Generous Love

Discover the Joy of Living "Others First"

Becky Kopitzke

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780764230530
• eBook ISBN: 9781493413454
• Subtopic: Religion

A Fresh, Down-to-Earth Look on Living and Loving Well

If asked, most of us want to make a difference, to live and love generously. But we get caught in the crazy rush of household routines, work demands, cranky attitudes, difficult people, exhaustion, worry, and pride, and once again we fail to love the people around us at all--let alone well. We too easily default to focusing more on self than on others, on receiving more than giving, in ways we don't even recognize. We dream of reaching out. We just . . . forget. Or don't have the energy.

Using relatable stories, discussion questions, and careful application of God's Word, author and speaker Becky Kopitzke gives you the inspiration and practical tips and ideas you need to see the opportunities around you, to reach out, to live generously, and to love others bravely and selflessly. To bless and be blessed is to actualize the joy of Christ--and to propel love forward.

Chapter 1
What Is a Blessing, Anyway?

I heard sharp gulps of breath, three in a row, and I braced myself for the blow.

“Ah-chooo!” My daughter tucked her nose into her elbow and sneezed.

“Bless you,” I said.

“Thanks, Mom.” She tilted her head toward me and wrinkled her eyebrows. “Why do people say ‘bless you’ after somebody sneezes?”

Huh. Good question.

“I’m not sure, sweetheart.”

So we did what every modern intellect does in a quandary. We Googled it.

Apparently ancient folklore says a sneeze was once believed to be the body’s way of ridding evil spirits.1 Creepy, eh?

Centuries later a sneeze was considered a sign that a person had contracted the plague. Ouch. In which case, “God bless you” wasn’t so much a friendly salutation but rather a farewell kiss.

Even in today’s age of dust allergies and antibiotics, “bless you” is still the knee-jerk response to a sneeze. Try ah-chooing in the middle of a meeting and you’re bound to hear a few gesundheits tossed your way.

But is that all a blessing is, really? Surely it’s more than a casual wish for God to protect your sinuses. When someone asks “How are you?” what do you say? When life is going well, when everybody’s happy and healthy and we’ve got money in the bank, we say we’re good, we’re great, we’re blessed.

We’re plenty eager to take all the blessings we can get.

Yet sadly for many of us, the only time we think about blessing another person is after they’ve blown a trajectory of germs across the room.

What does it mean to give and receive a blessing? What power does a blessing hold? Those questions are the foundation of our journey over these next sixteen chapters. And the answers begin with the first story ever told.

On the Fifth Day, God Created the Blessing

Did you know God created the blessing even before He created the first human being? It’s true.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”

Genesis 1:20–22, emphasis added

In Bible history, Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. But first, God spent a workweek creating their dwelling place—land and sea, plants and trees, light and dark, animals that swam and flew and ran. And when God looked around at all He had formed by the end of the fifth day—before man arrived to mess it up—He saw it was pretty awesome. So He commanded the fish and birds to multiply, to be fruitful, to make more awesomeness.

This was called a blessing.

Later, God gave a similar blessing to Adam and Eve: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it’” (Genesis 1:28). The Hebrew word for bless here is barak, which means to praise, congratulate, salute. It’s the same term God used when He told Abraham to go to the promised land, where He would shower him with prosperity and welfare.

I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12:2–3

Another Hebrew word for bless in the Bible is esher, which means happiness. We find this term often in the Psalms.

Blessed [esher] is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.

Psalm 1:1–3

When we put it all together, we see that a blessing is a gift we not only receive from God but also pass on to others. To bless someone is to hold them in high esteem, to enrich their life, and to magnify their awesomeness in a way that honors God, the source of everything awesome.

We can be blessed by God and others and, like Abraham, we can also be a blessing, meaning other people can be blessed through us—all because God blessed us first.

It’s a chain reaction.

I call it living “others first.”

Give: Be a Blessing

My mentor, Cindy, has a motto for her relationship with her son-in-law: “Be a blessing!” When her daughter got married, Cindy resolved to be the mother-in-law who sweetens her child’s marriage rather than souring it. How? By encouraging her daughter to love her husband. By supporting her son-in-law’s role as head of his household. By not sticking her nose in their business when they don’t ask for it. By treating her son-in-law as she treats her own sons.

I don’t think I need to tell you that this kind of selfless behavior does not come naturally to every mother-in-law in the universe. Heavens, it doesn’t come naturally to any of us—probably not even to Cindy, which is why she needs the motto in the first place.

To be a blessing means to bless someone else—with your words or gestures or your very presence—for the sake of showing love, respect, appreciation, and acceptance. It’s putting into action an attitude of grace and generosity toward another human being—and even toward God.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

Psalm 103:2 ESV

To bless God means to praise Him. To bless other people may also mean to praise them for their character or accomplishments, or to help them, support them, encourage them, equip them, affirm them, or to somehow invoke happiness in their lives.

