Explore the intricate dynamics of generosity versus selfishness and how it impacts wealth and relationships. Drawing insights from the book of Proverbs, Ronald L. Dart delves into the paradox of giving—to better understand how generosity attracts support, love, and ultimately wealth. Whether it’s teaching children the right values or learning from our everyday interactions, this episode sheds light on the timeless relevance of these biblical truths.
00:00:03 Introduction to the Paradox of Generosity
00:03:13 Building Wealth Through Goodness and Relationships
00:06:06 Family Dynamics and Constructive Criticism
00:10:27 Teaching Values and the Importance of Right and Wrong
00:16:10 Animals, Children, and Lessons from Proverbs
00:25:16 The Value of Listening to Counsel and Wise Words
SPEAKER 02 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Is it possible to give things away and yet become richer? Is it possible to hold on to everything you have and then wind up poor anyhow? You know, it seems there’s a law. In fact, the way the law is stated is in Proverbs 11, 24. There is that scatters and yet increases. There is that withholds more than is fit and attends only to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that waters shall be watered also himself. Then there’s Proverbs 12, 7. There is that makes himself rich and and yet has nothing. And there is that makes himself poor, and yet has great riches. This is what I call the paradox of generosity. I’ve thought about it a long time, and I think it has something to do with relationships. No man is ever going to get rich without other people. You just can’t do it on your own. You’ve got to have either people working with you, working for you, but you have to depend on others. And selfishness, greed, stinginess drives people away and alienates people. Generosity draws people toward us. And as a result, a cooperative work that we have with other people, we actually do better. also I think generosity has something to do with social consciousness the things we do affect other people and other people respond to the things that we do and at least in years gone by that was the reason why we taught our children to be generous we taught them to give we taught them to share and it’s not natural I mean there’s not a thing in the world natural about generosity Normally, we get a candy bar. We wanted it all. We had no intention of sharing it with our brother. And so we go through our little rituals when we’re kids. And mom makes us lay the candy bar out and gives one of us a knife and says, You divide it, but your brother gets to choose first. And so we learn to share. But we need to go beyond that. Children need to be taught to be generous. And, of course, you shouldn’t forget to set the example. Because all the way through life, the paradox of generosity works. The more generous you are, the more things are likely to come to you. There’s another proverb in chapter 11, verse 27, that says, He that diligently seeks good procures favor. But he that seeks mischief, sooner or later, it’s going to come to him. But the fact is that if you in your lifetime are looking for the good thing and doing the good thing and trying to do good to other people and just being a good person, you tend to procure favor. People look at you and say, hey, you know, he’s really a good guy. He’s really a nice man. She’s really a good person and easy to be with. And these things are the things that make us wealthy in the long run. But the person that’s always seeking mischief, well, that’s what he’s going to find. Later in verse 29, Solomon will say, He that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind. That’s not hard to figure either. You know, when the Bible uses the word house, generally speaking, it’s talking about more than a building, more than sticks and stones and mortar. It’s talking about family. And a man who has nothing but trouble in his own family is going to find himself with an inheritance, right? His father’s going to leave all the money to him, right? No, he’s going to inherit the wind. Now, most of the time, Solomon’s proverbs apply to men and women alike. But sometimes he chooses to address either men or women in areas that especially fit them. In chapter 12, verse 1, for example, he shifts to the woman. He says, “…a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that makes ashamed is as rottenness to his bones.” Well, I guess I understand that. But is there any more depth to it than that? There’s a short section. There’s one verse in chapter 14 that I like to connect with this. It’s chapter 14, verse 1, that says this. Every wise woman builds her house, but the foolish plucks it down with her hands. Now, why in the world would anyone want to tear down his house? Surely the wise person builds a house. And who can imagine tearing down your own shelter, that which keeps the rain off your head and keeps you warm in the winter? But again, go back one step. In the Bible, one’s house is a synonym for one’s family. Now, have you ever seen a woman tear down her own family? Well, I’ll bet you have. You’re not likely to see her out there with the axe chopping down the walls of her house. But you might very well see her taking an axe, figuratively speaking, to her children or to her husband. Now, again, we have another paradox, though. Why would a woman tear down her husband and her children? Because, after all, she loves her husband and she loves her children. Well, believe it or not, the woman who tears down her husband and her children is actually trying to build them up. Yeah, well, sure, you don’t want anything but the best for your children. You want them to have things working right in their life, don’t you? You want them to be all that they can be. You want them to be the best that they can be. And whenever you see them coming one iota short of that best, well, you’ve just got to tell them about it. The result is that she takes away their confidence in wanting your husband or your children to measure up to this very high standard you’re holding for them, which is nothing but the best. You only want the best for them, and you’re doing it for their sakes, right? But in the process, you’re making them feel deeply their failures. In fact, you are making those failures seem like they’re fatal. And you’re making it seem like that the standard that you’re holding up, the bar that you’re trying to ask them to get over, and maybe even trying to help them to get over, is so high that they can never make it. And you know why they get to where they feel that way? It’s because you keep raising it. Whenever they make it over one bar, that’s not good enough. You’ve got to put it a little higher. I know you can do better than that. And so you push them to do better than that. And they clear that bar. And then you raise the bar a little higher. And pretty soon they begin to feel that there is no way of really satisfying you. There’s no way of making you happy. There’s no way that you’re ever going to come to the place to where you are content with what they have done or satisfied with what they have done. You know… If you stop for a moment and ask yourself, why is this statement directed at the woman? Isn’t it just as applicable to the husband? Well, maybe it’s because no one has the power to hurt in the way that a mother has. If her husband did not care what she thought, she could not hurt him. If he didn’t need her approval, her withholding of it wouldn’t bother him. If he didn’t need her encouragement, the fact that she is constantly critical of him would not pull him down at all. And if her children didn’t need her approval, they would be impervious to her. But because we love our women, our wives, our mothers as much as we do, they have great power over us. They have power for good or for evil. And so comes the proverb, a wise woman builds her house, whereas the foolish woman tears it down with her hands. Well, how would a wise woman build her house then? Well, there’s a thing they call positive reinforcement. When they do something good, praise them. When they do something wrong, don’t praise them. That’s interesting. Praise is important. Encouragement is important. Approval is important. And not getting it is correction enough in most cases. Yeah, but I know real correction is needed. But mothers, wives, ration your criticism. It can eat away at your family, at your children, and at your husband like a corrosive acid bomb. Never, ever let your husband or your children doubt your love, not even for a moment. They will doubt it, you know, if you carp and criticize and tear down. They will come to the conclusion that you really don’t like them very much. Well, if you did like them, why would you be constantly trying to change them? Think about that for a moment and when I come back, we’ll talk about what you can do to build your house.
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If you need help in teaching Christian values to your children at home, write or call and give us the ages of your children and the call letters of this radio station. Born to Win will send you a free sample lesson from Youth Educational Adventures. Listen for the address at the close of this program or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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Every wise woman builds her house, builds her family up. But how does she do it? Well, one of the ways she does it is by telling her children what her values are. You know, I don’t know where this craziness got started that people would say, well, I don’t want to impose my values on my kids. I want them to grow up and decide for themselves what they’re going to be. Look, your kids are going to decide for themselves. You can’t stop that. But are you going to give them anything to go on? I mean, at least can you tell them what your values are? If you don’t act like a moral guide to your family, who’s going to do it? Television? Their friends? The schools? Say, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we let the culture give our kids their values? Now, there’s a formula for disaster. Tell your children what you think, and tell them why you think it. That’s not imposing your values on them. It’s sharing your values with them. Yeah, yeah, you want your children to think, and you want them to decide for themselves, but do you want them to do this without any guidelines, without any values to help them make those judgments? Does mama really make much difference in how children think and react to the world? Well, they do, a lot more than we might like to think. By now, everyone knows the name Schindler from the movie Schindler’s List. What you may not know is that Schindler was only one of a rather large number of Germans and others who put life and fortune on the line to save a number of Jews from the Nazis. Who knows, if these people had not done so, how much larger the death toll would have been. But to save 100 or 200 or 1,000 or 1,500, is it worthwhile? What is really interesting about all this is why they did what they did. There is a constant among these people who actually stepped out and took risks to save lives. It had to do with family and with a sense of right and wrong. And what I found especially interesting about this, it was not so much a question of what was right and what was wrong, as it was realizing that there is such a thing as right and wrong. Now, if you’re my age, if you’re the older generation, that probably