disruptions, de-globalization, Putin’s barbaric war on Ukraine, inflation, the looming global recession). Added to this are many financial and investment experts’ expectations that the 2020s will witness ongoing choppy and volatile “risk-off” market performance, as well as social, cultural, political, and historical tumults, including potential famines around the globe.13
Things could get much worse for the poor this decade. Affluent Christians worldwide must be ready to help. As I discuss more fully below, a movement is afoot among wealthy Christians in the world today entrusted with investible wealth estimated to be as high as $130 Trillion who are motivated to take the fight to poverty in creative, innovative, and sustainable ways.14
As hard as the 2020s and perhaps even the 2030s may be, there is great reason to believe that God’s faithful stewards of God’s wealth can significantly help their poor brothers and sisters through social impact investing and radical generosity.
We must always remember that the God’s Messiah and Son are on the throne and his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven. You can take that to the bank. Both God’s and yours.
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12 Kim Tan and Brian Giffiths, Social Impact Investing: New Agenda in Fighting Poverty (Transformational Business Network: London, 3d ed., 2022). For my wife, Tamara, and I, as well as many of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we want to invest our lives in making kingdom impact investments of time, money, wealth, and expertise and helping others experience the joy of these kind of investments curated specially for our brothers and sisters in Christ locally and around the world.
13 See, e.g., George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond (New York: Doubleday, 2020); Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization (New York: Harper Business, 2022); “A global food crisis” https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis (accessed 11/27/2022).
14 For a handful of exciting teasers, visit the following sites: https://www.enterprisesolutionstopoverty.com/about; https://www.enterprisesolutionstopoverty.com/stories; https://www.tbnetwork.org/impact-report2020; https://tbn-americas.org/case-studies; https://www.trustbridgeglobal.com.
The Rights of the Poor in Redemptive History
According to ancient Jewish wisdom literature (e.g., Proverbs 29:7), knowing the rights of the poor and being concerned for the rights of the poor is a mark of the “the righteous.”
Conversely, having no concern or knowledge of the rights of the poor is a mark of “the wicked.”
The righteous is concerned for (ESV: knows) the rights of the poor, the wicked does not understand such concern (ESV: knowledge).
Proverbs 29:7 In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
Jewish prophetic tradition fingers “wicked men” found among God’s chosen people (Jer 5:26) living in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Southern kingdom of Israel (i.e., Judah), who “have become great and rich” (Jer 5:27) and who do not defend the rights of the poor.
Don’t miss that. Jeremiah indicts the Jerusalem elites and their kings and explicitly links their becoming “great and rich” with failing to defend “the rights of the poor” (and to plead “the cause of the orphan” – these two phrases may properly be considered a hendiadys).
They are fat, they are sleek, they also excel in deeds of wickedness; they do not plead the cause, the cause of the orphan, that they may prosper; and they do not defend the rights of the poor.
Jeremiah 5:28 In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations
God is really serious about the rights of the poor. Just read the rest of Jeremiah. It makes the hair on the back of you neck stand up. At least it does mine.
Judgment Must Come
15 Then the LORD said to me, “Even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before Me, My heart would not be with this people; send them away from My presence and let them go! 2 And it shall be that when they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you are to tell them, ‘Thus says the LORD:
“Those destined for death, to death;
And those destined for the sword, to the sword;
And those destined for famine, to famine;
And those destined for captivity, to captivity.”’3 I will appoint over them four kinds of doom,” declares the LORD: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag off, and the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. 4 I will make them an object of horror among all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.
What did Manasseh do?
“He did evil in the sight of the LORD according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD dispossessed before the sons of Israel” (2 Chron 33:2).
Actually, it’s worse than that. Much worse.
“Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; besides his sin with which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the LORD (2 Kings 21:16).
Manasseh’s 55-year reign and rebuilding program involved the idolatrous, greedy grinding of the rights of the poor, the powerless, the innocent, the dependent, the weak, the voiceless. Children. The poor. Women. Slaves. The stranger.
“…he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down; he also erected altars for the Baals and made Asherim, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. 4 He built altars in the house of the LORD of which the LORD had said, “My name shall be in Jerusalem forever.” 5 For he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD. 6 He made his sons pass through the fire in the valley of Ben-hinnom; and he practiced witchcraft, used divination, practiced sorcery and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger. 7 Then he put the carved image of the idol which he had made in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever; 8 and I will not again remove the foot of Israel from the land which I have appointed for your fathers, if only they will observe to do all that I have commanded them according to all the law, the statutes and the ordinances given through Moses.” 9 Thus Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the sons of Israel” (2 Chron 33:9).15
Wicked kings like Manasseh don’t get along alone. They always have help and support from those who become “great and rich” and grow “fat and sleek” from the authority’s injustice and immorality.
