Generosity - Bishop T.D. Jakes

[Music] I'm ready to go deeper into the Word of God, and I want you to get your Bibles. As we prepare to go into the Word, I want you to go to Proverbs chapter 11, verses 22 through 27. I'm going to be reading out of the NIV, and I'm going to share that with you. And then I'm going to go to 2nd Kings 4:8 through 14, and I'm going to be reading that out of the King James Version. But the first one is going to be out of NIV. So let me get rid of this because I don't really need this. And, uh, and we're going to go from there and see what we can find to grow.

When I start talking about generosity, it's something that, number one, we don't talk about much at all. And when we do talk about it, we talk about it from the perspective of money alone. But I don't think that that's really the way that we ought to look at it. That's only a part of it. Generosity isn't about how much you have, or how little you have. It is the spirit that it comes from. Generosity can be children drawing paintings for their mother and putting it on the wall. Generosity can be bringing somebody in and feeding them when they need to be fed. Generosity can be a whole lot of things. But the question is, are you generous? Are you enough like God to be generous?

We know that God is generous. We know that God is generous. The earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof, and they that dwell therein. That's what the Bible says. It all belongs to God, and He turned around and gave charge of it over to us. That's pretty generous. Then God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That's pretty generous. Okay, God, who spared not His own Son, but gave His Son that we might have the right to the tree of life. That's pretty generous. His grace is generous. His mercy is generous.

What I'm trying to get you to see is that He has the nature of generosity. And I think that many of you have the nature of generosity, but I know that I do. And I didn't always understand what it was. We went through a time in the early years of our marriage that we were down to almost nothing, and I was still feeding people and bringing people in. And my mother was fussing at me, my siblings were fussing at me, saying, "You know, you can't take care of yourself, and there you are trying to take care of somebody else." I know it didn't make any sense. I know it sounded really stupid. But I enjoy giving. I enjoy other people enjoying. I enjoy being a blessing to other people. And though when I look back at it in retrospect, I probably would have criticized my kid for doing it too. I could barely make ends meet. We couldn't keep all the utilities on. I was having all kinds of people for dinner. I would get big bags of chicken legs, you know, you could get the chicken legs pretty affordable, and I'd get brown beans and a bag of rice and cook dinner and make some cornbread, invite people over for dinner and some sort of dessert. I made it work. I didn't have much, but I had a generous spirit.

And some of you have a generous spirit. And if you're not careful, people will talk you out of being generous so that they're more comfortable. They feel intimidated because you're generous and they're not, and they'll shame you out of being generous. You can't afford to do that. They're making a fool out of you. That doesn't make any sense. You need to take care of yourself. All of that stuff, practical stuff. But at the core, some of us have been created with a generous spirit. It's part of our likeness and image of God. And we have the desire, even if we don't have the means, to do something to contribute on some level. They're forever trying to get me to sit down somewhere when they're moving boxes around. I can't hardly stand to see everybody moving and working at me not jump in and do my part because I want to give too.

And if in any way that describes you, if in any way you've had that dampened down or belittled or criticized, tonight might be a really, really good night for you. Because God created you that way for a reason. It's part of your destiny. It's part of your purpose. It affects everything. It affects the way you preach. The way you minister. Some people minister, but they're not generous when they minister. They do the least they can get by with. They're not really worried about blessing people, they're worried about getting blessed. But when you are a generous person, you go above and beyond what you could do or should do or even what makes sense to do because you're generous.

So let me pray for you, and then we'll go in the Word. Father, we thank You that our time in the Word is going to be fruitful tonight. It's going to be a blessing tonight. It's going to help us tonight. It's going to liberate somebody tonight who's always felt uncomfortable and maybe they're the only one in their family like that, and they feel like a lame duck sitting out there. But God, tonight, You created us to be generous, and You designed us to have a spirit of generosity because we're like You. And I pray that that would flourish in the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen.

