I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life: Brad Formsma

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I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life

Guest:Brad Formsma

From the series:I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:November 28, 2024

Brad:I remember one time being at an airport and I was so frustrated and I’m like, how could I quickly change my attitude here? Oh, I know. I’m going to just give the lady my credit card and tell her the next ten people behind me, just ring it up. I’m going to stand around the corner, get a little of what God has for me, and then I’m going to come back and get my credit card.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann: This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:Alright, so we’re talking about one of your favorite topics in the world today.

Ann: We totally are. I’m really excited.

Dave:And our listeners are like, “What are we talking about?”

Ann: Giving.

Dave:I know. You love, it brings life to your soul. It drives me crazy sometimes.

Ann: I know it does but listen to these stats. When you give, your brain releases beneficial hormones that lift your mood. You feel more open, more alive, and more grateful. See, giving makes you happy.

Dave:Okay, we’re going to talk about it today. We got Brad Formsma with us and that quote, by the way, came from his book I Like Giving. What a book title. Brad, welcome.

Brad: And you do.

Ann: Dave’s a giver, but I’m probably more of a what, happy giver. You give very generously. Tithing, that is on your radar.

Dave:Always has been, yes. But there are times when we walk by somebody on the street, and she just pulls out dollar bills and starts giving them to them. She’s laughing and having a conversation and I’m like, “Not again, please, not again.” So I mean there’s different perspectives on this, right Brad? So anyway, first of all, welcome to FamilyLife. Talk about who you are, what you do. This is sort of your life. I Like Giving is not just the title, it’s who you are, right?

Ann: —your lifestyle.

Brad: Yeah, it is true. It’s actually the name of our ministry. Funny how names come about. I’ll take you back. It’s 2007 and we’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the time, that’s where we lived and our kids, here they are—

Dave:How many kids?

Brad: Three kids. So my oldest is Dan and then Drew and then Gracie.

Dave:Alright.

Brad: So at the time they were like 12, 9, and 6. I find a newspaper article. It’s a Sunday morning and there’s a picture of a Sudanese father and son. The article goes on to explain how they came to America, lost friends, family, tragic situation, and all they had was clothes on their back and a few bikes. I read the article to the kids and what I didn’t tell you is later in the article it became clear; somebody came along and stole their bikes.

So I just asked a question. That’s like the parent pro tip number one here for our—just engage the kids. I said, “What should we do?” My oldest son’s, “We got to go get them bikes. Let’s go get them bikes.” I’m an activator. We jump in our minivan, all the kids and my wife, Laura, and head to the bike store, buy two bikes, put them in the back.

Ann: You even got new bikes.

Brad: Well, yeah, we’ll talk about that. I don’t do junk for Jesus. We got to go back to junk for Jesus later. But that’s a whole nother thing. So we pull up to the first stoplight and this is perfect because it’s family life and marriage today, and this is what we’re talking about. So bringing everybody in now, all of you into my marriage, my wife looks over and says, “Hey, activator guy. Do you know where they live?”

Dave:Activator guy?

Brad: “No, I don’t know where they live, but I got the newspaper article right here. We got a little picture of where it says the sponsoring church, but there’s no other direction.”

Dave: Grand Rapids isn’t a small city. It’s pretty big.

Brad: Yeah, I know. We learned that the hard way. So we called the church, some guy gets on the phone and then he gets suspicious, and so he doesn’t want to tell me where it is. He said, “Just give the bikes to Wheels for Jesus.” And I’m like, “No, this isn’t about Wheels for Jesus. I want to model the generous life to my kids and there’s an immediate need today because this is how dad gets to work.”

Well, that set off a four-hour wild goose chase. He told us, “Oh, it’s on the south end of town.” So we literally took that information with bikes in the back and some cheerios for my daughter and off we went and up and down all these streets. And because of that picture, we finally went down a street and we could recognize the house because there was a green hose reel.

Shelby: Really?

Brad: We got ahold of these people, and we just said, “Hey, we want to bless you.” Because of the language barrier, all they could say was, “I like bike. I like bike.” And so that’s how I Like Giving got started because I would just tell the I like bike story and then people would send us their “I like” stories of, I like Taco Bell, or I like down coats. And that was the beginning.