For wicked men are found among my people;
they lurk like fowlers lying in wait.
They set a trap;
they catch men.
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
therefore they have become great and rich;
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no bounds in deeds of evil;
they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy (poor, NASB).Jeremiah 5:26-28 (ESV)
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15 As an aside but not entirely unrelated to the topic of the poor’s rights, I have long thought (since 1987) that we may very well be living in Manasseh’s United States. And despite all the rejoicing on the right and hand-wringing on the left over the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v Jackson decision in June 2022 reversing the infamous Roe v. Wade decision handed down in 1973, I suspect that we may still be living in it. But that’s for another time.
Who are the “great and rich” and the “fat and sleek” who in the 21st century “judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and…do not defend the rights of the needy [poor]?”
Trampling the rights of the poor brings nothing good for God’s people. Only bad. It brings God’s wrath. There are consequences for failure to defend the rights of the poor.
The overarching point Jeremiah makes is that Israel failed in its mission and calling to be a light to the nations. Israel failed in every aspect of the Mosaic Law, turning to idolatry, to other gods that are no gods at all. The historical books of the Old Testament and the Psalms recount Israel’s history and the fulfillment, partially, of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (renamed Israel). David and Solomon represent the pinnacle of historic fulfillment of the promises to the patriarchs. But both of them fell short of God’s glory. And their offspring fell even shorter. Northern Israel fell in 722 B.C. Southern Israel (Judah) fell in 586 B.C. with its idolatrous trampling of the rights of the poor.
A new, final king was needed who would bring in an everlasting kingdom of God’s righteous and benevolent reign. A new, final prophet was needed to bear witness to the final truth (i.e., the gospel). A new, final high priest was needed to mediate not just between God and his chosen people, the Jews from whom salvation comes, but also to reconcile and make peace in one body between Jew and Gentile and to mediate between God and the new humanity created in the Second Adam Jesus Christ.
The Mosaic Law and the Poor
Under the Mosaic legislation, the “poor” are those without land or without the economic, legal, and political resources to support and to be self-sustaining households. The poor are a diverse group of the marginalized, dispossessed, disenfranchised, powerless. They are subsistence farmers, day workers, indentured slaves, beggars, widows and orphans, prostitutes, the chronically infirm, and sojourners/resident aliens (see, e.g., Genesis 16; Exodus 22:21, 23:6-9; Deuteronomy 10:17-19, 15:1-11, 24:14-22; Leviticus 19:9-10 and 33-34, 23:22).
God is concerned about the poor. God knows the rights of the poor because he gave them to all humans in creation and then legislated them through Moses. God is perfectly righteous. The righteous know and are concerned for the rights of the poor.
Jesus was the righteous one who makes all who believe righteous by faith and empowers all who believe to live by a faith that justifies. At the heart of the practical faith is a faith that expresses itself in concern for and knowledge of the rights of the poor. According to James, it’s an active faith that cares for the poor and their rights.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27).
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead (James 2:14-17).
The apostle John agrees:
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Jesus, the Mosaic law, Prophets, and Psalms
We have already seen that Jesus, through the gospel, fulfilled all that was written about him in the Scriptures (as John puts it), all that was written about him in the Law, Psalms and Prophets (as Luke puts it).
In this, Jesus fulfilled all that was written about God’s righteous concern for and establishment of the rights of the poor.
So, redemptive history has its beginning and its end in the eternal Son of God, the firstborn of creation and the firstborn of re-creation (i.e., the firstborn from the dead).
Jesus is the second, final Israel. He is the final king, prophet, and high priest. He and the church are the final temple, tabernacle, dwelling place of God. He is the second Adam, the head of the new humanity. All this is from God, by whose doing all who believe are “in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.’”
When Jesus returns, he will bring heaven to earth. He will unite God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, making the kingdoms of this world his in fulfillment of all the prayers of the saints over the millennia, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Then the rights of the poor will finally be realized.
Redemptive History’s Actors
Until that kingdom comes and God’s will is done, until the rights of the poor are fully and completely realized, we must strive to invest and give and serve and advocate on behalf of the poor and their rights.
God’s children everywhere, particularly those who enjoy affluence now, are agents of redemptive history. They are agents of God’s mighty acts of liberation and freedom through the gospel for the poor.
Here is how Jesus and the apostles put it for us.
…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:16).
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).
…godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life (1 Timothy 6:6-19).
Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works,…For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works (Titus 2:7-14).
…when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people….And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful (Titus 3:4-14).
As agents of redemptive history, we are called to pursue good works on behalf of the poor. We must see that the good works prepared beforehand in ministry of the gospel are, by biblical definition, good works linked to the rights of the poor.
We are called to administer our gifts as fiduciaries, as trustworthy servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God in Christ (1 Corinthians 4:1-2). Peter puts it this way: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10).
The Good News about Gospel Stewardship in the 21st Century
I mentioned earlier that I would share some exciting things about what God is doing through his children to whom he has entrusted significant wealth. It seems to have begun in embryonic form around the year 2000. Increasingly, Christians are both giving more of their income and wealth to and investing their wealth in kingdom-expanding ventures with the rights of the poor in focus and with poverty relief, alleviation, reduction, and elimination as the goals.
Despite all the bad news in the world today, there is great reason to rejoice, to hope, and to work as if everything depends on God’s children entrusted with wealth, expertise, and influence and to pray as if everything depends on God! Jesus is still enthroned, interceding for the rights of the poor according to God’s will, sustaining all things by the word of his power, expanding God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. And we can be assured that his words will be fulfilled in due time: “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).
It is not possible to mention everything that is happening in this space of gospel-centered, biblically-grounded, joy-empowered, faith-driven entrepreneurship and investing. The heart of the movement is expressed in two interrelated dimensions: (1) biblical generosity and (2) social impact investing focused on poverty relief, not through aid/charitable donations, but through “patient equity” finance and investment in small to medium business enterprises.
Here is an all-too-brief, yet essential and substantive, summary of what’s been happening from 2000 through 2022 in the generous giving movement fueling social impact investing. There is so much more happening, but for now this must suffice:
- 2000: the Generous Giving movement was launched by the McClellan Foundation (https://generousgiving.org/who-we-are), which has helped to create a movement of generous and joyful stewards motivated to leave kingdom-expanding legacies for the good of others and glory of God.
- 2003: Kim Tam and Stuart McGreevy started the Transformational Business Network, which is focused on social impact investing and has grown to over 2,000 members across 7 countries (https://www.tbnetwork.org/about).
- 2022: funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the Christian Enterprise Solutions to Poverty Field Guide was published – “The first-ever landscape analysis of Christian organizations providing Enterprise Solutions to Poverty” – via a partnership between the Ormond Center at Duke Divinity School, Thriving Cities Group, and Belmont University https://www.enterprisesolutionstopoverty.com/about (citation to the Field Guide: Amy L. Sherman and Josh Yates, Christian Enterprise Solutions to Poverty (Duke Divinity School, 2022).
- 2022: Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, announces its formal partnership with Dr. Kim Tan and the Transformational Business Network at its inaugural Hope Summit held October 24-26 (https://president.belmont.edu/hope-summit-sched-2).
Wrapping up: Aslan is on the move!
I conclude with this.
“They say Aslan is on the move-perhaps has already landed."
The Beaver in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Since April of 2022 when I met this chap named Kay Hiramine, a strange sense has begun settling over me much like the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, sort of dreamlike. It’s like the Beaver is speaking on the issue of the rights of the poor, and God’s children in the narrative have this gut sense that something is not right in the world with all this wealth right in the midst of all this poverty. We have got to do something about it.
I’m not sure I fully understand what this Holy Smokes creator and Jesus-and-the-gospel netweaver has gotten me into, but it appears to be something big. Generous Giving. Social Impact Investing. God’s heart for the poor exploding in 2022.
And of course, both he and I and all of us know who is weaving the tapestry of redemption for the poor. As children of the only true and living God in Christ (1 Tim 1:17; Jn 17:3; 1 Jn 5:20; Jer 10:10; Is 43:11), we know it’s the Lord Jesus, the Spirit “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 2:17-18).
We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:19-21 (ESV)
We should not move too fast from how the apostle John concludes his first epistle. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” What were the idols confronting our first century brothers and sisters in Christ? They were many. And there are many now. One perennial sign that the world continues to be full of idols is the presence and grinding of the poor, the groanings of poverty in the world today. Keep in mind how Paul puts a fine point on the interplay and inseparable link between the last and first commandments in the Mosaic Law: “greed, which amounts to idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).
God in Christ is on the move in 2022 to further the work of instantiating the rights of the poor. May his children throughout the earth hear and heed the Spirit’s call to generous giving and generous investing on behalf of the poor. And may we all take to heart Proverbs 29:7 as we proceed forward in this great work, understanding that knowledge of and concern for the rights of the poor is fundamental to justice, to righteousness.
