I once read a story about a woman named Debra Veal. If that name isn’t familiar to you, she’s the first woman to cross the Atlantic alone in a rowboat.
You read that right. She rowed a tiny boat 6,600 miles across an ocean. Alone.
Actually, she didn’t start out alone. Initially, she had planned on making the trek with her husband, Andy. Debra is petite—about 5’4”. Andy is 6’5” and an Olympic gold-medal oarsman. He should have been a huge asset. But after about 14 days, he began suffering panic attacks and had to be rescued. So Debra continued on, by herself, for the rest of the journey.
Want to guess how far she had to go on her own? Andy was with her for eight days. She was on her own … for the remaining 99 days.
It’s an amazing story. She battled 30-foot waves, force-8 squalls (I had to look that up—but you can probably guess, they’re not fun), and sharks, all while having to dodge container ships that came too close for comfort. She’s gone on to become a motivational speaker who gives TED talks, and she’s written a couple of books.
My favorite paragraph from the article reads, “The adventure-loving PE teacher turned internet entrepreneur admitted she had thought about quitting as she confronted the solitude, storms, sharks and blazing sun. [Yeah, no joke!] Friends and family who kept in touch by email helped keep her going.” I mean, let’s be honest—it’s a game changer for the whole “stranded at sea” thing when you can update your Instagram reel while you’re out there. Imagine how much different Gilligan’s Island could have been if they’d been able to post on social media.
The point is: It’s easy to start something; it’s harder to finish. The rewards come not from starting, however, but finishing. Andy’s not being invited to give TED talks and write books to tell us how he bravely started the journey. No, we want to hear from Debra, who actually finished it.
The same goes for our generosity.
Resolving to be generous does nothing for you; it’s the follow-through that counts. In the last part of 2 Corinthians 8, Paul identifies a handful of things that sabotage our good intentions, threatening to make us quit. If we want to press on, like Debra, we will listen to Paul’s four words of counsel:
STOP worrying about the amount (v. 12)
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:12, “For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have” (ESV). In other words, it’s not about the amount. We give what we can. We don’t feel sheepish about not giving what we can’t.
What God cares about is the heart—the readiness, the “eagerness” to give. I love that phrase: We give “according to what we have, not according to what we do not have.”
A lot of people feel guilty that they don’t have much to give. Maybe you hear people tell these stories about giving and you think, “Well, I can’t give like that. I can’t even dream about giving like that. I’m so poor that even my dreams are on a budget. I’m so poor that the first item on my bucket list is ‘to save enough money to buy a bucket.’”
It’s never about the amount, because God doesn’t approach us with needs he expects us to supply. God’s not up in heaven going, “Oh, there are so many great things I want to do, if only my people would spare me a little start-up capital!” No, what God cares about is our heart. You can’t give what you don’t have. What is important is that your heart resembles his, and if that’s true, you’ll share generously from what you have.
START sharing in suffering (vv. 13–14)
These verses say, “For I [Paul] do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.”
This insight helped me so, so much. Paul is saying, “I’m not asking you to take on the responsibility for everybody else’s needs. I’m saying that when you love someone, you’ll use what you have to share in their needs.” Because that’s what love is, right? When you love someone, you enter into their pain. Love-based giving is when you give to the point that you share in the person’s hurt. Only when you actually inconvenience your life are you sharing in someone’s pain, which is the essence of love: taking someone else’s pain into yourself. Only then are you loving like God.
STOP thinking like an atheist (v. 15)
Verse 15 says, “As it is written, ‘Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.’” This is a quote from Exodus 16, which tells the story of how God provided manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness.
Here’s a CliffsNotes version of that story: The children of Israel were in a place in the wilderness where they couldn’t procure food for themselves (you know, like most places in the wilderness), so every night, God miraculously rained down from heaven this stuff called “manna.” Each morning, when Israel woke up, the ground was covered with it. “Manna” in Hebrew is man’hu, and it literally means, “What the heck is it?” (Based on the description Exodus gives, it seems like a mix between falafel and a protein bar.) This manna was provided daily.
Of course, people back then were just like they are today, and so they wanted a little extra stockpile of it, just in case one morning it didn’t show up. But God said, “That’s exactly opposite of how I want you to think. I want you to trust that I’ll be there tomorrow to provide for your needs just like I was today, and I want you to express that by gathering only enough for today and sharing any excess from today with those who don’t have enough today.” To drive home the point, God caused whatever excess they secretly stockpiled to rot, breed worms, and stink.
When you trust that the God who provided for you today will be there to provide for you tomorrow, that’s how you think. But when you don’t think that way—when you hoard and refuse to share because you’re afraid that tomorrow there won’t be a God to provide for you … well, functionally, you’re thinking like an atheist. Paul says, Don’t think like an atheist: The God who provided for you today will provide for you tomorrow, and he wants you to use whatever excess he’s given to you to meet needs around you today.
START contemplating the gospel (v. 9)
Paul writes, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
The gospel is not about a God who approaches us with needs. No, he’s always the Giver, and we’re always the receiver. We see that most clearly in our salvation: We were unspeakably poor; he was indescribably rich. And he lavished such incredible grace upon us and poured himself out so completely for us that it made even the angels stand in wonder, awestruck, hands over their mouths (1 Peter 1:12).
Paul’s not talking about throwing a little bit of your money in the offering bucket because of a high-pressure, timeshare-style guilt trip. He’s talking about a whole reorientation of your life around the grace of God. Make your experience with God’s grace the entire foundation and the shaping reality of your life, he says, and your generosity can’t help but be changed.
If all you do is give a little bit or make a few resolutions about generosity, it won’t survive until the end of the week. You’ll be eight days out in the ocean and tempted to give up. But if you reorient your life around the grace of God, you’ll flourish in this grace for the rest of your life. You’ll keep rowing, not just 99 days across the Atlantic, but for decades, blessing others all along the way.
Books by J.D. Greear
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