Giver
Characteristics of the Giver
Of all the seven motivational gifts this is the one least likely to be identified by the one who has it. Part of the reason may be that the giver's "left hand" does not know when his "right hand" gives alms (Matthew 6:3). Another may be the giver's "all-around" personality. The giver shares several traits of the server, can be a leader or a follower, and like the perceiver and the teacher has a love for the Word of God. But when it comes to the use of resources, the giver is unique.
The Greek word is metadidomi (distinct from didorni, to give) meaning "to give over, share, or impart." It is to be done with haplotetes—simplicity, sincerity, and liberality.
As you score this gift be sure to distinguish between learned behavior and innate tendencies. For instance, you may have been raised and trained by your parents and your church to be generous and to tithe. But has that always been your joyful inward motivation? You may need to reflect on your childhood in order to score accurately.
1. Gives freely of money, possessions, time, energy, and love.
Notice that givers give far more than just money. If they have money they will give generously of it, but they also give of anything else they possess. They give comprehensively. They give with abandonment. And, in the more mature stages of givers' lives, they give with absolutely no-strings attached and no ulterior motives. They simply become channels for the Lord to use for the distribution of His resources, for they are convinced everything belongs to Him.
Sharon, a young homemaker whose gift of giving was yearning for a way to express itself, was well aware of the family's tight budget. It had been a joint decision that she not go to work but be free to be a full-time mother.
One day she had a bright idea. "Honey," she asked her husband, "could we afford twenty-two cents a day, five days a week, for a special project?"
"Well, sure," he replied, "that's only about five dollars a month."
Sharon was delighted. She bought the first five postage stamps and launched her project. Each day she took one name from her Christmas card list and spent time praying for the person (or couple or family), asking the Lord to bless them and guide them. Often, as she prayed, the Lord would quicken a verse of Scripture for them.
Then Sharon wrote a letter, expressing her love for the person, enclosing the Scripture in the form of a simple bookmark using her calligraphy skills.
What a blessing it must have been to be on her Christmas card list, to be the recipient of such a gift of herself at a totally unexpected time of year!
We recently came across this very appropriate quotation: "The best gift cannot be bought or sold. It is giving a part of oneself."
2. Loves to give without others knowing about it.
Jesus had a lot to say about not broadcasting our good deeds.
"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. . . . So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets." Giving is to be secret. "Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:1, 2-4, Niv).
Givers do not want acclaim or credit. They just want to please their heavenly Father. That joy is reward enough for them. Often they will go to great lengths to assure that others do not find out about their gifts.
While I was editor of Aglow magazine we received a book manuscript by Joanne Se-8 titled A Christian Roadmap for Women Traveling Alone. We felt it would be an excellent resource for singles, but we did not have the one thousand dollar advance the printer required, so we put it on hold.
Penny (a fictitious name) heard about it and came by my office, shutting the door behind her. "Here's a check for one thousand dollars," she said. "That book needs to get out."
"This is wonderful. Thank you," I said gratefully.
"Just one thing," Penny insisted. "No one else is to know about this. It's between the Lord and me."
3. Wants to feel a part of the ministries to which he contributes.
Givers give to ministries that they believe in—ones that are effectively sharing the Gospel. Therefore they not only give monetarily, they also get involved in other ways. They will pray for the ministry, they will write letters of encouragement, send "care" packages, and sometimes they will show up in person to assist in the work.
Weldon, a pastor with a mature gift of giving, had been supporting a ministry in the Philippines. He not only wrote regularly himself, he also encouraged members of his congregation to do so. The children of the missionary were well remembered at Christmas and on birthdays.
Then the Holy Spirit began nudging Weldon about going to help personally. He did, assisting in preaching, ministering to the poor, and teaching leaders. Afterward he said, "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."
4. Intercedes for needs and the salvation of souls.
It is not unusual for givers to be awakened in the middle of the night with a "burden" for someone.
A man with this gift asked a returning missionary, "What was happening to you three weeks ago, on May 6th to be exact?" "May 6th!" the missionary exclaimed. "Why, that was the day there was an attempted robbery of our compound. But for some reason the thief dropped everything and fled—we don't know why."
"Oh, that explains it," Graham said.
"Explains what?"
"Well, I was awakened out of a deep sleep and sensed great danger for you and the others," Graham explained. "So I prayed for you, for maybe an hour, until the burden lifted. If I'm calculating right, our night is your day, so it all fits. I'm glad the Lord awakened me."