As I reflect back over the past 7 months, echoes of that classic 1975 song “Dream Weaver” sung by Gary Wright resound in my mind along with those mystical feelings I felt when I listened to it at age 14. I’m beginning to see how the strands of my life have been woven by God since 1961 and more recently from 2000 when I began my postgrad work in the north of England at the University of Durham’s Department of Theology and Religion. I realize that my brothers and sisters in Christ and I are all woven and wrapped into this drama of redemption in Christ by the Ultimate Netweaver and are called to work for the rights of the poor.
May the work at Belmont and the partnership between Belmont and the Transformational Business Network prosper. May the “social holiness”16 of God’s people shine brightly as the sun, magnifying Christ and glorifying God through good works of social impact investing and generous giving that God has prepared beforehand to walk humbly into by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10). And may the faith-driven entrepreneur and investor movements continue to expand through trustworthy servants of Christ stewarding God’s mysteries (1 Cor 4:1-2).
May it be so for the greater glory of God and for the good of the poor.
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16 Kim Tan’s phrase induced from his pioneering biblical work on the Jubilee and intentionally deployed to differentiate social impact investing from the negative aspects of the “social justice” and “social gospel” movements in the west, particularly the United States.
Think Birds and Lilies
Think Birds and Lilies
Reflections on Mediating the Anxieties of Affluence in Late Modernity
David A. Sims, JD PhD AIF® CKA®
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 4, 2024
Thoughts on entering into God’s reign/rule and mediating the anxieties of affluence in late modernity.
Think birds and lilies.
Recently, I read the “Artist’s Introduction” by Makoto Fujimura to his work in Crossway’s beautiful ESV The Four Holy Gospel’s illustrated Bible, which stands in the centuries-old stream of historical productions and publications of hand-illuminated editions of the Gospels. It’s a wonderful work of art, combining God’s art and genius in the Gospels with Fujimura’s art and genius, which of course Fujimura would readily admit is a gift from God that he has the privilege of stewarding for God’s glory and the renown of his beloved son, Jesus Christ. Reading the Gospels in such a setting is always a highlight of my day.
But I digress.
My point is that Fujimura’s introduction is a work of art itself.
And it has something in there that I had never seen before in Scripture. In his ever so brief but profoundly insightful commentary on Matthew 6:28, 25, 33 (in that order), I was struck with a strange light, it seemed, a wonderful illumination when I read it for the first time.
Here it is:
Jesus tells us to ‘consider the lilies’ (Matt. 6:28), instead of being ‘anxious about life, what you will eat or what you will drink’ (Matt. 6:25). I consider this passage to be a crucial step that needs to be taken, before we are able to ‘seek the kingdom of God’ (Matt. 6:33). To assist us in taking this step, we benefit much from the artist’s observation and depiction of the outer and inner worlds, and from the poet’s capturing of complex experiences and nuances of life, to help us grow in our capacity to love our neighbors and even our enemies, and to empathize with the needs of our world.
As I am prone to do when something comes alive to me afresh from reading the Bible, my mind went on a wild goose chase about “birds and lilies” as I read and then reread and then dug into Matthew 6:19-34. It’s been a wonderful journey since that Sunday morning in early June 2024 discovering new insights into entering God’s reign and rule in my life through Fujimura’s insights. It’s a journey that continues as I “look at the birds” and “consider the lilies” in my life.
Here's what’s come to me through this journey into Matthew 6 through Fujimura:
- Developing the habit of “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies” in my life is a key to entering into, a key to experiencing God’s reign and rule in my life right now and each day, to living with the consciousness that God is present and that I am stewarding my life under my heavenly Father’s superintending providence and kind, tenderhearted forgiving love toward me in his beloved son Jesus, my Lord and Savior and good elder brother and friend and king and wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption-liberation-freedom.
- Developing the habit of “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies” in my life is an antidote to anxiety in my life.
- Developing the habit of “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies” in my life is an antidote to the anxieties of affluence in my life.
- Developing the habit of “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies” in my life is an important practice demonstrating to myself that I’m trusting my heavenly Father to meet my needs and not acting like “the Gentiles” – who Jesus depicts as fretting over what they will eat and wear.
- Developing the habit of “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies” in my life has helped me:
- Interrogate myself in a healthy way with questions such as:
- Am I living a life of “little faith” when it comes to what I need to live (Mt 6:30)?