Dave:When you found that family, was it something that started a, I mean this already happened in your family. Did it start something even in your kids? And I’m wondering if you were the only one that bought bikes. Were you the only one that showed up?

Brad: Thank you for bringing that up because as we left, my wife reaches over and grabs my hand and says, “I so know we had an assignment today.”

Dave: Really.

Brad: She said, “I just kept hearing this voice over and over in my head. There’s going to be hundreds of bikes at their house. Certainly other people would’ve responded; after all, the newspaper goes to thousands and tens of thousands of people.”

Dave: That’s what I was thinking.

Brad: That is one of those moments, you move from awareness to action and miracles happen, but that event didn’t just happen. So there’s a pre-decision, pre-story to this in terms of my growing up, ten, eleven, twelve years old as the oldest of five and tagging along with my grandpa who owned a commercial baking company. I would just see him on Saturday mornings as we would bake these specialty loaves of bread, model generosity of his time and his words, and his money, and his attention and just different ways I would see him influence, express this. And those were seeds that were being planted in little Brad’s life back then for sure.

Ann: What did the conversation sound like on your way home from giving this family the bikes with the kids or even that night at the dinner table?

Brad: It started with one of the boys in the way back of the van said, “Dad, I know we were going to go to the water park today. This was so much better.” And it’s actually in that moment that—you know that verse, right, where it says it’s more blessed to give than receive—when kids get this, and this is why I’m giving my life away to this message. This is why the work of generous family is so prevalent today is because we see the power of when kids experience the joy of giving early; just so powerful.

Dave:How do you teach that? Obviously, you model it from what you just showed but I mean, we live in a culture, it’s always been this way. I mean, every parent knows you hand two kids one twinkie and there’s going to be a war over who gets the most, or a cookie or whatever. It’s like, we love getting. It isn’t in our DNA to love giving. So how do you teach that?

Brad: Well, I always encourage parents: don’t follow us. We’re not perfect on this but here’s some things we did that we think really were part of the story in helping our kids say today “We grew up very differently than we could have. And we love how we were brought up and we live this way. It’s like breathing. It’s natural.”

So for the first one was my wife and I and her coming from a different family of origin around money and me coming from a different one. So on my side there was just a lot of extreme giving. My grandpa was pretty generous in how he lived. Laura’s family had a little different approach on it, how they communicated it. So that took a little bit for her and I to get synced up. But then we decided we just want to make a pre-decision that we want to live generously. So I think that’s number one. You have to just put the stake in the ground. We want to move at living outside of ourself and others oriented.

Ann: So Brad, what if you do have a spouse that’s not on the same page? Like you said, you guys, kind of figured that out. That can be difficult sometimes.

Brad: It really is. I mean, one of the lines I learned from one of my guests on our wow factor podcast is start to start. We know God, he kind of paints with lines that aren’t so straight. So this is a jaggedy. You’re going to have bumps in the road, potholes.

I came home one day when we were back in business. My wife’s standing there with a letter from an organization and she’s like, we gave him X thousands of dollars. Can we afford to do this? And what do I do? The dumb guy thing, right. No, didn’t I—I thought I said, no, no. Remember, didn’t I bring up that maybe that we gave to— Me, it was a walk off home run, easy gift giving idea. And so we decided, “Hey, what if we create some kind of a threshold not to go over?”

So for us, we picked 500. I mean it doesn’t matter. It could be 50, it could be 5. The idea was let’s get into agreement and let’s quit being frustrated that somebody’s over giving. Worked perfect for six months. And then one day she came in; she was balancing the checkbook. She’s like, how come there’s so many $450 checks?

Dave:You want to give a guy 900 bucks, you just split it in half, huh?

Brad: It’s the workaround. So I would encourage somebody because there’s a gas pedal and a brake just if you forget anything, I say, just remember that day pulling up to that stop sign with two bikes in the back of a car, no direction. There’s a gas pedal and brake in this and they work really good together but if one person’s just foot on it all the time, you’re going to just not be so good.

Dave:Yeah, I mean that’s good wisdom, because that describes us a little bit. I mean I have, and we both make this decision, but we have the tithing check. I’ve always said, I used to say this as a pastor, is I always wanted my check to the Lord, to a church, to whatever you’re tithing to, to be bigger than any other check I write every month. Bigger than my house payment and it always has been.