Okay, all right. Let's get into it a little bit. There's some things here I think that are really going to bless you, and I'm anxious to share them with you because I believe that they're going to speak to your life in a definite way and uplift you and help you to grow. Proverbs 11:22 says, "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion." Like a gold ring in a pig's nose is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. That's the message all by itself. I'm not going to get into that tonight, but that's a message. The importance of discretion. That's just a whole thing all by itself. But I won't get into it.

"The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath." The desire of the righteous ends only in good. The desire, the desire, the desire. We're not talking about means. Desire. "One gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty." So, in other words, a person who gives freely, they gain even more. And another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. I have seen this so many times in my own life. You would think that if you hoard it up for yourself, you would end up rich. But the reality is, the more you give, the more gets given back to you. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over. That's time. That's wisdom. That's energy. That's finances. That's whatever you have to give. That's cooking. That's baking. That's serving. That's fixing somebody's steps. It's helping somebody to move. Whatever way you find to give, when you are a giver, you will find a way to give. A generous person will prosper. A generous person will prosper. A generous person will prosper.

Tonight, we're talking about generosity. A generous person will prosper. "Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed." Oh my gosh, I can stop right there. A generous person will prosper, and whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. This is nothing but sowing and reaping, reaping what yourself. What you sow. If you want friends, you must show yourself friendly. If you are a generous person, the Bible said you will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. This is good already. "People curse the one who hoards grain, but they pray God's blessings on the one who is willing to sell." "Whoever seeks good finds favor." Whoever seeks good, not favor. Whoever seeks good finds favor. But evil comes to one who searches for it. So the person who is seeking favor, evil comes to them. They want a favor, they never prosper. But if you just seek to do good, God will give you favor because God wants to empower you to be able to do good.

Now, I may have heard me say this before, but I've been on this thing about thinking about mentoring and modeling. And mentoring is wonderful. We go out, we get somebody, we want them to mentor us. But it is difficult to mentor somebody who has had another thing modeled in front of them. It's not impossible, but it's more difficult. What is modeled in front of you often becomes a standard to which you live. So if it was modeled in front of you to be selfish, it was modeled in front of you to be narcissistic, if it was modeled in front of you to take care of yourself and nobody else, whatever is modeled in front of you, it becomes difficult to overcome that because that, in fact, has become the substratum of your example. And you find yourself ending up bending yourself over into what was modeled in front of you. And it takes a strong mentor to break through the modeling to get you to the next level of life.

I say this, and I think it's really, really interesting because I grew up with a great deal of criticism about being a giver, about always wanting to give, and always wanting to feed people, and always wanting to help people. It drove people crazy. One time, as a little boy, I was walking around the road, Mountain Road, on my way back to the house, and I saw a German police dog that had died, and she had all these puppies. And the puppies were trying to nurse at the breast of a dead mother. And I had this box, and I picked up this box and I brought all the puppies home and decided I was going to nurse them. Okay? I didn't know what I was doing. I'm maybe 10 years old. So I got my mother's Palmolive dishwashing liquid bottle, emptied it out, and put some warm milk in it and a little bit of oatmeal. And I don't know why I put the oatmeal in there, but I did. It just seemed like a good thing to do. And I took the puppies one by one, and I fed them out of the bottle. And it worked. It worked with some inconveniences. I don't recommend it for everybody. Something about the milk or the oatmeal mixing together with the puppies gave them terrible diarrhea. So it was, I had to get the hose anyway. But my heart, my heart was in the right place. My heart was in the right place. In some kind of way, my mother put up with this. I got all these puppies and all of this puppy feces all over the yard, and I'm standing there with the Palmolive bottle, smelling like God knows what. But I was feeding the puppies. And I've been feeding the puppies ever since.