- Am I trying to do the impossible in my life, to serve “God and money” (Mt 6:24)?
- Am I stopping to “smell the roses” in my life by “looking at the birds” and “considering the lilies”? (I have to say quite joyfully that I am enjoying both creation and my work in a whole new way now through the biblical-spiritual spectacles Fujimura has provided!)
- Interrogate myself in a healthy way with questions such as:
-
- To wrestle with myself and examine myself to see if I truly believe what Paul said to Timothy (1 Tim 6:8), “If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.”
- To see Ephesians 2:10 in an entirely new and liberating light, such that I live with a daily consciousness that I am my heavenly Father’s (along with all my brothers and sisters in Christ) “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that” I am now free to “walk in them” – wow, really? This is such a wonderfully liberating truth that motivates me to get to sleep and get up to get working in the present and the future that is in God’s good hands in Christ.
- Test and examine myself to see if this is true of my life: “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU” (Heb 13:5).
- Come back and reconsider whether I truly believe and live like I believe that Acts 20:35 is true in my life: “In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Do I work like that?
- If I am supposed to be content with just food and clothing, should I remain content with others being without food and clothing in the world today, especially those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ? Texts like these have sprung to new life in my consciousness:
- 14 What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can [a]that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, [b]be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? (James 2:14-16)
- 16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his [g]heart [h]against him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. (1 John 3:16-18)
- …the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM (Matthew 11:5)
More to come…
I feel like Fujimura is a friend now. I feel like I can say personally to him, “Thank you, Makoto.”
And so I do.
Many thanks, my friend and brother in Christ, for your reflections on Matthew 6:28, 25, 33. I fully expect more illuminations to come joyfully flooding at times and flowing at others into my heart, mind, and soul as I reflect and take time to look at the birds and to consider the lilies in my life.
Now I see more clearly than ever that these “birds and lilies in my life” are, gloriously, many.
Tamara, our children and grandchildren, my mom and dad and our sisters, my mother-in-law and our families and friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ both near and far.
Nature with its birds and flowers and deer right off our deck at Wood Haven.
New Smyrna Beach, Longwood, Heathrow, and Winter Haven, Florida.
Oceans and lakes.
All those good works that are being done by those walking by grace through faith in the Son of God into that certain, hope-full resurrected future prepared beforehand by God and kept by God in his good hands.
All those works of art like Makoto’s and other redemptive-historically oriented Christian artists.
All those biblical-theological Jesus-and-the-gospel-centered works of art like Richard Pratt’s through Third Millennium Ministries and David Platt’s through Radical and N. T. Wright’s and John Piper’s and Timothy Keller’s through their prolific writing and teachings and preachings.
All those wonderfully true and honorable and right and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy things in the world.
And, strangely somehow, they are bringing peace and serious joy, freedom and liberty I’ve never known before. Is this what Jesus is getting at in Matthew 6:19-34? Is this what mediating the anxieties of affluence in late modernity feels like? I wonder…
100Fold Fun
100Fold Fun
A Joyfully Serious Essay on Affluence and Liberty
David A. Sims, JD PhD AIF® CKA®
Ordinary Time, August 3, 2024
Imagine this.
One of your friends, whom you respect and admire and love deeply, calls you out of the blue. You can tell he’s very sober and serious.
Usually, when you guys connect, it’s over cigars and brown water or good craft beers full of good laughs and entrepreneurial scheming or some other holy mischief somewhere on or near the water – the Atlantic or Pacific ocean, or perhaps on one of the glorious chains of lakes or rivers in Florida. Less frequently, it’s in Cali or the Pacific Northwest, maybe in Gig or Roche Harbors.
He's one of those very few “Super Rich” planetary inhabitants. Those you might see as UNWIers: Uber Net Worth Individuals. A member of the American upper class, an American elite. He’s a veritable entrepreneurial genius who seems to spin out start-ups and 30x, 60x, and 100x exits in his sleep. At 57, you guess he’s worth upwards of $1B, maybe much more, with annual recurring revenue of at least $500M. He’s got jets, and cars, and houses, and hotels in various places, multiple businesses, flies around the world with birds of a feather enjoying whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Self-made wealth, not inherited. Started with nothing. True rags to riches story.
And he knows it. He knows it’s because God’s blessed him with a gift of creating wealth. Of seeing into things in ways very few do.
Not only this, he’s a true 21st century Renaissance man. Musician. Started his own music recording studio with a renowned American multiple-platinum record producer, songwriter, and musician a few years back. A remarkably refined taste for aesthetics in all dimensions.