So I have that in my head and so I’m like, “Okay, we’re good. We’re beyond ten percent. Okay, that’s great.” Then I’ll look over and she’s throwing 50 bucks, 100 bucks to some person we don’t know and that becomes, and we joked about it at the beginning, but that has become somewhat of a tension. “We’re giving to our max here and now you’re adding to it.” But that’s a good conversation that we often haven’t had.

Ann: Well, and I think one person, me, can feel like, “But of course, why wouldn’t we say yes to this?” But I think it’s good to have the break too, because I think you’re really important where I would just probably, we’d be poor and, on the street, because I’d give it all away. I don’t think Jesus would let us maybe do that, but it’s good to have both. I agree. I think that’s really wise.

Brad: Yeah. Laura has been great for me on the whole break thing because I think you and I would be kindred spirits on that. But I also think you kind of grow into it. And as we know the world of the generous—this is right out of the scriptures—the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy, smaller and smaller. So I believe in the first fruits idea of giving first. I think that just softens our heart.

I think what my grandpa modeled to me and now what we teach in our homeschool program Generous Students, or in our school program, we’re teaching the 7 Ways. I think what’s important about this is showing through scripture how we can be generous with our words. Boy, do we know what that’s like or generous with our attention, and our money. I don’t want to diminish the importance of—

Dave:But there’s other ways.

Brad: Yeah, generous with our thought life. Oh my goodness. I mean, am I giving the benefit of the doubt? Oh, that’s not giving. Well it is. It says giving the benefit of the doubt. How am I doing with my influence?

Ann: So this generous giving idea; you have a homeschool program.

Brad: Yeah, it’s called Generous Students. You get it at GenerousFamily.com. We started from our book and our online videos ten years ago, getting reports of families saying, “Hey, we’re homeschooling. We want to teach our kids the generous life.” So we went out and found some of the greatest homeschool teachers and families and all this and parents and just said, “We created a 26-week program that allows them every day to have something to touch on the generous life.”

There’re generosity heroes in there from the Bible and from today, but we’re always big on engaging scripture in everything—not just putting a verse on top, but how do you live this out? When kids live it out, when it’s experiential, when they experience the joy, that’s when it gets real and real fun.

Ann: And it can be simple, I think, Brad; don’t you think?

Brad: Absolutely.

Ann: It becomes a mindset.

Brad: We can overcomplicate it. I always say the reason we’ve created content for families to engage around the generous life is because I was running into parents and grandparents who are very generous. The 11-year-old, 7-year-old gets when you’re—for example, my daughter Gracie one day—I live in Orange County, California. There’re a few people that think they’re just a little bit better there. I think they’re in every city, but we got an extra few.

So we’re at the dry cleaner, and I can hear “Mr. Arms crossed” behind me, when people kind of cross that spatial thing and the doors were open. I know Rosa there because I like to meet people and know their names. You can see it’s hot and the air conditioner must be broken. He’s doing his nonverbal huffing and puffing and breathing right. You’ve been there.

Dave:—right on your back, yep.

Brad: Yeah. Gracie’s with me and I get up to the counter and I said, “Rosa, how many of you are working here today?” She’s like “Four of us.” And I’m like, “Great.” So we leave; we weren’t two steps out of there and she looks up at me, “I know exactly what we’re going to do. You’re going to Chipotle to get four iced teas, aren’t you?” She calls me chummy. I have no idea where that name came from, but here we go. We did. I’m like, “You’re right; exactly.”

So she must’ve seen something and then began to connect because she wasn’t that old. We go back in. It was, I think a holy pleasure because Mr. Arms cross was just kind of wrapping up his order. Rosa, thank you so much for being here. Put those down on the counter and here’s what happened. He was hosed. That’s an okay word to say, right?

Because as you started this conversation, oxytocin, dopamine, it is produced. God set it up this way. The giver, the receiver and the observer, they all get it, whether you want it or not, baby, it’s coming. And so he cracked a smile, shoulders kind of came up a little bit, little more flush in the face. It just does this to you. We walked out. So for nine bucks—pre-covid pricing—we got the iced tea.

Dave:I thought you going to say you got a fifth tea for him, but he got it anyway just watching it.

Brad: Yes, very important to know this; the giver, the observer and I could just, I don’t want to take too many stories, but yeah, it’s so great.