Generosity doesn't start with dollars. It doesn't start with wisdom. It doesn't start with preaching. It's an attitude that you have in your heart. And I want to stir this up because a lot of us start out being generous, but either because we get hurt, or because we get criticized, or because we don't feel safe, or we've been used and abused, we gradually retrain ourselves away from generosity. And in so doing, we might be safe, but we become a bit miserable. Because what you don't realize about givers is that givers get as much out of giving as the recipient does. It's a wonderful thing. The other day, we had the kids over for dinner, and we were feeding them, and I was watching all of them eat the food. And I had been cooking overnight. My wife had cooked overnight. And we were working together. We were feeding all the kids and everything like that. The joy that we got out of them talking, "Oh, this is so good! Oh, what did you put in this?" That was better than the food to me. What was the joy was them enjoying what was given. It's about how you show love. It's about how you express yourself. It's a natural inclination to give. And some of you have had that natural inclination, but the enemy has heaped so much dirt on top of it, and so much discouragement, so much bitterness on top of it, and so much embarrassment on top of it, that he's really killed your gift. And you have the gift of generosity. You have the gift of giving. Whenever you come in, you always want to make things better. You have the gift of giving.

And I want to challenge you tonight to go back to your gift. Because your gift is going to make room for you. Your gift is going to open doors for you. Your gift is going to add favor into your life. Your gift is going to bring you before great men. But when that gift is thwarted, and you're unable or unwilling to give like you once gave, because of what people might think or say, it kind of thwarts you from being who you want to be. Now, this is not everybody. I'm not trying to get everybody, but I'm going after somebody tonight who has had your whole personality disrupted. It's been you. You've been realigned. You've been reprogrammed to turn into something to fit in with other people. When, in fact, you should have been yourself and allowed them to adjust to you. But you've allowed them to control and dominate you to the point that you've lost yourself. You've lost yourself.

And it's interesting that the text starts out talking about a gold ring and a pig's nose. Now, that's just as odd a metaphor as you can get. It talks about a gold ring in a pig's snout. Now, I've never seen a gold ring in a pig's snout, but I know that you don't normally see a gold ring in a pig. Now, he compares that to a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. In other words, she has no ability to give loyalty. She's gorgeous, but she has no ability to give loyalty. The fact that she has no discretion is the Bible compares it to a pig with an earring, with a gold ring in its nose. The gold is valuable, the ring is beautiful, but it is contaminated by the environment that it's in. And sometimes, when you stop being who you were created to do, it really does hinder where you're at.

Now, I want to be sure that I drive this scripture down into your heart and into your spirit, and that you get it really, really good, because it is so important to understand. In verse 25, "A generous person will prosper." To all the generous people out there right now, you may not have it right now. I didn't either. My car was repossessed. I was barely making it. I was on unemployment. Didn't have unemployment. I ran out of unemployment. I was on welfare. I was getting food stamps. But even then, I was still giving. I was still giving. It drove my mother crazy, but I was still giving because I like to do that. Because it's in my heart to do that. I didn't know that there was a gift of generosity that comes down into your spirit. And that a generous person ultimately will be rewarded, will be blessed, will come into their own, will be able to do things that they couldn't otherwise do. And the Bible simply states, "A generous person will prosper." I want you to write that down. A generous person will prosper. A generous person will prosper.

Now, if a generous person will prosper, they don't have to be, they don't have to be prosperous to be generous. So generous, it's not about how much you have. This is the inclination of, about what you do with what you have. Okay? A generous person will prosper.

Now, I'm going to go to 2nd Kings and we're going to work on 2nd Kings a little bit because I think 2nd Kings, this woman fascinates me. She fascinates me. And I've written a book, "When Women Pray," and she's one of the women that I focused on in the book because this woman is an amazing woman. Shunammite woman. Elijah's talking about her. It's 2nd Kings chapter 4, verse 8. "And it fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunem, where there was a great woman." Underlying great woman. She was a great woman. Don't misunderstand. Greatness at first blush, that greatness is an indication of the fact that this woman is wealthy, that she's well-off, that she's sustained. She is, she's all of that. But I'm starting to think that her greatness is not in her net worth. Her greatness is in who she is as a person.