Phew! Do you see? There are about as many ways to bless someone as there are moments in the day. But don’t worry. You’ll quickly get the hang of it. Later in this book we’ll explore several practical ideas for blessing the people around you. Then soon enough you’ll be coming up with hundreds of ideas all on your own.

Receive: Be Blessed

Likewise, when someone blesses us, we ought to feel encouraged, equipped, supported, and loved. This is what it means to be blessed.

When my husband takes my car for a spin just to fill it with gas—I am blessed.

When my friend offers to watch my children for an afternoon so I can run errands—I am blessed.

When a reader emails to say she printed one of my blog posts and refers to it daily—I am blessed indeed.

God himself blesses us every day just by holding the world in balance and watching over our every move. One of my favorite quotes is by theologian and author John Piper: “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.”2 The Lord is constantly blessing us, even when we are clueless.

As a natural outpouring of our gratitude toward God for His blessings, we ought to be motivated to bless others. And in turn, those people will be more likely to bless us back and to pay forward still more blessings to more people, and so the cycle spins on.

Sound idealistic? Like wishful thinking? Maybe. Especially since the world doesn’t appear to operate on this happy system as a general rule most days. But I believe it can, if we make the first move.

Why? Because the Bible says so.

For God, who gives seed to the farmer to plant, and later on good crops to harvest and eat, will give you more and more seed to plant and will make it grow so that you can give away more and more fruit from your harvest. Yes, God will give you much so that you can give away much, and when we take your gifts to those who need them they will break out into thanksgiving and praise to God for your help.

2 Corinthians 9:10–11 TLB

Everybody Wins

In order to fully understand and implement the concept of generous love—of selflessly blessing the people in our lives—we first need to recognize what generous love is not.

It’s not a competition. If your intention is to show someone up and prove you’re better at blessing than they are, then your actions are rooted in selfishness, not generosity.

It’s not a compromise. Blessing is not about meeting in the middle. It requires crossing over to another person’s side—seeing your relationship from their point of view, and serving them according to their needs rather than your own.

It’s not passive-aggression. Coating underlying anger or resentment in sweet gestures is like pouring chocolate sauce on a bowl of five-alarm chili. It doesn’t hide the burn. Blessing others can be part of the remedy for healing what lies beneath, yes, but it cannot be a shroud.

It’s not an ulterior motive or a hint—that the blessee should do something nice for you in return. Yes, hopefully your blessing will spark more blessing. But if it’s delivered with the intention of giving in order to get, that’s not a pure blessing, and you’ve missed the whole point.

A blessing is a simple act of selfless love, just because you care about another human being—or more important, because you care about God, who loves that person more than you do. It looks something like this.

And So I Washed His Coffee Mug

I had deadlines. Projects to tackle, emails to answer, phone calls to take. As soon as I walked in the house after school drop-off that morning, I gave myself exactly five minutes to load the dishwasher before parking my bottom in my desk chair for the remainder of the day.

Dishes in, table wiped, faucet off—and that’s when I saw it. Sitting on the counter beside the sink, my husband’s favorite Starbucks travel mug, dirty. Hand-wash only.

I could’ve let it sit. It was his mug, after all, and he didn’t expect me to wash it. I don’t drink coffee unless it’s made by a barista, laced with oodles of chocolate, and poured into a disposable to-go cup. So in our house we have an unspoken agreement that the kitchen coffee maker, the coffee grounds, and the half-dozen ceramic mugs my husband used to leave sitting in the car week by week—which is why I bought him the travel mug in the first place—are all his deal. So let him scrub his own precious mug. I had other stuff to do.

But.

How long would it take me to wash that mug? Sixty seconds, tops? And I was already standing at the sink. The water was already hot. The scrub brush was just three inches from my fingertips.

Why shouldn’t I wash the mug?

Better question—why should I?

If washing that mug says I love you and I’m thinking of you and You matter to me, isn’t that worth a one-minute sacrifice out of my day?

Isn’t it worth way more than that?

And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Hebrews 13:16

Deep relationships aren’t built on emotional highs. They’re made strong through a bunch of little gestures that are so easily overlooked an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. What Is a Blessing, Anyway?
• Chapter 2. Why Are We So Stinking Selfish?
• Chapter 3. The “Me” Weeds
• Chapter 4. The Blessing Toolbox
• Chapter 5. Four P’s of Blessing
• Chapter 6. Blessings Near and Far
• Chapter 7. Four P’s of Blessing
• Chapter 8. Olivia’s Heart
• Chapter 9. Four P’s of Blessing
• Chapter 10. Loving People Who Aren’t Like You
• Chapter 11. Four P’s of Blessing
• Chapter 12. A Church on Every Corner
• Chapter 13. Why? Because God Says So
• Chapter 14. And Because It Benefits You, Too
• Chapter 15. When Blessing Is Hard
• Chapter 16. About That Golden Rule
• Epilogue A Life Well-Lived
• Bonus Materials
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Cover