Givers often keep lists of people who need to receive salvation. They will intercede faithfully until with joy they can check a name off the list. When you ask a group to pray for the salvation of your relative or neighbor, the givers will follow through on your re-quest. Others may mean to but soon forget. Not so the giver. Above all he wants people to come into the Kingdom of God.
5. Feels delighted when his gift is an answer to specific prayer.
Since givers know that the highest and best use of their gift is when they are being led to give by the Holy Spirit, they are especially thrilled when someone says, "How did you know I needed this? It's an answer to prayer."
One time we happened to be right in the middle of such an incident. Annie had come into an inheritance and had $700 she wanted to give to someone who really needed it. She attended a meeting where a missionary couple spoke. Afterward Annie slipped into a chair beside us.
"Do you think they could use $700?" she asked. "As I listened to them I felt God was telling me to give it to them. But I don't know if they really need it."
"Oh, they do," we assured her. "In fact, we happen to know that they have been raising money to buy video equipment and are exactly $700 short of their goal."
"Isn't that great!" Annie exclaimed, hurrying off to present the missionaries with a check. We don't know who was blessed the most, the recipients or the giver. Annie left the meeting still exclaiming, "Isn't God good!"
6. Wants gift to be of high quality or craftsmanship.
When givers give they give the very best. They are generous, even lavish. They want their gifts to be the highest quality they can afford. If they cannot afford to buy a gift they will make one—with great thoughtfulness and skill.
JoAnn had been attending the Tuesday morning Bible study at our home. She had noticed that my Amplified Bible was falling apart. It was a hardback edition that had seen ten years of extensive use. Whenever I turned to the middle of the New Testament, Ephesians fell out. I'd just stuff it back in place and go on. Soon Galatians began falling out too. I put up with it because it was my favorite Bible and had all my markings and marginal notes.
One afternoon JoAnn arrived at our front door. "Here," she said, thrusting a package into my hands, "this is for you." And she walked off.
I opened it up. It was a beautiful new leather bound Amplified Bible, the most expensive and durable edition available. JoAnn had gone out and purchased the very best for me. I have used that Bible for fourteen years and guess what? None of the pages has ever fallen out.
7. Gives only by the leading of the Holy Spirit.
You can't talk a mature giver into giving. They will resist pressure appeals. They give only as the Holy Spirit leads them. About ten years ago we were getting ready go overseas to teach the motivational gift seminar. We had just revised the materials and had taken them to Barb, a professional typist, so we would have a neat master copy to take with us for duplication purposes. We'd put off picking up the typing, though, because our bank account was down so low we couldn't pay for it.
The day before our departure we decided that I should drive over to Barb's and ask if we could take the work now and pay her when we got back. When I arrived I found Barb in pain. Her back had gone out and she was unable to find a comfortable position.
"Let me pray for you," I offered.
"Thank you," she moaned. "Maybe it will help."
I prayed for her lower back to be adjusted and for the Lord to take away all her pain.
"Hey!" she exclaimed. "It's gone! The pain is gone!" She got up and bent in all directions to be sure. "The Lord sent you at just the right time."
Then Barb handed me the bill. But across the bill had been written, "Paid in full."
"What's this?" I asked.
"Oh, that," Barb replied. "The Lord told me this morning that I needed to have a part in your ministry. It's something I can do to help."
"Barb," I said, "you don't know how much this blesses me."
As I drove home I praised the Lord all the way. "Thank You, Lord, that You spoke to one of Your givers on our behalf."
8. Gives to support and bless others or to advance a ministry.
When givers select a ministry to advance with financial support they check it out thoroughly to be sure 1) it gets the Gospel out effectively, and 2) overhead and administrative expenses are not taking too much of a chunk out of the donations. Sometimes the giver wants to be an anonymous source of blessing for those who have genuine needs.
A man in a small town in Montana is just such a giver. His business is doing well and the more he gives the more it seems to prosper. One day in church his attention was drawn to a young girl with badly protruding teeth. Her mother is a widow and their meager budget did not allow for braces.
The man went to the local orthodontist, gave him three thousand dollars and said, "Call in this girl and see that she gets her teeth straightened. If there are additional costs, let me know. But please, don't tell them, or anyone else, where the money has come from. Just tell them it's the Lord's provision."