Oh, he also breeds world-class show horses and is an equestrian expert with black belts in karate, judo, Brazilian jujitsu, and Krav Maga. He won gold in Olympic freestyle wrestling at the 1992 Summer Olympics held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
He’s super fun. Super funny. Brilliant on any topic – art, history, politics, political economy, business, investment, philosophy, knee-breaking, security, risk management, asset protection, law – you name it.
Genius smart. Your go-to guy for critical thinking about anything that needs critical thought for critical decision-making. And the best part about that is that you don’t have to pay him for his opinions, for two reasons: he neither needs the money nor would he charge you because y’all are best bros.
But this time, you can tell something’s different. You feel it in your gut. Because you love him, because you want the best for him and don’t want to lose the times you guys talk and hang out, your mind and heart begins racing. You care for this friend, this brother from another mother.
“Oh no,” you think to yourself, “Does he have cancer? What kind is it? Did something happen to his wife? Is she divorcing him? Did she have an affair? Did something happen to one of his kids?”
You scan your memory but recall no hints of lurking risks or dark clouds on the horizon of his life.
“What’s up bro?” Your chest tightens a bit, you take a deep breath, bracing yourself.
“Man, I just got diagnosed with dyshekatontaplasiona.”
“With what?!”
“Dyshekatontaplasiona.” He says it very slowly, heavily.
“What the heck is dysheka…how do you say it again?”
“Dyshekatontaplasiona.”
“Dys…heka..ton..ta…?”
“…plasiona.”
“Dysheka..ton..ta…plasiona?”
“You got it.”
“What is that, bro?”
“I just learned about it from my doc. It’s also called dyshakatontitis. Very serious diagnosis, man. It’s wrecked my life.”
You feel a bit nauseous.
Very somberly and seriously, your friend continues. “Ron, you’re not gonna believe this. You know how over all these years, all our conversations, debates, and laughs over cigars and brown-water and crafts, how I’ve shared my serious-ass doubts about the Bible, right? How the can a collection of ancient writings written by ancient people thousands of years ago be relevant to the 21st century with all we now know? And some of that stuff in the Old Testament, like God commanding the slaughter of women and children in the promised land or cutting off a wife’s hand for grabbing her husband’s assailant by the balls when the assailant is beating her husband.”
You interrupt. “Yep, but wait. You said your doc gave you the diagnosis. I lost you.”
“Yeh. I’ll get there, just hang on. But no bull man, I was reading the Bible…”
“Seriously? How does that relate to your diagnosis? It must be really grim if it got you reading the Bible! Tell me you’re ok, man. Is Lynn ok? The kids?”
“Yes, smartass, yes. They’re fine. And yes the diagnosis is very grim indeed. But in a very strange way it’s made me joyfully serious about my life and about changing my life. Wrecked it, but in another sense saved it. Lynn and the kids are great. But I’m wrecked…let me tell you how I got there.”
Pregnant pause. Big breaths on both sides of the call.
“So, I was reading in the Gospel of Mark. Not sure why. I just picked up the Bible and started reading in Mark 1 yesterday. I got all the way through to Mark 4:7 and something happened. ‘Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop’ My mind was arrested. My breath got shorter. I got anxious and somehow my life flashed before my eyes. It was like a thunderbolt hit me. It seems like it lasted an hour, but I realized after I came out of it that probably I was frozen in thought for about a minute or two. So I kept reading through verses 8 and 9, but when I got to verse 9 it was like I wasn’t reading, it was like there was this voice in my head where it says, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’ Like the voice was saying, ‘Listen up! Pay attention here. Examine yourself.’ I stopped in my tracks for another minute and thought to myself, ‘Am I going nuts?’ And then it was like I heard, ‘Keep reading.’ So I kept reading all the way through verse 20.”
Somewhat incredulous, you speak into the pause. “Wow, man, that’s wild. I gotta be honest that this is blowing my mind considering your doubts about the Bible. What happened next?”
“Well, this is where the life-wrecking began. Verse 19 got me: ‘the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.’ It was like gongs started going off in my head with ‘worries of the world’ and ‘deceitfulness of riches’ and ‘desires for other things’ and ‘choke the word’, and ‘becomes unfruitful.’ Gong…gong…gong…gong…gong!!!!! What the heck, I thought. I must be going nuts. But then that voice inside my head queried me, ‘What’s your life become? Is it fruitful? Why are you anxious about things? About security? About control? About all the stuff that keeps you so busy and worried? About taxes and politics and being certain that you can respond to any crisis any time and be able to escape to any country with your multiple passports and golden visas? Are things choked in your life? Are you really free?’ The self-interrogation went on for a while. And then verse 20 grabbed me: ‘the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.’ I asked myself, who are they? Does that describe me? What does 30, 60, 100 fold fruit bearing mean?? And then I got a text from Lynn reminding me that we were going out to breakfast, so I had to shake my mind loose and get back into my day. But I marked my spot in Mark 4 and planned to come back to my reading and thoughts.”