Dave:No, I mean your stories in the book are fabulous. I mean, we’re reading it and we’re reading them to each other—

Ann: Yes.

Dave:—almost tearing in our eyes. Just all these beautiful, generous living stories.

Ann: I’m even imagining a family sitting at a dinner table reading these stories because—

Dave:They’re inspiring.

Ann: They are inspiring. I have a very similar story. I was with our grandkids. We were at a Walmart. I think they were with us; we were on vacation together. And so I had bought a toy for them, and as we’re checking out, I can’t remember the cashier’s name, super nice, got to know her, called her by name and she saw some fried chicken in our cart and she goes, boy does this look good? I wish I had fried chicken for lunch today. And so we got—

Dave:—all she needed hear, “I wish.”

Ann: We got done, and I grabbed Bryce and Autumn, and I said, “Should we go get some fried chicken for, let’s say Mary?” And they said, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Well, it’s right there. We could go get her some and she could have it for lunch. We could get her something to drink.” And so we did that.

They were pumped. This is a five- and three-year-old pumped out of their minds. So excited about that. We end up taking it to her. She stops—everyone in line—and she’s like, “You got me fried chicken for my lunch. This is the best day ever.” She kneels down, says, “Bryce, thank you. Autumn, thank you.” We walked out of the store; here’s what the kids say—it’s exactly what you’re saying, Brad—“That was better than getting any toy.” And it’s exactly what you know, you’ve seen, you’ve experienced. This is better.

Brad: It’s better.

Ann: And God designed it that way.

Brad: He did. And we get to step into it.

Dave:So what do you do with a person that’s the brake pedal all the time? They’re even listening right now. It’s like, “Yeah, but we don’t have enough to give. We are tight.” Honestly, if you looked at their budget, they probably could give five or 10 bucks, but they can’t give a thousand or a hundred and so it’s always brake. And maybe, because we talked about this earlier—gas pedal, brake pedal—maybe it’s two brake pedals in marriage, or two gas pedals. What would you say to either side?

Brad: Wow. Well, there’s a lot going on in that question. First of all, this is I think the brilliance I really see through my own journey of needing to grow in my relationship with Jesus and dependence on Him, the 7 Ways coming through. I’m not inclined to be generous with my attention. That’s probably one I wish I kind of would’ve left out. That for me can be a challenge.

And we are in the distraction era. I carry six ounces of glass, plastic and technology. You guys encourage dates. Laura and I regularly go on dates. My word, we’re on a date one time, and I make the dude dumb comment of like, “Can you believe all these people in this nice restaurant that are on their phones?” And she looks at me with that million-dollar smile and says, “Like you?” I thought I was just in the booth, just quick checking, didn’t notice anything.

Dave:Don’t you love how our wives can just destroy us.

Brad: The bias is just, get out of here. So are you thinking about things that are pure, right, true, lovely, praiseworthy? So there’s generous thoughts. Our second book in the kid series is Ellie the Elephant and the Stinkin’ Thinkin’. We don’t have to believe and listen to every thought, but we can. What is it like to be generous and clear and specific with our words? You don’t have to be a millionaire. You hardly have to even have minimum wage job to go “Boy, I can specifically affirm and build somebody up.” You remember it like it happened yesterday, when it’s sincere.

Dave:Right; those words stick.

Brad: And we know the other side of not generous words. Those could be decades old and we’re still carrying them around. So I would just say you get to really think forward on your legacy and play the movie forward, as my buddy Henry Cloud says. Play it forward. Where are you at in 30 years? Do you want to live a life where you look back and “Hey, we hung on. Stingy won the day.” You got to be wise. I think it’s good to plan, but at the same time, boy, there’s a lot of fun. And starting to start is part of it.

I think another thing that I am so aware of because of the research we do around kids, when kids between the age of eight and twelve come into contact with learning the generous life and learning that they were created in God’s image. He’s the most generous being. I just listened to that on my podcast on the treadmill this morning. God is the most generous being. He created us and He gave us the Holy Spirit. He gave us Jesus, and obviously not in these orders; not the theologian here, but I’m just saying there’s a clear picture of, we were created to live generously. That’s when kids first establish their morals, their values, and their worldview. That’s why we think it’s so important to teach them that it’s not about them, and get them to learn gratitude daily, weekly, monthly, and learn to be generous. It’s right there.

