TODAY’S
WORD FOR MONDAY OCTOBER 14, 2013.
TITHING
DEFINITION:
The
tenth part of goods; to give or pay a tenth part of goods or income for the
support of the church.
SCRIPTURE:
You
shall tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by
year. Deuteronomy 14:22.
Honor
the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase;
so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will over flow with new
wine. Proverbs 3:9-10
KNOWLEDGE
AND EXPERIENCE:
There
are a number of principles that one who knows Jesus as Savior must live by if
they want God’s blessing on their life. One of these principles is to tithe
back to our Lord 10% of what He has blessed one with.
Tithing
is the setting aside of one tenth of all that God blesses us with to give back
to the Lord. Tithing is of great significance in the life of those who are
believers. Tithing is an important part of serving and honoring the Lord. The
purpose of tithing is to demonstrate that we put God first in our lives. We are
to give God the first fruits (the first and best) of what we receive. (Proverbs
3:9-10)
Giving
God the first part of our earnings shows what we value most. It is a temptation
to take care of everything else first and give the Lord something only if there
is money left over. If the Lord is not a priority, we cannot expect Him to
bless us. Proverbs 9:10 tells us that those who honor the Lord with their tithe
will have their "barns filled with plenty."
The
Israelites were instructed by God through Moses to give God the first and best
portions of their harvest and the best of their flocks to the Lord. It was a
reminder to them that everything they had belonged to God. Over the years the
Israelites forgot this instruction. In the book of Malachi, chapter 3 verse 6,
God sends His messenger, the prophet Malachi to ask the Jews in Judah this
question: “Will a man rob God?” This shocked them and they asked, “How do we
rob God?” God answered them through the prophet, “In tithes and offerings.” If
you are not tithing have you thought about the fact that you are robbing God?
God
went on to put out a challenge in Malachi 3:10. God says, “Test Me in this.
Bring all your tithe into the storehouse and see if I will not pour out so much
blessing that you will not have room for it.”
From
the time we were children our parents taught us the importance of tithing. They
instilled in us that we were to give the first tenth of all the money we
received before we spent it on anything else. I (Ken) can remember the cup
and/or glass that sat on a table for us to put even our few pennies from our
allowance in each week. My (Dottie's) mother taught her three girls early on
that if we received 10 pennies we should give the Lord the shiniest one
signifying that we were giving our best to the Lord. It was a different day
then, our allowance was in pennies.
This
training helped us realize the importance of tithing as we got older. We
believe today that because we were taught as children to tithe and then we have
practiced tithing all of our lives that it may be the single most important
reason that God has blessed us so abundantly. When we speak of God’s blessings
we are not saying God’s blessings are necessarily always material blessings,
because God blesses us in ways that we are so much more meaningful and precious
than material things.
If
a tenth seems a lot, then remember two very important things. First, all we
have belongs to God. Secondly, we cannot out give God. We have found that the
more we give the more God blesses us. We challenge you to tithe if you do not
now. We could give you many examples of how God has blessed others just as he
has blessed us. We learned to tithe even
when it was difficult. We learned to give a tithe when we had to tighten an
already tight budget. But every time when we needed help or came to a crises
God provided far and beyond our need.
LEARNING:
Our
memory verse for this week is found in I Timothy 2:5.
For
there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
PRAYER:
Keep
me faithful in tithing to you from all that You have blessed me with. Thank
You, dear Lord for providing for me and my family in such a marvelous way. We
honor You and thank You for being our God, our Lord and our Savior.