“Bro, that’s mind-blowing. What happened next? How did you get to the diagnosis?”
“Well, pretty much all of yesterday I couldn’t get what happened out of my mind. So I sort of talked to God in my mind something like, ‘Ok, God, what’s going on here? Are you speaking to me? If so, please make it crystal clear that you are and that I’m not having some kind of psychotic moment.’ So this morning I get up and can’t think about anything else. So I pick up back reading in Mark 4 and rolled through to Mark 10, verse 17, where the story of the rich man starts. And it was like the voice in my head spoke up again. ‘Listen!’ So I read verses 17 through 31 and stopped. I went back and read it again. And again. And then again….All of a sudden, it hit me. All these years I’ve heard God’s word about Jesus and the good news of his death, burial, and resurrection but never connected the dots between that and all the financial blessings in my life, all the wealth I have. And I realized I’m choked. I’m not fruitful the way Jesus puts it in Mark 4 and 10. I’m fruitful, but really only for myself and Lynn and my kids and maybe every so often for others who I think deserve to get some of my hard-earned money and wealth. But in a flash, I realized that even any giving I’d been doing up to that point has been like tipping God with much less than a tithe of my income and throwing out crumbs of self-serving-pat-myself-on-the-back generosity to the birds pecking around the fringes of my rich and rather luxurious life. I was wrecked. I was so sad and depressed. It’s hard to explain. A great darkness settled over me. I felt enslaved, like I was chained to my stuff, my pleasures, myself. I didn’t feel truly free or even alive. It was surreal, man.”
“Sounds like it bro. Are you still there in that dark place?”
“Well, not really. Although everything’s changed. But let me finish so I can tell you about the diagnosis and why I have hope. I said I called my doc. Actually, he’s my soul doc. My genius good friend whom I respect immensely, Dr. Richard Pratt. I think of him as my personal pastor and pocket theologian. Whenever I have something I don’t like or understand about the Bible, I call him and we scuba dive into philosophy, theology, metaphysics, and other stuff. Often, we have a good, hot debate. But this time it wasn’t an intellectual getting off. It was much different, much deeper, real, essential. He listened to my story. He asked a bunch of soul diagnostic questions. Then he walked me through Mark 4 and 10.”
“We talked for hours. He enunciated and then explained the Greek words underlying the 30fold, 60fold, and 100fold language in those verses. Having a pretty good idea of what I’m worth and make, he said, ‘Well Bill, sounds like you’ve got dyshekatontaplasiona. It’s also known as dyshekatontitis.’”
“He’s so smart and speaks really fast, so I asked him to repeat it. He said it more slowly, and eventually I was able to say it. And then explained that it sounds like I’ve got a common form of a sudden dysphoric, dystopic, and disorienting perspective of life that comes to some wealthy people whose consciousness awakens to the presence of Jesus and suddenly realize that their 30fold, 60fold, or 100fold wealth and lives are unfruitful, displeasing to God. They suddenly realize that they’re stuck, they’re choked in unfruitfulness, not free to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, incapable of being his disciple, of denying themselves, taking up their crosses, and following Jesus in that hard but ultimately easy path, that liberating path of donation and dispossession of one’s life for his sake and the sake of the gospel. Then Richard said this, very gently, but it hit like a bolt of lightning in my heart and mind: ‘Bill, sounds like in your case that you have 100Fold dysphoria going on. It’s also called affluenza. It can be very deadly. But sounds like the Lord is speaking to you. Perhaps he’s been speaking to you a long time as you journeyed in your life from 0Fold to 30Fold through 60Fold to 100Fold wealth and affluence, but you’re just now beginning to hear his word of liberation, of freedom, of redemption. Sounds like this might be God’s version of Kill Bill 1 and 2 for you, to set you free in the path of discipleship. (I love those movies, by the way.) God was certainly speaking in the midst of your ascent into affluence from 30Fold through 60Fold, no doubt. But for whatever reason, you awakening and coming alive to the reality of your condition. Put another way, Bill, it sounds like your dyshekatontaplasiona may be in the process of being healed and transformed into hekatontaplasiona, into the joyfully liberating and healthy condition of 100Fold syndrome. Time will tell. Sounds like you’ve got some seriously joyful work to do and decisions to make.’
