October 19, 2025
How Does God Provide?
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
This morning we’re in our Fall series, Building a Wider Welcome. In this series we’re exploring what it means to build on the welcome of Christ.
Today I want to think with you about how generosity—sharing what we have—builds on Christ’s welcome.
In most years, today would be the start of a stewardship season for 2026, we would begin talking about giving for next year’s needs. This year, though, the session has decided to move the stewardship season to January, because that move was so well-received last year. So, this sermon is not kicking off a stewardship season. You’re welcome!
This is, however, a good opportunity to think together about faith and generosity. Because giving is an important way that we build a wider welcome and respond with our lives to the welcome of Christ.
I want to start by naming some of the ways that generosity can feel hard, because as inspiring as giving can be, it is also complicated. Some of us live with anxiety about having enough. The kids are growing. Can we afford the bigger house we know we’ll need. The kids are ambitious. Can we afford to pay for the college they want to go to? We’re getting older. Have we saved enough for retirement? What if healthcare costs keep rising? Or what if the economy goes sideways? What if I outlive my resources?
The world is always changing, and the economic goalposts keep moving. The irony is that even though we have more than most people in history, we still feel anxious.
Some of us live with guilt about how much we have compared to others who don’t have nearly enough. I’m sure you can relate to this. You’re scrolling the news—see images from Gaza or Ukraine, or people who are homeless in America, or rebuilding after a disaster. Your heart breaks, you say a quiet prayer. And… then you close that app and open Amazon to shop for Christmas presents because it’s October.
That’s normal. You feel grateful and guilty at the same time. I heard someone call this “guiltitude” – a mix of feeling grateful and guilty, and it can be a stumbling block to generosity.
Sometimes we live with doubt about whether our giving matters. Hurricane Helene caused $53 billion in damage. A foundation can donate $50 million to the cause. Does my $500 matter? Or my $50? Where does it go? What does it actually do? My gift feels like a drop in an ocean of need.
Today, these struggles feel particularly acute. We’re watching our democracy – which is fundamentally about shared participation in society – under intense strain. Our sense of unity as a country is so badly frayed. There is so little sense of pulling together and sharing our abundance.
As people of faith, we see versions of Christianity in the news that make our stomachs churn. Christian nationalism that confuses gospel with political power and American culture. Leaders who invoke Jesus while rejecting the stranger and mocking the weak. For some of us, the very idea of being a person of faith feels embarrassing. And the topic of generosity seems quaint.
These feelings are real. These aren’t failures of faith. These are the water we swim in. This is part of what it means to follow Jesus as an economic human in America in 2025. And each one of these realities can make generosity feel anxious, or doubtful, or hard. But there is good news.
The Apostle Paul wrote to a community who was struggling with generosity. The Corinthians had resources. They had pledged to contribute to a collection for the poor in Jerusalem. But they had stalled. Maybe they were confronted with a poor economy, or maybe there was division in their community. For whatever reason, they were stuck.
Here’s what’s interesting: Paul doesn’t guilt them. He doesn’t manipulate them with images of suffering in Jerusalem. Instead, he gives them theology. He shows them how God works.
Think about the anxiety I named. “Will there be enough?” That feeling assumes a fixed amount, that what I have now is all there is.
But listen to Paul:
“And God is able to provide you with every blessing[c] in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
How does God provide? Continuously and abundantly, not all at once or every now and then. The God who provided today will provide tomorrow. So that by “always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly.”
This is where it starts. God is the source of every good thing.
The theologian Thomas Aquinas said God is the primary cause of all provision—the ultimate source. But God provides through secondary causes, through created means. How does that work?
Let’s say you lost your phone, and you’re away from home, and you need someone to call it for you. You say a quick desperate prayer for help, and then a person walking by sees your distress and offers their phone.
Yes, the person is kind, and also God provided. Both are true. There is no contradiction.
Your employer signs your paycheck and you earned every penny. And God provides strength and reward for labor. Both are true. No contradiction. Aquinas wrote: “It belongs to divine providence to use intermediary causes… on account of the abundance of divine goodness, that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures.” What does that mean?
It means God doesn’t need us, God chooses us. God chooses to work through us because God wants us to have the joy and dignity of working together with God.
God isn’t absent from Monday morning—from your work, or your payroll, or planning, or budget or business. God is the source, constantly providing through all of these means so that we may have enough of everything.
Here’s an image: Think about the difference between a jug of water and a stream. A year ago, many of us depended on jugs for water—you fill it up, bring it home, use it until it’s empty. And you feel anxious when it gets light. Am I about to run out?
But when the water system came back on, wow! You turn on the faucet and water flows. You can go to the refrigerator and leave the water running, without anxiety. Continuous flow. You’re not depleting a fixed sum. It’s a flowing stream.
That’s God’s abundance. We’re not managing a shrinking pile. We’re stewarding a continuous flow. The future doesn’t rest on what we can save, but on God’s abundance. God is good and able to provide with every blessing.