Over the next few years this giver had the joy of seeing the girl's bright smile blossom with metal as her teeth came into proper alignment. He was personally blessed in blessing her.
9. Views hospitality as an opportunity to give.
Like the server, the giver loves to practice hospitality. Outwardly this characteristic looks the same for both. But the inner viewpoint differs. The server sees hospitality as a chance to serve; the giver sees it as an expression of giving.
I stayed in the home of a giver one time when I was speaking in far northern British Columbia. Charlotte had done everything she could think of to make my stay comfortable. She fixed a lovely dinner, then throughout the rest of the evening kept trying to give me something else to eat—another dessert, another cup of coffee, fruit, mints, nuts.
In addition it seemed that hardly a half hour went by that she did not bring me a gift. "Here's a lipstick I think would look good with your coloring," she told me. A cosmetics distributor, she'd looked through her supplies until she found just the right shade for a red-head.
Later she brought me a special cleansing spray for glasses. "I think you'll find this use-ful," she said hopefully.
Then came some perfume, a box of powder, a pen, pictures of her house and her cat. I felt a bit embarrassed accepting so many gifts but I knew she was loving the opportunity to give.
"We don't get many guests 'way up here," she explained. "I so seldom get to entertain." Her stored-up desire to practice hospitality was unleashed and I was the beneficiary!
10. Handles finances with wisdom and frugality.
Givers are good at handling money. The best, as a matter of fact. They're careful, cautious, even a little tight with their own spending. They do not squander money.
One couple were in financial difficulty, getting deeper in debt as bills piled up. They went to a church elder for advice. After listening to them awhile he told the husband, "It seems to me that your wife has natural ability with finances. Why don't you turn the responsibility over to her for six months and see if she can't solve the problem?"
"I never thought of doing that," the husband said. "I always assumed it was the husband's responsibility to handle the money. But I'm not good at it, so I'd love to give it to her."
The wife, a classic giver, immediately established a budget, began making partial payments to creditors, and cut out all spending except for absolute necessities. No more restaurant lunches for her husband or school cafeteria meals for the kids. Brown bag would have to do. No more clothes purchases for anyone. She stretched the food budget by clipping coupons and by getting fruits, vegetables, and bread at the church's food bank.
By the end of the six months they were almost in the black. "Honey," her grateful husband said, "I'm delegating the family finances to you permanently." Givers make great treasurers too for any kind of group. They are excellent to have on financial committees, and make fastidious bookkeepers and accountants.
11. Quickly volunteers to help where a need is seen.
Here's another characteristic that the giver has in common with the server. The server, however, is apt to jump in first to meet a need while the giver comes alongside to help once someone else has identified the need.
Announce a church work party some Saturday and it will be the servers and the givers who show up with greatest enthusiasm. They'll work all day and come back again if the job isn't finished.
Ask for volunteers for any worthwhile cause and guess which gifts will respond first. If someone is sick or hospitalized the servers and the givers will be taking in meals even before someone thinks to organize such acts of kindness.
12. Seeks confirmation on the amount to give.
Steve Lightle shared with us that he and his wife, Judy, always pray about the amount of money they give above their basic tithe to others or other ministries. "We find that at least eighty percent of the time Judy and I feel we should give exactly the same amount," Steve said. "It's so good to have such confirmation."
Steve gave a specific example. "Recently while I was spending time in prayer the Lord kept bringing to my mind a special friend of ours in Israel who has a very vital ministry. After praying for him awhile, the Lord laid it on my heart to give him a specific amount of money. What was unusual was that the amount was not in round numbers like fifty, one hundred, or two hundred. It was specifically two hundred and forty dollars.
"I told Judy that the Lord was saying to send our friend some money and asked her to pray about it and see what amount it should be. A bit later Judy called to me, 'Steve, I believe the Lord wants us to send two hundred and forty dollars.'
'Thank You Lord,' I said, 'that's confirmation!' And I quickly of the check off to our dear friend in Israel.