Ann: And when we talk so often about teens struggling with anxiety and depression, you’re saying this could impact that for sure.

Brad: Not only could, I mean it does. It’s just all over the place. The research is—it’s not just faith people saying this—your anxiety, it’s real hard to be depressed. I understand there’s clinical situations. It’s very hard to be an anxious, driven, depressed, frustrated person when you’re giving.

I can give you an example. I remember one time being at an airport and I was so frustrated. The flight’s late, delayed, on and on and on. I’m getting more amped up. Blood pressure’s going up, I think; it sure felt like it. Of course, you think nobody around you can notice that you’re steaming off. I’m standing in line, and I’m supposed to be the giving guy, as Dave Ramsey says, and I’m like, “Hmm, how could I quickly change my attitude here? Oh, I know. I’m going to just give the lady my credit card and tell her the next ten people behind me, just ring it up. I’m going to stand around the corner, get a little of what God has for me, and then I’m going to come back and get my credit card.”

Ann: Come on, you did that; ten people.

Brad: Yeah. And it was really great—

Dave: You can tell; he’s getting so excited right now.

Dave:Oh yeah. Well here’s—

Ann: Wait, wait, what goes through your head when you hear that?

Dave: I’m like, “How much did that cost? That’s what I thought.

Brad: I was doing really good ‘til the seventh person and then I heard him say, “Hey, I’ll take a bag of that, one pound of that coffee.” And I’m like, “Oh, no, words out.” But you know what? I had so much fun going back there and picking it up, and it might’ve been 60, 70 dollars, but the point is this: the fastest way to shift out of a bad mood is to give and be generous, every time.

Ann: I am totally doing that, with my husband’s approval.

Dave: You already do that, and I don’t want to sound like the downer here.

Brad: It’s just under 500, you’re fine.

Dave:Yeah, exactly. Ours needs to be a hundred but again, I’m not against it at all. I love it, but there are times when I’m like, I have the budget in my head and I know where we are on the month and that’s where—I mean, we literally were speaking at a conference in Indianapolis months ago and went out to dinner Saturday night. We’re sort of fried. We’ve been speaking all weekend, thousands of people, get away, grab a meal. We’re walking back to the hotel and sure enough, she sees a lady, guy?

Ann: It was a man. He was homeless.

Dave:—on the side of the street, sort of homeless. I look over and I’m like, “Of course, there goes 50 or 20,” I don’t know what it was. And she’s just—and talked to him.

Ann: I only had a $20 bill.

Dave:It was 20. Anyway, she was so excited. And again, I should have been like, “That was beautiful.” I’m like, “You just took 20 bucks, gave some guy. He’s probably faking,” the whole thing; all those thoughts in my mind.

Brad: And they might be.

Ann: Well, Brad, you’ve mentioned two things. You mentioned the 7 Ways. We hit some of those, but I want to get into that a little bit more. And also your book series for kids. I think tomorrow we’ll talk about that some more too.

Dave:Yeah, let’s talk about both of those.

Ann: Yeah.

Shelby: Wow. I hope this conversation about giving and being generous has really excited you, especially as we celebrate thankfulness today on Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is just that, giving thanks. And when we do it with a sincere heart, it blesses others certainly, but it also blesses us.

I’m Shelby Abbott and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Brad Formsma on FamilyLife Today. Brad has written a book called I Like Giving: The Transforming Power of a Generous Life. You can get your copy right now by going online to FamilyLifeToday.com or click on the link in the show notes. Or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word “TODAY.”

Ann: Hey guys, we just wanted to take a quick minute to jump in and say whatever you’re going through today, you aren’t alone. And did you know that Dave and I have a team at FamilyLife Today ready to pray for you? So if you need prayer, head on over to FamilyLife.com/PrayForMe. Again, that’s FamilyLife.com/PrayForMe.

Shelby: Now tomorrow, I wanted to let you know that it’s actually going to be my last day as the voice of FamilyLife Today. I’ve been doing this now for several years. I followed the great Bob Lepine and I’m going to be transitioning off FamilyLife Today. I’ve loved it here and I’m grateful for the time that the Lord has allowed me to be here. And tomorrow we’re going to discover practical tips to raise generous kids. Brad Formsma is going to be back with the Wilsons to talk about how to do that. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We’ll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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