Ryan Thomas - You of Little Faith: How Bold Giving Leads to Great Blessing

I n the previous chapter, I made a generic list of the types of blessings we were expecting in response to our giving that first year. But at the outset of the commitment, I also had some very specific ideassome hunchesof how God might reward us. I had three ways in particular in mind that God might give back to us after we had given to him.

The first way was through a bonus. I was working for a small start-up at the time. Though my annual salary was only $35,000, there was an incentive structure built in, and I could earn bonuses of up to $50,000 based on performance. These were by no means guaranteedin fact, they were something of a long shot. But still, the possibility was there. So my first thought as to how things would play out was that God would help me to earn $50,000 in bonuses, and wed break even. In fact, the prospect of those bonuses was partly how we came to the $50,000 number to begin with.

The second way was through acceptance into law school. At the time, I had a half-finished seminary degree under my belt, but I had been wondering whether I was supposed to be a pastor after all. When I got married, I dropped out of seminary to work full-time and planned to apply to law school in the meantime. But as I wasnt sure this was what God wanted me to do either, I constructed a Gideons-fleece scenario. I decided to apply to only one school: the University of Virginia. UVA is always ranked within the top ten law schools in the country. The problem was, I wasnt a top-ten applicant. The school had an extremely low acceptance rate, and my undergrad GPA was well below the average GPA that was admitted. But in looking at all the schools I could attend, UVA was the only school that stood out to methat jumped off the page. So I reasoned, If I apply to only this one school and Im admitted even though its clearly out of my league, that will be a sign that Im supposed to go. I submitted my long-shot application to UVA that November, the same exact month we started our giving commitment.

The third way I had in mind was through a book deal. The father of one of my friends from college worked for a large Christian publishing house. He knew I had tried my hand at writing, so as a kindness to me and without my asking, he had recently offered to show some of my work to various editors at his publisher. One of them liked what he saw well enough to begin working with meunofficially, on the sidehelping me put together something the publisher might want to acquire. I wanted this deal partly because of the financial component. Selling a book would help to recoup some of the $50,000 we were giving away. But I knew that a young, first-time author wouldnt get much of a first payment, an advance, on a book project, so it wasnt primarily about the money. It was more about the influence and opportunity.