sounds crazy to you that we should even wonder whether there is a right and a wrong. But as time has gone by, they have crept up on us, folks, with an idea of situational ethics, of morals that can adjust to the situation and the time and the place. And nothing is really right and nothing is really wrong except as it relates to the people or the times or how we feel about it. One of these rescuers of many people was interviewed, and he said this, and I quote, My mother said to me when we were small, and even when we were bigger, Regardless of what you do with your life, be honest. When it comes to the day when you have to make a decision, make the right one. It may be a hard one, but even the hard ones should be the right ones. And after he finished quoting his mother, he went on to say, I did not know what this meant. You understand what he’s saying? He’s saying as a child, I really did not understand what she was driving at. Because she didn’t at that time explain to him all the rights and wrongs of the world out here. No one could ever do that. There are too many decisions, too many variables, too many things that you have to decide on day by day for anyone to ever give you a comprehensive list. Do you realize what an enormous value it is to your children if you do nothing more than to teach them that there is a difference between right and wrong? There is such a thing as right. There is such a thing as the right way to do things, the right way to treat people. If they can understand that… and understand that they are supposed to choose not on the basis of how they feel, but upon what’s right. You will have given them a lot. When I read what that man said, I understood something very important. My parents, long time ago, got that idea of right and wrong into my head. I couldn’t tell you when they did it. But all my life I have had an awareness of right and wrong. Not so much what was right or what was wrong, but the realization that I cannot decide on the basis of expediency. And that was very important to me, as it was to the German rescuers. It wasn’t just what will work for me now. It wasn’t a question of what feels good to me now, that there is a right thing to do in this situation. And once you have come to that conclusion, once you have accepted that premise, finding the right thing to do is just not all that hard. So, you can’t teach your children everything there is to know about right and wrong. But you can teach them that some things are right and some things are wrong. And if you succeed at that, you will have made an enormous difference in their lives. When I come back, I’m going to tell you one more thing that will make a bigger difference than you might think.
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A righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. That’s Proverbs 12 and verse 10. Well, now, you don’t have to go see 101 Dalmatians to realize that there are people in the world who are cruel toward animals. And I really wonder sometimes where that all gets started. Probably the children, because I gather there’s not a baby born into this world who does not have within him or her the potential for being a cruel person. And it’s odd in a way that the Bible would concern itself with critters. You know, the righteous man regards the life of his beast. He takes care of his animal. He sees to it it has food. He sees to it it has water. He doesn’t treat it brutally. Now, does God really care about animals? Paul asked the question in 1 Corinthians 9. He said, For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn. Does God take care for oxen? Or does he say it all together for our sakes? He says, Well, he says it for our sakes, that he that plows should plow in hope, and he that threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. So Paul implies that God isn’t all that worried about animals, that when he gives us something like this, it’s for our sakes. It’s because it makes a difference to the human heart how he treats his animals. You know, I’ve been asked by people occasionally who had a dog or a cat or something, they really love this dog, and says, do you think I’ll see my little Fido in the resurrection? I have a lot of patience with people who love animals, and I gather in the Bible so does God. He favors people who love animals. And so I answer them this way. I say, well, if you’re in the resurrection and it’s still important enough to you, then perhaps God will allow you to resurrect your pet dog. Who am I to say no? I don’t know how God will feel about it, and I don’t know how you will feel about it when it comes to that. But, you know, when I look at all this, I conclude it’s probably good for kids to have a dog or a cat. Dogs in particular are protective, and they’re great companions. And I wonder how many kids there are, adults really, who are alive today because they had a dog. Because they were dragged out of the water by a dog when they were drowning. Because they were awakened from sleep by a dog when a house was on fire. And so on it goes. Every year there are awards given to dogs who are heroes because they save some kid’s life. But it’s a lot more than that. They teach us a lot about love. And when a dog dies, the kids learn a lot about pity and grief and sorrow. Through their life, they learned that when you pull on a dog’s ears, it hurts. And it matters that it hurts. The dog lets you know that it hurts. He’ll give you a good squeal in the process. Dogs and kids go together. They’re just naturals. They’re companions. They get along. Someone recently sent me a list of things we can learn from a dog. I thought it was pretty good, actually. It started off by saying never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy. When loved ones come home, always run to greet them. Unfortunately, children learn this next one pretty well. When it’s in your best interest, practice obedience. But in a way, that’s a pretty good lesson for your children to learn. Let others know when they’ve invaded your territory. Take naps and stretch before rising. Run, romp, and play every day. And eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Ha-ha! Wouldn’t you like your kids to pick up on that one? Be loyal. Well, that’s one of the great things you can learn from a dog. Because they are. Never pretend to be something you’re not. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it. And one thing I wish a lot of people would learn from a dog. When someone is having a bad day, be silent. Sit close by and nuzzle him or her gently. Just, you know, leave them alone, but just touch them every once in a while and let them know you care. Avoid biting when a simple growl is sufficient. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree. That’s good advice, you know. You live longer. When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body. No matter how often you’re scolded, don’t buy into the guilt thing and pout. Run right back and make friends. Now, you know, if a kid could learn those things from a dog, would they be well served or not? A righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. I guess we teach things where we can. Proverbs 12 and verse 11. He that tills his land shall be satisfied with bread, but he that follows worthless pursuits is void of understanding. Now, of all the things we can learn in life, this one is pretty important, that the man who actually goes out and does something, I mean, no matter how small it is, the very beginning thing of raising a crop is breaking the ground. If you just get out there and do the first thing, you’re going to ultimately be satisfied with the results. But there are a jillion things you can do that are absolutely worthless. And you know, when you look at your kids, there is some value in computer games in that they teach kids some basic skills. They teach them the use of the mouse and controls. Even in playing solitary, you get dexterous with the mouse. And they teach also some levels of problem solving, all of which is very good. But there comes a time in your kid’s life when they need to move away from games that don’t go anywhere and don’t teach anything. There’s a time when they need to learn to enjoy work. Now, if I could tell you in just simple terms how to teach your kids to enjoy work, they would give me the Nobel Prize. I know that’s a challenge. But the man who learns to enjoy work has the best shot at enjoying life because your work is going to take up the bulk of your life. Now, I don’t know about all kids, but I will tell you something about the kids I know. They work better when you are out there working with them. My parents tended to give me solitary chores that I did while they were doing something else. I mean, they weren’t doping off. They had their work to do as well. But when the time came for me to do yard work, I was out there by myself doing the yard work and nobody else was in sight, which gave me lots of time to feel sorry for myself, gave me a lot of time to think about something I would rather be doing. Now, I have a good friend who took his kids out in the yard and worked with them. In fact, of all the chores and all the jobs that they did, they did them together. He worked with his boys. And I’ll tell you this. Those boys developed better work habits than I did. I would say one of your best chances of teaching your kids to enjoy work is to work with them. If you can teach your children to take pleasure in work, to actually enjoy work, to have their life’s work be almost like their play, you will have given them one of the greatest gifts a man could ever receive. There are so many lessons to learn in Proverbs, and one of the greatest is in verse 15. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that listens to counsel is wise. You know, people don’t go out and do things they think are wrong. And so just because something looks right to you doesn’t mean that it is. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. But the man who listens to advice is wise. Now, you don’t always have to do the advice. Because sometimes your advice is going to be wrong. But the simple point is, don’t be so all-fired sure that you’re right all the time. Sometimes, wise counsel, sometimes advice can come to you from the strangest of places. Skipping down to verse 18 of Proverbs. There is that speaks like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is health. What this is telling us is it’s very easy to hurt people with things we say. Now, I don’t know what you do about that when you’re sitting there and before you can even think twice about it, you blurt something out and you’ve pierced somebody right through with a sword. But maybe, maybe if we worked harder at trying to make people feel better with what we say, we’d be a little less likely to shove a sword through their heart in the process. Verse 23. A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims foolishness. I have to confess I have a problem with this. I know it is wise not to tell everything I know, but then I have never been able to read through the book of Proverbs without being called a fool. The thing that gives me heart, though, is that it’s not the people whom Proverbs calls a fool who are the losers. It’s the people who don’t read it at all. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
SPEAKER 02 :
The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791 you may call us toll free at 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
