Todd Harper Generous Giving Financial Finish Line Podcast Pledge
Finish Line Podcast Episode 25

Todd Harper, Cofounder of Generous Giving, Sharing the Generous Giving Story

You may genuinely want to become more generous while still feeling the steady pull to accumulate more, protect your financial independence, and measure success by what you keep.

How can generosity move from a duty you fulfill into a way of life that creates greater freedom, contentment, and dependence on God?


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Meet your guide

Todd Harper is a co-founder and former president of Generous Giving, where he spent 19 years helping Christians explore biblical generosity through stories, relationships, and transformative experiences. His own journey began with a childhood fascination with becoming wealthy, but a decision in college to surrender his plans to God gradually redirected his ambitions toward ministry, missions, and generosity.

Todd explains how Generous Giving grew from a simple observation: radically generous people were often shaped by Scripture, relationships with other generous Christians, and experiences that reframed their view of wealth. Rather than prescribing how much people should give, the organization creates pressure-free environments where peers can share stories and families can discern God’s invitation for themselves.

Todd also shares how setting his own financial finish line produced an unexpected freedom from striving and the constant pursuit of more. You may come away seeing generosity less as a financial obligation and more as a pathway toward contentment, trust, community, and greater openness to God’s purposes.

What you’ll gain

  • Why generosity grows through stories, relationships, and shared experiences
  • How giving can move from duty toward joyful participation
  • Why financial transparency helps sustain countercultural generosity
  • How a finish line can replace striving with contentment
  • Why financial independence can compete with dependence on God
  • How a short finish line experiment can create lasting freedom

Inspired? Take your next step

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Financial Finish Line Pledge Step 3

Try a 90 Day Finish Line Experiment

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Play the Game of Life Simulator

Not ready for the assessment? Try a quick interactive simulator to see how you stack up in managing wealth.

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Inspired? Take your next step

Try the Game of Life Simulator

Step into a four-minute interactive experience and see what unfolds as you decide how to manage your resources.

Start the Game
Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot
Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot

Quotes to Remember

  • “If we really come to understand God’s plan for our lives, then living into that plan is the most obvious, natural way to live.”
  • “What I felt like God was asking me to give up was my dream to be a millionaire by 30.”
  • “I’m an eternal investment advisor, I help people lay up treasure in heaven.”
  • “The essence of what we started with is still the essence of what we do, which is to tell compelling stories and ask questions.”
  • “It’s so easy to be convinced that what the world is selling 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year is legit – that bigger, better, faster makes you happy.”
  • “The Holy Spirit flips the switch for people from ‘ought to’ to ‘get to’ in their giving.”
  • “Desire is so much more powerful than duty.”
  • “Being around generous people is just stinkin contagious.”
  • “People who are giving their lives away for the sake of others – there is a joy and authenticity in their experience of life that is attractive.”
  • “I’ve never met an unhappy generous person.” 
  • “This orientation towards others, this orientation towards giving, really is the thing that brings life and joy.”
  • “Because of my orientation to always wanting more, the notion of what I had being enough created a sense of freedom and contentment that I never would have predicted.”
  • “I don’t always need to figure out how to make more, or save more, or create more for the future.”
  • “I think many of the most generous families I know have implemented some version of a finish line.”
  • “The idea of establishing limits to create freedom is a very powerful idea and it’s rarely implemented in the financial space.”
  • “The more dependant I am on God, the better of a place I’m in.”
  • “I’m not sure God ever wants us to get to the place where we are financially independent.”

Links from the Show

Bible References from the Show

John 8:32 | The Truth Will Set You Free 

32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Matt. 6:21 | Where Your Treasure Is

21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 | That Which is Truly Life

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.

Enter your information below and we’ll send you our free PDF guide to explore the specific adventure you were called into.

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Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.
Generosity Profile Image
Enter your information below and we’ll send you our free PDF guide to explore the specific adventure you were called into.
Generosity Profile Image

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