About two months ago, I felt a calling to double our weekly church giving.
I’ll be honest, this couldn’t have come at a worse time. We were facing several big expenses, and on paper, our budget just didn’t reconcile.
But, that next week when we went to church, I doubled our giving. I’ve done it every week since then. I just feel like it’s what I should do.
While I’ve often heard of those who give faithfully and receive abundant rewards from God, I hadn’t experienced that personally. Indeed, for years when our budget was very tight and we were paying off debt, I only gave a small amount. I was stingy and thought I knew about my money and my finances better than God.
Robbing God
But as Pastor Rick Ezell says,
When we rob from God, we are actually robbing from ourselves. We are robbing ourselves of spiritual blessings, of God’s provisions, of a church that can meet the needs of others. We are left with a choice: How will we treat God? Will we rob God by not giving our tithes, or will we be faithful in giving to God what is His? (LifeWay).
I decided to no longer rob God, to listen to the urge to give more and to realize that ultimately, my money is not mine, but God’s.
God’s Blessing
I didn’t make this change because I was looking for additional financial blessings, but since I started increasing our giving, God HAS blessed us abundantly.
Earlier this summer, my son was to go to the National History Bee to compete. We did not have the money to pay for this. Instead, my son gave a speech to one of our church groups and received a donation, and he also asked family and friends to donate. People were very generous, but at the end of all of our fundraising, we were still $300 short of our goal. Less than two weeks before the competition, an old family friend that we hadn’t spoken to in several years heard about my son competing and offered $300, even before she knew that was the exact amount we needed. What a blessing!
But the biggest blessing happened just this last week. Early in July, our air conditioner died and needed to be replaced. This was a huge expense that we were not ready for. In addition to buying the air conditioning and heating unit and paying for the install, we also had to pay for Aerosealing duct sealing to seal our leaky duct work.
Just last week the men came out to seal the duct work and spent several hours preparing to do so by blocking the vents, etc. When they hooked up the machine, they discovered that our duct work was not leaky. They came back down and said we didn’t need the Aerosealing, which cut our expense by 20%. We were ecstatic!
While I didn’t start giving more money looking for financial blessings from God, we have already received them abundantly.
As Pastor Rick Ezell says,
God’s hand is bigger. His shovel is bigger. His wallet is bigger. His generosity is bigger. His love is bigger. Make a game of it. See if you can outgive God. That is the one game you hope you lose, and, in time, you will realize that you will always lose (LifeWay).
I gave more because I felt called to, but God, in his generosity, is inspiring me to give even more.
Do you regularly give to your church? If so, have you received blessings from God that you attribute directly to your own giving?
Wow. This is a deep, deep subject that would take much longer than a comment to address fully.
But, since you asked:
1. Yes, we give regularly to our church. We tithe and give offerings above that.
2. We certainly have been blessed both financially and in other ways and I feel it’s tied to our giving somehow. That said, there’s nothing I can directly attribute a particular blessing to.
In Gen 26 God rewards Isaac with earthly prosperity.
In Exodus, and again in Deut. 8 we read that God would reward the piety of the Jewish people with earthly riches during their earthly lives.
In John 19 we learned that Jesus wore an expensive and valuable cloak.
In 2 Timothy 4 we learn that St. Paul also owned an expensive cloak.
In 3 John we find St. John, or one writing on his behalf, wishing personal financial prosperity upon an early Christian leader named Gaius.
There is no shortage of other passages like these.
Clearly God wants at least SOME people to experience finacial wealth during their earthly lives and even uses earthly prosperity as a reward for good behavior.
Several other passages indicate earthly financial prosperity is a reward for such things as labor, saving/investing and doing good and/or charitable works. I see no reason God would exclude giving money to a church would be excluded from the behaviors that would lead to earthly financial prosperity.
However:
1). Several of the Biblical “rewards” passages are clearly metaphors, and
2). Faithless giving, as in some sort of “I’ll pay God enough money so I can get into heaven, ” is CLEARLY not part of God’s plan.
Maybe it’s your obedience that God is rewarding? We went through a year of what I call “faith budgeting” because we felt called to give 10% and we were flat broke. We were in over our heads but every paycheck we’d sit down and ask God to help balance our books and He did. He didn’t always bring extra money. Sometimes it was sifting out needs versus wants. I can’t tell you how many times I thought there was nothing left to cut in our budget and lo and behold there was stuff. Seven years later, I’m still finding ways to tweak it to better match what matters most to us. Sometimes it was part-time jobs or money making opportunities. He did bless us abundantly – financial and otherwise. I caution people to read the Bible for themselves about tithing. The heart of the giver is what’s really at issue. Do we recognize God’s goodness? Do we understand that all we have is from Him? Are we grateful for everything – whether it’s a little or a lot? And what does He really want us to do with the money He’s entrusted to us?
Using words like we are “robbing God” in a message about giving, puts people under condemnation and fear. It’s easy to teach people to give based on Mosaic law, Because there’s no faith involved. Do good get good, do bad get bad.
Jesus taught that most people, unfortunately, will stay with the old wine, because it tastes so familiar, and goes down smooth. Unfortunately, most people are actually motivated by fear, it’s all they know, because preachers want to keep them in a fear motivated mentality. Those peacher are in the sin management business.
We have a much better covenent now, one that involves faith. There’s no more robbing God by not tithing. God is no longer inputting our sins against us because of Jesus. Our blessings are no longer related to our works because of Jesus . We should learn and be taught to give from a different place, from our heart, as we listen to the Holy Spirit. The more we understanding the New Covenant and who we are in Christ, the better we will be at spotting a peacher trying to use the Old Covenant to Manipulate us.
I would like to mention however, there is still the principle of sowing and reaping, but it is not the same as the “dead works” of tithing, although it is used by many peachers to spice-up their “robbing God” message.
Grace and peace…