Lending to God?

What if you could lend money to the best possible credit risk ever? Someone who is impossibly wealthy, never breaks a contract, and is inherently perfectly good. Someone who will also repay with substantial interest. You'd jump at it, right? The perfect investment!

I came across a verse in the Bible today that rather shocked me. Proverbs 19:17 says, "If you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord—and he will repay you!" (NLT). I've never really thought about how crazy this is. How can we lend to the God who created and owns everything? Psalm 24:1 states, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him." So "our" resources -our time, treasure, and talents - aren't ours at all. God provided them to us in trust so we can use them for His glory. Isn't that the basic principle of stewardship?

Then how can the author of Proverbs 19:17 say that helping the poor (which could be giving money, time, or our skills and experience) is lending to the Lord? Not even "giving back," as we like to say. Lending, knowing that God always pays back his debts, as though we are somehow His creditors. In my experience, God's borrower interest rate is pretty compelling, too.

Proverbs 14:31 emphasizes just how much God identifies with the poor. "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but helping the poor honors him." God identifies with the poor – how you treat the poor is how you treat God. In Jesus' time, this was a peculiarly Jewish approach that Jesus soundly reinforced. For example, in Matthew 25, Jesus says of people who fed the hungry or clothed the naked, "when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!"

This is why we give a portion of what we have specifically to the poor or to alleviate poverty. If we don't do this, we are missing out! I give money and time to World Renew, a great NGO that works through local partners to provide sustainable solutions to poverty in about 20 countries worldwide. This is my way, but you will have your own. I encourage you to consider your impact on the poor and the degree to which you are "lending to God".

There are implications beyond stewardship, of course. For example, parents have an excellent opportunity to model this for their children, and also to teach it. What if parents told their children that any portion of their allowance used to help the poor would be an investment that the parents would repay in one way or another? It could be a bonus on their next allowance or something entirely different, like a trip or a special meal.

For investors, not everything is about realizing a financial return, providing for the future, or making profits for your shareholders and partners. Isn't there a principle here that we should all be following – dedicating a portion of our investing to alleviating poverty? We call this "impact investing". Financial return is still necessary for sustainability, but the primary measurable outcome is a positive impact on the economic well-being of people experiencing poverty. So the risk profile is different, success is differently measured, and the world is changed because we lent to God!

Are you or your business lending to God? Try it – you won't be disappointed!