"And she constrained him to eat bread." And so it was, that as often as he passed by, he turned in thither to eat bread. So she kept having him over for dinner, kept having him over for dinner. And she said unto her husband, "Behold now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God which passes by us continually." She didn't start out giving on the next level, but she started out with dinner. And in the process of dinner, she decided to escalate the process. "Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall, and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick. And it shall be, when he comes to us, that he shall turn in thither." So he doesn't just come to dinner now. Now she's made it turned it into a bed and breakfast place, and he's staying there whenever he comes to town.

"And it fell on a day that he came unto her, and he turned into the chamber and lay there." He is laying in her generosity. He is laying in her generosity. And he said to Gehazi, while he was laying there, his servant, "Call this Shunammite woman." And when he had called her, she stood before him. And he said unto her, "Say now unto her, Behold, thou hast been careful for us with all this care. What is it to be done for thee?" See how her gift has opened up a conversation that she never would have had if she hadn't fed him. She wouldn't have built the room, and she hadn't built the room, he wouldn't have been laying in the bed. If he hadn't been laying in the bed, he wouldn't have thought this way about her. He said, "I cannot allow you to continue to be generous to me and me not do something back to you. I've got to give something back." And this is going from generosity to reciprocity. Okay, we're going to go from generosity to reciprocity.

He says, "You have been kind to me. Every time I came over, you fed me. Every time I came over, you had me to dinner. And now you've built this room, turned your house into a bed and breakfast to accommodate a man of God." And he says, "I cannot let you continue to do this and have experienced your generosity and not give reciprocity." I don't know who I'm talking to tonight, but you have been generous over a period of time. You've been, you've been generous. Your generosity, your generosity has escalated with time. In the process of escalating that generosity, there is coming a day of reciprocity. And I want to prophesy this into you, and I want to speak it into your life. You didn't do it for reciprocity. You didn't ask for reciprocity. This woman didn't ask for anything. But there was in the desire of the prophet a desire to bless her because she asked for nothing, because she required nothing, because she did it from a pure place of understanding her responsibility that God had been that good to her, that He'd been so good to her, that she wanted to extend it and find a way to give back to the God who gave her. And she can't just take the bread and throw it up in the air and hope that heaven. He said, she can't build a room and hope God lives in her house. But giving to God's servant was the way in which she thought, "I can give to God." God's servant is laying in her bed that she built for him, thinking about how can I be a blessing to her? God rests in your generosity. Your generosity creates a bed for him to lay on. When God rests in your generosity, it puts you on His mind. Generosity will always get you selected. Generosity will always get you selected.

When they were looking for a wife for Isaac, they said, "Go and find a woman who waters all of your horses and gives all your meal water to drink. That is the woman that I want to be married to my son." And all of a sudden, she ended up married to Isaac because of her generosity. And the way that God found her was through her generosity. Generosity will always lead to reciprocity. The prophet in the text now says, "What can I do for you, seeing as you have already sowed so much into me? I cannot just take all of this in and rob, rob, rob, rob, and not create a way for reciprocity."

Here's another lesson to those of you that have been on the receiving end of other people's generosity, and they, oh, they're so nice. And you're so quick to give compliments. That's nice. But what are you going to do in terms of reciprocity? At some point, you have to do something back for people who keep on serving you. I don't care if it's a waiter, I don't care if it's a waitress, I don't care if it's a person who drove an ambulance. There ought to be something in your recreated spirit that wants to have reciprocity, that does not just take and not give.

Let's go deeper. You remember when Jesus cursed the fig tree and said, "Why cumbereth it the ground?" The reason He cursed the fig tree is that the fig tree is taking the sunlight, it's in the ground, it's taking the water and the nutrients out of the soil, and yet it gives no fruit back. And He cursed it because that is a curse all by itself. If you don't find your way to reciprocity, that's a curse all by itself. Reciprocity is what sustains the entire population. In the book of Genesis, when God created the heavens and the earth, He created it under a system of reciprocity. Everything that He created, had every living thing that He created had a seed inside of itself. And as He gave it seed, it reproduced after its own kind. And each thing after its own kind, because God created the system so that He wouldn't have to get up and create grass every time you wanted a front yard. But through reciprocity, the cycle of blessings continues. Somebody needs to be in a cycle of blessings. And in order to get in a cycle of blessings, you have to be reciprocal. You have to learn to be reciprocal. And it's difficult, difficult when it wasn't modeled in front of you. It's not your nature. And there's all these voices. There's one on the shoulder, and there's one on the shoulder. And one voice is saying, "You ought to do good." In other words, "That doesn't make sense. You got to take care of yourself." Listening at the right voice lines you up from generosity to reciprocity.

And when reciprocity begins to flow into your life, you come into a level of favor that you never would have gotten before. You never would have gotten it before. Because a generous soul shall prosper. And you come into favor because you are generous, not in spite of you being generous. And those of you who are trying to come into favor by hoarding back to yourself, you always end up destitute. By ripping people off, by tricking people, by being selfish and self-centered, you always come into poverty. But if you are generous, God has what you might not. Now, let me say this. You might not always get it back from the person you gave it to, but God will find a way to bless you. He will find a way to bless you. He will find a way to bless you.

This is the way. This whole notion of reciprocity is what causes water to come down from heaven as rain, dehydrate and go back up into the heavens again, and then recycle that water back down again. The whole heavens operate under reciprocity. The herb yielding seed after its own kind is reciprocity. The reason leaves fall from the tree and go back into the ground and fertilize the soil from which the roots are drawing life is reciprocity. Everything survives under reciprocity. And you can't have reciprocity if you don't have generosity. You have to have the generosity that creates a reciprocity for you to be able to go to the next level.

I always watch people who don't have any instinct to be reciprocal. They take, take, take, take, take, take. They give absolutely nothing back. And they're comfortable to give nothing back. And ultimately, it's always a character flaw. And it's a sign that something may be a little bit off there. Because there ought to be something instinctively inside of you that says, "I need to do something back." Elijah's laying in her bed. He's eating her food. He's living in her house. He's laying in her bed. And he says, "I cannot let this be one-sided. You cannot stay in that house and not be reciprocal. You can't just live there and eat their young people and old people, any age people, and run up the water bill and run up the power bill and not be reciprocal." There's a certain thing in you that's important to your character. It's not whether they need it or not. It's not whether they ask for it or not. It says something about you when you don't have an instinct to be reciprocal.

This woman has modeled generosity in front of him, and the modeling manifests in his reciprocity. If your children grow up and they never see you give, and they never see you do anything, and it's all about, "What can I get for Christmas?" And they're opening up toys as fast as you can get them out, they're opening up toy after toy after toy. "What else did you give me? What else did you give me?" It's time to do something else with them where we take some toys down to the shelter, or we go to the shut-in and we serve somebody. Because you have to break that spirit that stops them from always taking and not giving. Especially with our men. I think it's very, very, very, very, very important that the man doesn't grow up being spoiled by his mama and then go out here and find a younger mama to take care of him because he's always on the receiving end, but he has never been taught reciprocity.

If reciprocity runs the universe, if it controls the air and the water, if it controls the grass growing and the harvesting of wheat, if it controls apple orchards, if it controls vineyards, then reciprocity has something to do with what is going to happen in your life. Reciprocity. And I want to break it today. I want to break it today. If you have to send somebody something in a cash app, if you have to call them on the phone and say, "You know what? You're always good to me, and I'm never doing anything back for you. I'm inviting you over for dinner." Find something to give back. Because reciprocity is a law of which the whole ecosystem of the planet exists. And you cannot be a hoarder and expect to prosper. You have to develop the propensity to be liberal. The Bible said, "The liberal soul shall be made fat." What is fat? Overflow. Its abundance is more than what your body needs. So you ate more food than your body needed to use, and all of this fat I'm preaching about, all of this fat is overflow. Overflow. That's all the energy you didn't burn. Okay? You have to, under the Bible says, "The liberal soul shall be made fat." In other words, if you're a liberal, you'll have overflow. You'll have extra. You'll have more abundance. You're coming to another level because you have the spirit of generosity.

Can we go deeper in this? This is good. I want to get this into your spirit because we don't see this much anymore. And there he is, laying in the bed. And it fell on the day while he was laying in the bed, he said to Gehazi, "Call the Shunammite woman." And when he had called her, she stood before him. And he said unto her, "Behold, thou hast been careful for us, or taken good care of us with all this care. What is it to be done for thee? What is thou be spoken for to the king or the captain of the host?" He said, "I can introduce you to great people. Would you like for me to speak up for you to the king or the captain of the host?"

And this is amazing. She says, "I dwell amongst my own people." In other words, I'm complete with where I am. I found my place where I fit. I dwell amongst my own people. This is not discrimination. This is not anything other than the fact that this woman says, "I have found a niche where I fit, and I'm good with it. And I don't really need to meet the king or the captain of the host. I found the place that I fit." Have you found the place that you fit? This is not just about hanging with people of your economic level, or your social level, or your racial level. This is your type of person. Who are your people? Your people ought to be the people that you fit with organically, not that look like you, or vote like you, or dress like you. But "I dwell amongst my own people."

If you are not feeling safe right now, it could be that you are trying to force a relationship that doesn't fit. "Dwell amongst my own people" means I'm dwelling amongst people who are similar to me in terms of their values, or their constructs, or their disciplines. May not be similar to me by race or income or anything like that. "I dwell amongst my own people." I have no desire to meet the king. I have no desire to meet the captain of the host. I'm good. You can see here for sure why this woman is a great woman. She is a great woman not because she could build a room and put a bed in it, and a chair and a table in it, and a bed, all that kind of stuff. That's not what makes her great. What makes her great is she did all of that asking nothing in return. And when he offers her something, she says, "I'm good. I dwell amongst my own people. I'm fine. I am not eating up with ambition and just going to be going and further to be further and reaching to be reaching." She says, "I dwell amongst my own people. I found my niche. I fit. I'm good. I'm safe."

Safe is such a powerful word. Because if you're going to be generous, you need to be safe, to be in a place where you're safe, and you understand how things work. Those were the things that she valued. And I suggest to you that part of the reason this woman is so great is because she knows who she is. She is generous in her spirit. She understands reciprocity. And God has done great things in her life.

The conversation goes on. It's really getting good. Can we go on? Let's go a little bit deeper. Because he says to her, he says to Gehazi, "You know what? What can we do for this woman?" And he said, "What then is it to be done for her?" And Gehazi answered and said, "Verily, she has no child, and her husband is old." He says, "She has a need that money cannot buy." I want to talk to some people out here who have a need that money cannot buy, that influence cannot buy, that being a beautiful woman cannot buy, that being a handsome gentleman cannot buy. There's still a void in her life. She has no child. That's her void. Here's her circumstance. Her husband is old. So it's very unlikely, though she's dwelling amongst her own people, she has exhausted what she can get from the element that she's in. And this is how we grow. When you have exhausted what you can get from the element that you're in, God begins to expose you to outside people who don't fit within the corridors of what are your people. But God uses other people to bless you. And that's why Elijah is in her life. She thought Elijah was in her life so that she could bless him, never really realizing that he was also there that he might bless her.

And he says, "By this time next year, you will have a child." And she couldn't believe it. She couldn't conceive it. Okay? She could not conceive. She could conceive being generous. Generosity. She could receive reciprocity. But she could not receive the fact that something that she wanted so bad and had gone all over her life and never had, and all of the conditions were against that, just by being generous, it would open up a door that would change her life.

What is I'm saying to you tonight? What is He saying to you tonight? What is He speaking to you about? The attitude of your heart, not the size of your check. The attitude of your heart. Giving is a heart issue. God so loved that He gave. Giving is a heart issue. What does God want to see happen in your heart? That you're a giver again. Giver of service, giver of time, giver of taking care of the people in your life, doing things that now you stop doing, but it is really in you to do. It's in you to do. You get blessing doing it. It opens doors for you. It makes ways for you. And the enemy doesn't want you to operate in your gift because your gift is going to bring you before great men. Because your gift is going to fill up voids that you can't write a check and do. Because your gift is going to put you in an environment that allows you to dream again on a level that you have become comfortable not to dream on.