"We received a letter back. He was overjoyed. Our gift was a specific answer to prayer. He had been in need of an essential piece of equipment costing four hundred dollars. He'd been given two hundred dollars toward it and been praying for the other two hundred and forty dollars so that he could pay a tithe on the four hundred dollars. Our Gift had been exactly what he had needed. 'Nobody knew about my need,' he said, 'but God.' "
13. Has strong belief in tithing and in giving in addition to tithing.
The person with the motivational gift of giving would never think of withholding part of his tithe. To him that would be robbing God. He believes that everything he has, money, home, car, and all other possessions, belongs to the Lord. He sees himself as a steward of God's resources. The tithe is only the foundational aspect of his giving. Givers give beyond that, often up to twenty or thirty percent of their income or more.
In a book about one famous giver, inventor-manufacturer Robert Gilmour LeTourneau, the biographer writes, "In the matter of giving R. G. LeTourneau considers himself merely a steward of the money God has placed at his disposal. His oft-repeated statement is that he gives away ninety percent of his earnings to the Lord's work.' At the time the biography was written, twenty-eight years before LeTourneau died, he had already donated twelve million dollars to missions and other Christian work.
14. Focuses on sharing the Gospel.
Givers are naturally evangelistic. We've found that even as children (providing they knew the Lord themselves) givers attempted to lead other children to Jesus.
Jerry Raaf, a Canadian Armed Forces chaplain, recalled how strong his desire to share the Gospel had been all his life. Even as a five-year-old he would try to tell his little friends about Jesus. They didn't always want to hear and would run home. But that did not discourage Jerry.
One day his parents searched for him and finally found him out in the chicken yard. He had locked the gate so the chickens couldn't get away and was preaching his heart out to his captive audience.
Giver-evangelist Rod McDougal has held fifty-seven "miracle crusades" throughout the Philippines during the past four years. (We've known Rod and his wife, Trena, since they were leaders in the Jesus People movement in Seattle in the sixties.) After we participated in one of his city-wide crusades in Iriga City and saw with our own eyes between seven hundred and two thousand people come to the Lord each evening, we said to Rod, "Why don't you report this in your newsletter? You only speak of a few hundred being reached."
"Those who have not been her cannot believe it," Rod explained. Some are skeptical even of the numbers we do use; they think we must be exaggerating. It's hard to believe ourselves. But the harvest fields are white here. It's a joy to help with a harvest that's so plentiful."
15. Believes God is the Source of his supply.
Since, from the giver's viewpoint, everything belongs to God, the Christian's job is simply to distribute money and resources wherever He directs. Therefore, if the supply runs out (he reasons), it is God's responsibility to replenish that supply. Meanwhile, the giver is content to get by with whatever he has or, as the case may be, has not. Like Paul, the giver knows how to be abased or to abound.
Givers love the Scripture "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19, Kw). They have every confidence that if they are being obedient to God's direction in their life, He will indeed take care of their needs.
There is a seeming paradox. On the one hand givers seem most capable of all the gifts of earning a good living, while at the same time they are the ones most likely to live by faith.
Perhaps the most outstanding example of such faith that we know of is George Mueller who lived in England more than a hundred years ago. Starting with one children's home he never asked anyone but God to supply his financial needs, knowing without a doubt that He was the source of supply for the work he was called to do. God met those needs by prompting people from many walks of life to bring or send resources. Eventually five children's homes were built at Ashley Down, caring for 2,050 orphans at a time.
Today the work continues in Mueller's tradition, and still conducts no financial campaigns, but trusts God for its support.
16. Is very industrious with a tendency toward success.
Whatever givers touch seems to turn to gold. The endeavors they get involved in habitu-ally succeed. True, givers are hard-working, but it's more than that. We believe that God prospers givers so that they can (and they usually do) give even more to the work of the Gospel.
When a giver, Patricia Stamets, moved to Seattle she was a single mother trying to get her kids through college. The economic cycle in Seattle was low but she was thrilled to get a job selling real estate, and was grateful when her mother loaned her enough money to buy a car, a necessity for the job.
One day during the first week Patricia was praising the Lord for His provision of the car when she heard Him ask, "Are you really thankful?"
"Oh, yes, Lord," she replied. "I am truly thankful."
"Then I want you to show it"
"But how, Lord?"
Then the Lord told her He wanted her to have "The Lord is my shepherd " painted Oil the front doors and the tailgate of her station wagon in four-inch-high old English letters,
"Okay, Lord, do it," she said, It wasn't long before word got to the president of the real estate firm and Patricia was called into his office. He told her in no uncertain terms to get that religious stuff- off her car or she'd lose her job.
