A person who's financially generous will be generous in other ways in their life - generous with their words, with their time, generous in all kinds of other ways.
If you want to be a great encourager, a great exhorter of people: generosity is one of the first things to build into your life - to become a generous person. I thank God I've got so many generous people here.
2) Acts 11:24 – “He was a good man, filled with the Holy Ghost, and with Faith”.
Being generous with people - you go out of your way to make them welcome in your world. You don't just turn up and church, and just connect with a few nice ones that you know. Well done, but that's not generosity. Generosity is when you make it your point that you will actually include people in your world, beyond your normal group.
3) Filled with the Holy Ghost. He's a spirit-filled guy, he's a man of prayer, he's a man who's stayed filled with the Holy Ghost, kept his life energised and empowered in the Holy Ghost. That was what made him able to encourage people. That's why they said: “this is the Son of the Holy Ghost”.
The life of God flows in him. There's a river flowing in him. He kept himself in a strong place in prayer. You don't get filled with the Holy Ghost with bad attitudes; when you're cranky; when you're negative. You've got to get your mind and your attitudes right - and the Holy Ghost fills you, and empowers you. Get into prayer, get into the word.
He's not just filled with the Holy Ghost - he was filled with Faith. It's so easy to see difficulties and problems; it's another thing to come into it, and be a faith person. Church is called to be Faith People.
Faith people don't ignore problems, but they look to see what God is doing, and bring a word from God into that situation. He was full of faith. Some people are full of it - but it's not faith. He was full of faith.
Imagine being known just for those three qualities: 1) you are generous; 2) you're filled with the Holy Ghost, and have the joy of the Lord operating and flowing in your life; 2) and you also impart faith to people.
The desperate need today in the church, is to have people impart Faith to someone else. I don't want someone to impart their depression to me, or their negativity to me, or their problems to me. I want them to be able to be grounded in the word, and connected to God, where actually they're a faith person. Faith people speak. Faith people talk in a certain kind of way.
That's what made him an exhorter - he was full of the Holy Ghost. He had a great heart for people, and when he spoke, he spoke words that lifted people's spirit, and connected them to the promises of God. That's what faith does - if we have the spirit of faith, we speak what God's word says about our life.
A week or so ago, we had a couple come forward, and we prayed and spoke God's word over their life - and within a week there was an outworking of that in their life. We have to learn the value of the word of God. The word of God is what builds your faith.
In the Old Testament, a whole generation lost their way, because when they faced problems and giants - they complained; but there were two men that said: “the giants are bread for us!” It's exactly the same spirit that is on David, in Psalm 23, when he says: “you prepare a table before me in the midst of my enemies”. What he's saying is: I'm surrounded by difficulties that could overwhelm and kill me; but Lord, You provide for me something that makes me grow. That's the spirit of faith - it speaks; it imparts hope and life to people, by redirecting them to the word of God.