Tonight, we're talking about generosity. We're talking about you. We're talking about the gifts that God placed down inside of your spirit that have been ambushed by the words of other people, that have been asphyxiated by the criticism of those around us, that has been terminated by the opposition that made us feel like we were foolish simply because we were acting in our gift. And you have a gift to give. And God is calling you to rekindle that gift, to stir it up, to bring it to a place of fruition. Because that is going to unlock the blessing that begins to flow in your life on the next level.

Now, here God gives this woman a child. She raises the child. The child, at some point in his life, grows ill. He grows ill and dies. And this woman lays him, or has him laid, in the prophet's bed and goes riding out to meet the prophet. Her promise is now laying in the prophet's bed. Had she not been generous? Had she not built the room? There would have been no place to lay this dead boy. He's a corpse laying in the prophet's bed. And you know the story how she went out to look for him, and when she found him, she found him, she disclosed her problem and opened up her complaint to him. And ultimately, the prophet had to come to the bed that she had built for him, that the boy is now laying in. And when he starts laying on top of that void, he literally resuscitates.

So we have generosity, we have reciprocity, and now we have resuscitation. And resuscitation is achieved. But it never would have happened if it hadn't been for that initial generosity. What is God challenging you to give right now that's going to turn around and bless your children? That's going to bless the next generation? That's going to release generational blessings? You didn't even know it. When you built the bed, you thought you were building it for the prophet, never knowing that your unborn child was going to grow up and end up laying in that bed dead, and that would be the spot. That would be the spot where the miracle occurs. Glory to God. That's going to be the spot. When you sow, that's going to be the spot where the miracle occurs. That's going to be the spot where the door opens. It is not the bed. It's the generosity that created the bed. It's not the bed. This is not a magic bed. We can't roll it down the street and start laying dead corpses on it and it's raising up everybody in the city. The power is not in the bed. It's in the generous spirit that got the bed in the first place.

I want to make a clarion call tonight for people who have lost their ability to be generous. And it's not because you lost your wealth, it's you've lost the passion to be generous. And you don't understand that that passion is given to you so that later in life, something that gets in trouble is going to rest in the place of your generosity. You don't understand that that something later in life is going to rest in the place of your generosity, that you're going to affect generations through generosity. So we started out talking about generosity, we ended up talking about reciprocity, and now we're talking about generations are blessed in the generosity that started this. My God, what is God saying to us?

I want to challenge you to stir up the gift that lies within you. It might have become encrusted, it might be rusty, it might be dormant, it might be out of practice. But if you stir up the gift that lies within you, God is going to quicken some things in your life. And things that you have reckoned to be dead can be resurrected if you lay them in your generosity. Oh, dear hearts, so many of us don't have any place to lay the next generation because we have never been generous. We don't have anybody to help us with our children because we don't help anybody else with their children. We don't have anybody to give us mercy because we have never been merciful. We don't have anybody to be kind to us because we've never been kind. We are like that beautiful woman that the Bible says is like a gold ring and a horse's snout. She lacks discretion. No discretion reaps no loyalty. You don't get loyalty because you don't sow loyalty. You don't get reciprocity because you've never sown generosity.

This is a character checkup and an opportunity for you to check your heart out, not your wallet. Because the widow's mite was just as generous as the wealthy people's giving was, because she gave what she had. What do you have? What do you have? And how can you experience the joy that comes when God can give you something and you can give it back? That's joy. That's generosity. God had blessed this woman before the prophet. Everyone got there. He had blessed her to be a blessing. Yet, we live in a time now, you ask somebody to say, "Oh, I don't feel like it tonight. I'm tired." Why do they always call on me? To say, "Shut up. Sing. Be generous with you again. Be grateful that somebody, they're asking me to teach again. I don't want to teach again. I thought last to teach again." Be generous with that spirit. Oh, they always asking you to sow financially. Be glad you got something too. So, so again, because somewhere down the road, people always asking, "Where's the storehouse?"

