Episode 95 - God's Generosity(original date 9/25/2023)

I am constantly experiencing God the Father's love and generosity. How do I share that with those around me? 

Transcript

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Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Paul. You today, I would like to talk about God's generosity. But before we do that, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we ask You for all the grace and wisdom that we need to face the challenges or the circumstances that we find ourselves in. We know that you love us and that you have a great plan for us, allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. We ask all this in Jesus name, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So recently, I feel like I've been learning some new elements of God's generosity and how I can try to better follow his example. Now I'm going to share a personal story that is very recent. But first, let me start by giving you a little bit of a of context. So a few months ago, my son, Josh, 17 years old. He got his driver's license. He had also purchased his own car, and we talked, and I had told him that he's responsible for the gas, minor repairs in the upkeep, and I told him, if there was a major expense for the car, that we could discuss it well. So that was the context. Move all up to last week. Last week, my wife and I went out on date night. We try to do that every week, when we got home, we paid the kids for babysitting and for us babysitting when we go out. It's one of those chores that we told the older kids they get paid for. And in our budget, we pay for babysitting at $10 per hour, as long as when we get home, the little guys have been put to bed in the dinner dishes. They've all been cleaned up. So we got home, I asked my older kids who babysat? They answered that they both did. My 17 year old son and my 15 year old daughter. So I split the babysitting money. We're out for three hours, so that's $30 of babysitting. So $15 each. My son looked at it and said, can I get more money for gas? I looked at him and said, is, is that a thing? Have I asked you to run errands for me that has used up gas in your car? He said, No, but it almost cost $50 to fill up the tank. And in my brain, I was thinking, dude, your gas money. It's on the floor of your closet in sneakers, and it's on the wall in your room in hats. He likes shoes and hats, and he spent, I mean, a good amount of money on those. And I was thinking, well, that's where your gas money is. Now, I didn't say this out loud, but I was thinking it. What I did say out loud was no, because I want him to learn that there are opportunity costs that we spend money, like on shoes and hats, we have less to spend on things like gas when we need it. Gas is a need. Shoes and hats are want. And I looked at my wife, who was, you know, in the kitchen. This conversation was in the kitchen. She was present to it. I looked her and said, Am I in a line? Is that a thing that we're just going to give him gas money when he wants it? I don't remember saying that. She said, No, we never told him we're going to give him gas money unless we ask him to do a bunch of, you know, errands running around for us. So I felt justified in my response to him. Now let me go backwards a little bit. A day earlier, he had brought another item to me. We have taught our kids to tithe. It's something Taryn and I do. It's what we firmly believe the Lord is calling us to and tithe. That is to give 10% of our income to the Lord and His work. So my son Josh, he worked all summer at various jobs, and he had told me early in the summer that he didn't want to just give, you know, 1020, or $30 a week in the collection basket at church, but rather, he wanted to save up his tithe into a bigger amount and to give it somewhere where he felt the Lord calling him to give it. So this day earlier, he had approached me and asked me how he could give his tithe to his youth group. He had $330 that he had saved up in his tithe envelope from the summer. He told me he felt the Lord had put on his heart to give it to his youth group. I told him, that was awesome, and I agreed. And I told him, and I'm very proud of him. I mean, it's one of the reasons I'm sharing this here on the podcast as well. He is a great young man. And then I was thinking recently, he has just really been constantly asking how he can help at home, coming up to me multiple times a day and asking dad, how can I help? Dad, is there anything you'd like me? He do, and other times he just jumps in, even without being asked. He's been playing and engaging his two younger brothers regularly, and especially at times when he notices that they're being crazy or looking for attention. I mean, the other night, he took them to the field next to our house to play soccer. It was right after dinner. They were being a little crazy. Josh noticed that, and he decided to help get them out of the way from the others that were cleaning up from dinner. And he took him next door to the field to play soccer. It was a huge help. So let me just kind of recap. He's been super helpful. He's trying to follow the promptings of the Lord and His generosity. And I told him no to extra gas money, because I want him to learn how to manage his money better. So just last week, last Friday morning, in my prayer, I had a sense from the Lord, and the Lord asked me, Do I want Josh to do, what I want him to do, or do I want Josh to do what the Lord wants him to do? Wow. That hit me really hard. I mean, I talk about us following the Lord's plan all the time, and here I am probably trying to get my son to follow my plan instead of the Lord's plan maybe. So I started praying, am I getting in the way or somehow not cooperating with what the Lord is trying to do with Josh. He's being a great son. He's growing into a young man, and I'm incredibly proud of him. Am I loving him as much as I possibly can, or am I making it more difficult for him to experience love? I finished my