“So what was the lightning strike like, Bill?”
“It was amazing. My life was wrecked, then saved. In an instant, I saw exactly what I needed to do, what I must do, to be truly free. To gain the whole world, to have my life back. With Richard on the phone, I read Mark 10:17-31 out loud. I heard Jesus saying to me, ‘Bill, one thing you lack…go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. And trust me, I guarantee you that in this life and in the life to come, both of which lives I have made possible for you through my bodily death and burial and my bodily resurrection, you will see your houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms and businesses and wealth and riches and boats and cars and hotels and anything else you possess that possesses you multiply 100Fold in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. Your joy and liberty will be beyond comprehension.’ And in a moment, I knew it was true and exactly what I had to do.”
“Amazing. Simply amazing, bro. Super excited for you. Have you talked to Lynn?”
“A little bit. But, how do I explain all this to Lynn and the children? I’m still processing and thinking and trying to get the beginning of a plan together. And that’s the second reason I called you. I know you do generosity advising with affluent believers and are passionate about it, Ron. And I know how serious you are about generosity both in your personal and professional life. I want and need your counsel. Will you help me think through how to talk with Lynn about it and then help her and me develop a full-tilt generosity plan of donation and dispossession for the poor along the lines of what I heard Jesus saying? Then we’ll need your help to choose and develop our next generation of stewards to take the generosity plan we develop into the future after we’re gone. But we want to get started at it with them now while we have time.”
“Bro, of course you know I will. It would be my privilege and joy. On one condition: we do most of our planning and implementing work together either at my place in New Smyrna Beach, or yours in Flagler Beach. Remember, New Smyrna has Jeffe Cigar Lounge on Flagler Avenue. Perfect place for this kind of work!”
“Sweet. Thanks for your friendship, Ron. Love ya man. Let’s grab our calendars and scope out the rest of the year for our meetings….Oh, and by the way. As you know, I love Richard. And I love how he has given his life for his ministry, Third Millennium Ministries: Biblical Education for the World For Free. And I realize I’ve been a really arrogant twit in my views about the Bible. Just simply stupidly arrogant. It had to have frustrated and hurt him many times over the years. But Richard has never judged me. He’s always given me time and listened to my speculative philosophical and theological baloney in my attempts to dismiss the Bible and justify my doubts. But here’s what I know God wants me to do. He wants me to figure out how to fund a permanent endowment for Third Mill. I think it will only take about $160 million in principal conservatively invested to throw off enough to fund the annual budget of about $7 million or so. Let’s put that objective at the top of the list. And let’s talk to Grant Birdwell on your team about how to dial that in and get it working.”
“Sounds good Bill. How about September 13th through the 15th? New Smyrna Beach will be perfect then….”
On the Way to a Hundredfold = 100Fold
- triakonta — HNWI to VHNWI = 30Fold = $1M - $29.999M = Rich
- hexakonta — VHNWI to UHNWI = 60Fold = $30M - $99.999M
- hekaton (hekatontaplasiona) — UHNWI to UNWI/SRI = 100Fold = $100M+
Roughly corresponds to the sequence recorded about the patriarch Isaac, who, the Scripture says, “sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich [30Fold], and continued to grow richer [60Fold] until he became very wealthy [100Fold].”
Look at the sequence: (1) he sowed and reaped 100Fold; (2) the Lord blessed him; (3) he became rich; (4) continued to grow richer; and (5) became very wealthy.
Every good Jew and sane Christian acknowledges that it is God who gives them the power and even the gifts to make wealth. Every highly successful and wealthy Christian I have the privilege of knowing and/or serving along their life’s path of generosity cultivation knows and acknowledges this: that but for God’s blessings, they would never have reached 30Fold, 60Fold, or 100Fold.
At the same time, both I and they realize that indeed they “made wealth” – they did the work, and it was God at work in them both to will and to work in the making of the wealth. Making wealth requires work. And it is good work, which makes possible the “good works” into which God intends for us to walk each day and the next, into the future that is in God’s good hands.
The 100Fold Texts.
Genesis 26
12 Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy.
Mark 4
8 Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” 9 And He was saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
20 And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”
Mark 10
29 Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, 30 but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last, first.”
Luke 8
8 Other seed fell into the good soil, and grew up, and produced a crop a hundred times as great.” As He said these things, He would call out, “He who has ears to hear, [b]let him hear.”
11 “Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God….15 But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with [d]perseverance.