The next day, Scriptures still in place, she went to a home to take a listing And when the client was walking back to the car with Patricia she saw the words. "You know the Lord!' the woman exclaimed. She asked Patricia to come hack into the house to pray with her for a desperate situation she was facing. At I0-30 that evening Patricia got a phone call from the woman saying that the crisis had been defused
"While I never took the initiative to share my faith,'. Patricia told us day after day people responded to the Scripture, enabling me to pray and minister to their needs. My sales soared and within a couple of months I was a top performer in the industry. The Lord blessed me both financially and in opportunities to be a channel for HIS pm-roles. There are no economic down-cycles in God's economy
She added that the president of the company impressed with her success, never mentioned the Scripture on her automobile again ta is now on her third car with "The Lord is my shepherd painted on it
17. Has natural And effective business ability.
Givers are good at making money. Ewen as children they are drawn into "business." They are the ones likely to open up a corner lemonade stand, or go door-to-door distributing homemade -business cards" offering babysitting or lawn-mowing or car washes
Givers also learn to save money at an early age. My nephew Rex and his brother and two sisters lived with my family for a while. Whenever we gave the children spending money three of them would take off immediately for the grocery store. Not Rex. He would put his in his bank to save until he had enough to buy something he really wanted rather than spend it on candy. When the kids were given nuts or candy Rex would only eat a little piece, then stash the rest away to eat later. Sometimes when I was cleaning house I would find his treasures hidden behind the cups in the china closet or under a sofa cushion. I kept his hiding places secret.
Today Rex continues to exhibit the characteristics of a giver: He works hard in his business, carefully invests his money, is building his own house, and takes his wife on an exciting two-week vacation each year.
18. Likes to get the best value for the money spent.
Givers don't like to waste money. When they give, they give the best. But when it comes to spending money on themselves they're frugal. They shop for bargains and sales. One giver said, "I never buy a garment for myself at full retail price. I check the sale racks or wait for post-season markdowns."
Mary Jane is a giver who has always clipped grocery coupons but was delighted to find a few years ago that her local supermarket would accept newspaper ad coupons from other stores.
"I save at least ten dollars a week this way," Mary Jane revealed. "What with the manufacturer's coupons that I pair up with another store's double-coupon offer, and the freebies and store coupons I clip from the newspaper, I sometimes get thirty-five dollar's worth of groceries for twenty dollars.
"I haven't paid for my weekly dozen eggs for two years since one store started making them their free incentive item. The other day I got a whole chicken and a sixty-four-ounce apple juice free as well. This kind of couponing only takes about thirty extra minutes of my time each week, and it releases about five hundred dollars a year for the Lord's work."
19. Is definitely not gullible.
We think God has supplied givers with this characteristic to protect them from those who would wrongly dissociate them from their money. They are not easily fooled. You can't pull the wool over their eyes.
This clear-eyed quality shows up in other areas besides financial ones. Lucy, a mature giver who owned a nursing home, demonstrated it every day in her relationships to the elderly people in her care.
A white-haired man wheeled up to her in his chair while I was there: "Please tell the nurse at the desk that it's okay for me to go to my daughter's this weekend."
"Now, Mr. Jones," Lucy would say, "you know your daughter only has you one week-end a month. You went last weekend." Next a lady hobbled up complaining that her roommate was stealing her clothes. "No, Mrs. Smith," Lucy assured her, "she couldn't possibly do that. She can't even get out of her bed. You look again. Your clothes are all there, dear."
As we continued down the hall a half a dozen others reported crises, and Lucy quietly defused each one. Some were so convincing that we •would have hurried to their rescue. But Lucy explained, "In this work you have to be able to discern the real from the imagined, the genuine from the attempted manipulation. •Many live in the past or in a fantasy world. I'm grateful that God has gifted me with the ability not to be gullible."
20. Possesses both natural and God-given wisdom.
Givers are fair and objective. They are often wise beyond their years. We cannot help but think of King Solomon, a biblical giver who prayed for wisdom and received much. In 1 Kings 3:16-28 we read that two women both claimed to be mother of a surviving baby. After hearing their claims Solomon asked for a sword and gave the order to "cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other."
What an awful-sounding command! But it was wisdom indeed, for the true mother cried out to spare the child, while the mother of the dead child agreed: "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!"
Solomon's command had elicited from the women the responses that enabled him to determine the facts. Note the concluding verse: "When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God . ." (niv).