prayer and immediately grabbed his car keys, drove his car to the gas station and filled it up with gas for him. When I got home, my wife looked at me and said, Where'd you go? I told her, I went and filled up Josh's car with gas. She said, that's great. I was going to tell you I thought you should do that. And immediately I was like, No, this was not your idea. It was my idea. And that hit me, that's my pride coming out. I mean, really it was God's idea. See, he showed me that I'm called to love and be generous without making deals. God fills up my gas tank every day, whether I deserve it or not, and I can tell you I never deserve it. Just this past Sunday, the homily at mass, it just reinforced and reiterated what I had heard. You know, within the Gospel reading the workers in the vineyard, the vineyard owner asked the workers who had worked all day, are you jealous? Because I am generous. The Lord is so generous to us constantly, and we have never, and we can never earn any of it. It is immeasurable the amount of love and grace that He pours about, that he pours out upon us freely, and then He commands us love one another as I have loved you. The prior week, Sunday gospel had a similar message where the master forgave the incredibly large debt from the one servant, forgave it out of mercy and love, and then that same servant leaves, sees a fellow servant who owed him a much lesser amount, and throws him into prison until he paid it back. He did not follow the example of his master. Am I going to follow the example of my master. Am I going to follow the example of Jesus? It is human nature for us to want to make deals. If you do this, I'll do that right. But the Lord doesn't make deals like that at all. He gives us everything freely, and then we get to respond to him by either rejecting Him or embracing Him. And when we reject the Lord, he actually he honors our free will and still continues to relentlessly pour out His grace and mercy and constantly calls us to return to him. I mean, I pray I can follow the example of God's generosity in the way I love my wife and the way I love my children and the way I love my parents and my siblings, and the way I love my friends and all of those that the Lord puts in my life. So my encouragement today is, who in your life can you show more love to? Where can you increase your generosity? Do you have conditions that people need to meet before you show them love or mercy. Sometimes we need to first list and identify all the areas that we are grateful to the Lord for his generosity. And believe me, for all of us, regardless of our situation, there are numerous ways where the Lord has poured out His love and mercy. So let's list those areas where Lord has blessed us. Maybe it is with your spouse, your kids or your family. Maybe it's with your home, your job or a close friend. Do we have gratitude for the sacraments, for the opportunity to go to confession and receive reconciliation? Am I grateful for God? The Father sending His Son Jesus to die for me and for redeeming me and all of us and adopting us all as his sons and daughters. Are we grateful for the opportunity to receive his body and blood in the Eucharist? When we see all the areas where the Lord has blessed us, it should fill us with gratitude, and should then overflow from our hearts to others. This is one of those areas where the Lord invites us to cooperate in his plan, to follow his example of generosity. When I filled up Josh's car with gas, it encourages him and it reinforces the truth, the truth that the Lord will bless His faithfulness. He'll bless him constantly, but a particular way we see it when we're trying to be faithful to the Lord, we more clearly see the way he blesses us. I did not bless Josh by filling his tank. The Lord did. He used me to do it, and I need to be humble and joyful to be used as an instrument for the Lord to bless others. It is the Spirit of the Lord, alive and active that through our humility and yielding to Him, that He uses us to accomplish the work that he is about. We must make a decision to say to the Lord, use me and then be careful, because he shows up in ways that we can't even imagine. That short prayer, those two words, it's very powerful, but don't pray it unless you are ready. Because the Lord, he usually answers that prayer. He always answers that prayer. Use me. And if you're reluctant to pray, that's your prayer. I invite you to take a look at your life. Take a look at your spirit. You might need to make some space in your life to be able to say that prayer, but when you do and the Lord shows up, I promise you will have an awesome life that is full of joy because you are loving and serving others. I need to remember to pray this constantly, because my human nature wants to be selfish. I want to be comfortable, but when I look at the cross and I see what true love looks like, I'm reminded of what the Lord said, Love one another as I have loved you. So if you're ready, pray with me now, Heavenly Father, I am grateful for all the ways that you love and bless me. Thank you for your constant generosity towards me. I am so grateful that your mercy is bigger, oceans bigger than all of my sins. Please help me to love more. Help me to share your love with others. Use me. Use me as an instrument of your love and mercy so that others may come to experience you through me. May I be a light directing others to you. Thank you for the awesome invitation to cooperate with your plan. Please give me the strength to be courageous to follow the promptings of Your Holy Spirit in my life. Please give me the humility I need to yield to your spirit. We ask all this through your holy name. Amen. Well, that is all I have for today. I really hope this was helpful. Please use the link in the podcast description to reach out to me if you have any questions, or if there's any other way I could serve you. Thank you for joining me today. God bless Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You. School. I'm.