Can you be wealthy and generous?
“I asked for nothing, even though I regularly fed 150 Jewish officials at my table, besides all the visitors from other lands! …Yet I refused to claim the governor’s food allowance because the people already carried a heavy burden.” ~ Nehemiah 5:17-18 NLT
Nehemiah was very wealthy and very generous. I grew up thinking being wealthy and being generous were mutually exclusive. (In fact, I had no category for a wealthy Christian - that just didn’t compute for me.) My Labor Union father would often rail against the rich and blamed “big money” for most of our troubles in America.
Looking back, I can see that he had a point. In fact, Nehemiah confronts wealthy Jews earlier in this chapter for taking advantage of poorer Jews by charging them interest on loans.
Yet Nehemiah himself is an excellent example of someone God blessed with great wealth who stewarded it well. He was blessed to be a blessing. He embraced that and practiced extravagant generosity.
But wait a minute, “wealth” is a relative term, isn’t it? The average annual wage in India in 2025 is $5,064 USD and according to Forbes, the average yearly income of someone with a college degree is about $20,000 USD. When we compare that to the US it looks like this: The 2023 median income in the US was $59,384 and if you are a college graduate that increased to $77,636.
So, what’s the point? First, no matter where you live or how much you have, God owns it all. Whether we have little or much, we are all stewards of what God entrusts to us. Frankly, many of us (like Nehemiah) have more than we need for the basic necessities of life (which, by the way, do not include Spotify Premium and Starbucks - ouch).
So, here are three good questions to ask yourself – especially if you’re turning gray like me and most of your friends are talking about their knee and hip replacements:
1.How much do you need? (What is that number for you?)
2.If you have children, how much do you want to give them?
3.What does God want you to do with the rest?