This woman didn't know that bed was going to be a storehouse. That bed became a storehouse for her. And when she laid that dead boy on that bed, little did she know that he would be resurrected in the place of her generosity. There are some things in your life that God wants to resurrect. Some promises that have strangely gotten healed and shut down. And God needs a place to lay that dead thing. And you need to have enough generosity going for you right now to have that bed. Therefore, I challenge you. You don't even know what's coming. But in the time of need, that very ministry you supported, in the time of need, will help you with your child. That very one you gave it to, in the time of need, will strengthen you in a way, will encourage your son locked up in prison. That very one that you say, "I didn't even, you didn't even do it for." Had no idea that one thing had anything to do with another. But she brought that bed. It was totally for Elijah, never knowing she didn't even have the child yet, that she would later have a child, that that child would grow up and later get ill, lay in his father's lap and say, "My head, my head," and pass away. And that she would lay that child in that bed and go after the prophet, and the prophet would resurrect him right in the place of her generosity.

As I close tonight, I want to challenge your generosity. I want to challenge you to give and to sow into the kingdom of God. I want you to start breaking through the rust and the crud around your generous heart and get it out of bondage again. But not just in giving and sowing into the kingdom of God, whatever you have, I want you to become generous again. Because the liberal soul shall be made. May God bless you tonight. May God strengthen you tonight as you rediscover the hidden gifts that the enemy has tried to hide from you. May He renew you and strengthen you. May He really resurrect something powerful in you. I can hear my dogs barking outside. They're all excited too. Something is about to happen in your life that's going to require you to be more generous, less narcissistic. That's going to require you to operate in reciprocity like you have never done before. You cannot always be a taker. Love takes, love gives. Tonight, we're talking about generosity. Teach it to your children. Don't let them have toys they can't share with anybody. Teach it to a mother early. Model it and let them see you doing for people you don't have to do for. Giving when you don't have to give. Let it be embedded in their spirit, a spirit of generosity. When the floods come and the hurricanes come, people only survive because other people are generous. It is in our nature to be generous. It is the enemy that wants to kill that out. Bind the powers of the enemy that have distorted your personality and made you fearful and made you not feel safe and made you feel bad about your own personality. I shut up every voice and keep speaking to you and say, "They're taking advantage of you. That's too much. You shouldn't do that." No, I rebuke every voice and I command you in the name of Jesus to flow in your gift because it is your gift that's going to release the next blessing in your life. So say, "It is the Word of God." And I'll leave it with you for your prayerful consideration. Are you really generous? It could be possible that your life depends on it.

I'm Bishop T.D. Jakes, Senior Pastor of The Potter's House. It's Bible class on Wednesday night, and we have been teaching on generosity. Take a lesson from this great woman, this Shunammite woman. I did. I included her in my "When Women Pray." My new book is coming out because this woman was great, not because she was rich. A lot of rich people are not great people, and a lot of great people are not rich. This woman was great because she was generous. She has done what she could. Once you've done what you could, that's all you can do. But until you've done what you could, you have no right to complain. If you're not going to vote, don't complain. If you're not going to be a part of the answer, stop yelling at me about the problem. It could be up to you and your generosity that sets the things in motion for the change in your life. I hope you got that tonight. I hope it blesses you in some way. I hope you act on it right now. Find a way to act on it right now, not just for the moment, but when you get up in the morning, I want you to purpose in your heart, "I'm going to do something generous today. I'm going to do something that I don't have to do. I'm going to do something beyond what is required of me. I am going to practice being generous again until I get myself back." I got to get myself back in the name of Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Oh God, we pray. We believe You. We trust You. Let there be massive restorations of the gift of generosity in Jesus' name. Amen. Have a great evening. It's been my pleasure to share with you tonight. Take the Word of God with you and be blessed, and be what? That's right. Generous. Bye-bye.

[Applause] [Music] Hallelujah.