This is so important for those of us who live with anxiety about the future. If you’re anxious about retirement, or about your job, or (my hand up) about paying for college tuitions, Paul is pulling us back onto the ground of faith, back to this vision of abundant provision.
God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance.
Because of God’s provision, Paul calls this Corinthian church to be generous. He says something striking in verse 11: “You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity.” Some of you might think: “That doesn’t sound right. We don’t give to get. I shouldn’t be enriched by my generosity?” What does that mean?
Professor Willie Jennings, who teaches at Yale, offers insight on this. He says Western Christianity taught us to think “It’s mine because I earned it.” That creates both pride and guilt. Pride of ownership – look what I’ve made – but also guilt in having too much while others don’t have enough.
Jennings invites us to recover an older imagination.
It’s Psalmist’s imagination: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” What we have isn’t ultimately ours to hoard or feel guilty about. All that we have belongs to God and is entrusted to us for sharing.
The money that Paul was collecting for Jerusalem was a real disruption of Roman economic values. In that empire, wealth flowed upward—from colonies to Rome. It was an economy of extraction. The powerful taking from the weak.
Paul wanted to change the flow—to send resources from wealthy Gentiles to poor Jewish believers. Because the gospel creates a different economy. The free gift of God in Jesus leads to a different way of thinking. Not extraction but sharing. Not “me and mine” but “us and ours.”
Here’s where this connects to our moment: We live in a time when scarcity thinking really dominates our cultural life. Leaders assume there’s “not enough to go around.” Not enough jobs if we take in more people who need them. Not enough aid if we give too much to others. Not enough access if we let more people come in. This is scarcity thinking, and the church of Jesus Christ bears witness to a different story.
God’s economy says: there is enough because God is able to provide every blessing in abundance. God’s economy is an economy of grace, embodied in the self-giving of Jesus. If we are powerful, it is so that we can serve. If we are rich, it is so that we can share.
Remember that “guiltitude”? This is the way through that: to recognize it’s not ultimately ours to begin with. No matter what we have, we’re not owners. We’re stewards. The question is not “Why me?” but “What now?”
Thomas Aquinas taught that God provides through us. Willie Jennings reminds us we don’t own; we steward. Put them together: We are conduits. God is generous to us so God can be generous through us.
Next month, we’ll host the Loaves and Fishes Alternative Gift Market with Trinity Episcopal and Central Methodist. There are twelve local non-profits you can partner with this Christmas, and they will be here on November 23 to share about their work. One of them is ABCCM.
When someone experiencing homelessness gets a bed at ABCCM on a Code Purple night, your gift is how God provided that bed. Actually. I’m not being metaphorical. Your gift goes into ABCCM’s budget, which pays for the bed, provides warmth, and restores dignity. It may be a small gift, a miniscule percentage of the total, but you participate. And this is how God provides. Not apart from us, but with us.
You are enriched in every way by becoming a co-laborer with God in the good work of blessing a world in need.
Now, one last step, watch what happens when we give. Paul describes it in verses 12-14:
“The ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God… while they long for you and pray for you.”
Your gift meets a need. Someone eats. Someone has shelter. Someone gets out of the cold.
But, wait, there’s more. Thanksgiving rises to God. Gratitude wells up in the heart. A gift translates into act of worship.
And, wait, there’s more: community is created. You and the recipient of the gift are connected. You’re part of each other’s story. You feel this connection, when you think of them and when you see them; they feel it when they think of you or see you.
And wait, there’s more: the gospel becomes visible. You bear witness, in a small way, to the free gift of God’s love in Jesus. Your generosity testifies to God’s generosity.
And, then there’s more: prayers rise up for you. You’re surrounded by gratitude, held in a circle of blessing.
One gift becomes a stream that becomes a cascade of effects. And all of it flows back to God in praise.
God supplies the seed, God is the fount that continues to flow. God is the ultimate recipient of praise and thanksgiving for every good gift. And in the middle of this, we – our energy, and imagination, and intelligence, and love – we are caught up in this joyful and generous work of blessing that God is doing.
God provides to us so God can provide through us.
If you’re anxious about having enough: God supplies continuously. Put your trust in the Giver not the gift.
If you’re carrying guilt about having more than enough: Remember, you’re not an owner, you’re a steward. The question isn’t “Why?” but “What now?”
If you doubt your gift matters, yes, it matters. Because God has chosen to work through ordinary people to create a cascade of blessing that ends in praise, no matter how large or small the gift.
We live in anxious times. We live in a culture that runs on greed, fear, and scarcity. We see leaders—even Christian leaders—who hoard power, who play zero sum games, who say there’s “not enough to go around” so we need to look out for ourselves first. But we know a different story. We trust a God whose love is abundant and free, whose provision is continuous, whose economy is gift and dignity, not exploitation and extraction.
You and I are not the source of provision for the world’s needs. That would be too much for anyone to bear. God is the source of every good gift, but we can be the channel—a divinely shaped conduit of grace. God, who is the Great Giver, is generous to us so that God can be generous through us, for the blessing of the world and the glory of God.
And this is how generosity builds on the welcome of Christ.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina