This past Sunday we celebrated our generosity as a church and how God is working through it to change lives. I am in a unique position in my role to see generosity not just on the group level but also on an individual level.

I can see people prayerfully making changes to their giving and I can also see people responding to the needs of those around them. While we share with some frequency about our collective generosity, we do not often share the individual stories of how our BP Family cares for and is generous to one another. Below are two stories I wanted to share with you so you can join me in praising God.

A small group provides support during financial instability

We are a family of five that loves Christ and attends BridgePointe. My wife and I have two boys and a baby girl. She had just given birth to our daughter in our new home when shortly after, I was laid off from work. Through prayer and faith I eventually ended up finding a great new job. However, in the time that it took to find a new job, bills quickly added up and we were falling behind. Then one day we got the news that our house was being foreclosed unless we came up with the money.

We put faith in God to help us through these problems and I mentioned what was going on in my small group. The men in my small group decided to get together and raise money for my family to help me save my house. With prayer and faith in God, we were able to negotiate a deal with the mortgage company to prevent foreclosure and to forgive our lateness. The group knew that money was tight and other bills were behind, and donated the money that they collected to help us pay our other bills and get us a great head start to paying what we were behind on.

That was a very hard time for us, and we struggled with feeling very depressed and that we were hopeless. With prayer, faith and trust that God would lead us; we were able to overcome this dark time. We thank God for His generous gift to us through our family here at BridgePointe, and we hope that others can feel God's generous love and compassion as we did. We are humbled and in awe of the kindness shown to us. We pray that God can guide us to be generous to others as we were blessed, and that others may hear this and know how good our lord is when you just have trust in Him. 

Unexpected holiday blessings

I wanted to share a little about how someone’s generosity greatly helped me and my family. Just before the holidays someone had noticed we were in need and I was approached with two gift cards to Stop and Shop with a substantial amount of money on them. The person who gave us these cards has remained anonymous til this day.  I can’t even begin to explain what that meant for me and my family to receive these gift cards. We were struggling pretty badly and having one less burden, like not having to worry about groceries during the holidays was truly a godsend. The only thing I had to now worry about was providing a decent holiday for the kids and we did, thanks to being able to focus more on the kids instead of trying to figure out how to get food in the house. But that’s not where the story ends.

As Christmas came and I had gotten a few small gifts for each child, people from the church had unexpectedly put together a massive pile of toys for the kids. What we originally thought was going to be a terrible holiday season ended up being one of the best holidays we have ever had, where we as a family got to spend more time together not only sharing biblical stories, but also discussing the importance of generosity and how our church family really came through for us. Our children know how this was all made possible for us, and we are forever thankful.

This did not make our hardships go away completely and we still struggle as many families do in this economy, but what it did was help lighten our burden for even just a short while so we could focus on what was most important during the season…the Love of God and how far it goes and works through others.

My wife and I constantly discuss how one day we hope to be on the opposite end of this miracle of giving and to be able to provide for others as they have for us. It’s something I now pray for and look forward to. I know how it made me feel when we first received this gift. My wife and I cried. We couldn’t believe we had received such a generous gift like that. I can’t wait to be an instrument of God in this way and help be part of someone else’s miracle story one day.

In both of these stories, people chose to be generous beyond the tithe and respond to the needs around them as prompted by the Spirit. Romans 12:13 commands us to share with the Lord’s people who are in need. When we do so it strengthens both their faith and ours and it is a beautiful example of Christian community to the world around us.

I hope these stories are an encouragement and an inspiration for you whether you see yourself as in a position of need or in a position to give. Thank you again for being such a generous church, and if you have a story to share — use this form to praise God and share your testimony with us.