\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Lord<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>All-Powerful says, <\/em><\/strong>\u201cTry this test. Bring one-tenth of your things to me. Put them in the treasury. Bring food to my house. Test me! If you do these things, I will surely bless you. Good things will come to you like rain falling from the sky. You will have more than enough of everything. <\/em><\/strong>Mal 3:10 (ERV)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Bible has many examples of people testing God. Most of them occur when Israel was wandering in the desert for 40 years after Moses led them out of Egypt. The New Testament frequently refers to those Old Testament instances as warnings of what not to do in a relationship with God.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yet here, near the very end of the Old Testament, God is low key inviting us to test Him.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In 2003, right after I became a Christian, my pastor preached a sermon on the verse above, emphasizing that in this instance alone, God wants us to test Him. I had never thought of tithing as \u201ctesting God\u201d before.\u00a0 In my mind, tithing was like a church tax, or else something that only extra-credit Christians did.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Besides, I had little money at the time. I was living on my own and trying to pay down debts from my recently failed first marriage. What did I have to offer God that could win His favor?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Did your red-light buzzer go off just then? It should have. For one thing, God\u2019s favor is just a part of who He is. There isn\u2019t anything we can do to earn it<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And for another . . . does God really need MY money? He\u2019s God. I don\u2019t think He\u2019s short of funds.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n What I have come to learn is that it really isn\u2019t about the money itself.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n God entrusts us with His wealth<\/a> according to our ability to handle it. Jesus illustrates this principle in the Parable of the Talents:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>\u201cAgain, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone.\u00a0<\/em>He gave five bags of silver\u00a0to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last\u2014dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe servant who received the five bags of silver began to invest the money and earned five more.<\/em>\u00a0The servant with two bags of silver also went to work and earned two more.\u00a0But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master<\/em>\u2019s money.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAfter a long time their master returned from his trip and called them to give an account of how they had used his money.<\/em>\u00a0The servant to whom he had entrusted the five bags of silver came forward with five more and said, <\/em>\u2018Master, you gave me five bags of silver to invest, and I have earned five more.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe master was full of praise. \u2018Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let\u2019s celebrate together!<\/em> \u00b4<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe servant who had received the two bags of silver came forward and said, \u2018Master, you gave me two bags of silver to invest, and I have earned two more.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe master said, \u2018Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let\u2019s celebrate together!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThen the servant with the one bag of silver came and said, \u2018Master, I knew you were a harsh man, harvesting crops you didn\u2019t plant and gathering crops you didn\u2019t cultivate.<\/em>\u00a0<\/sup><\/em><\/strong>I was afraid I would lose your money, so I hid it in the earth. Look, here is your money back.<\/em>\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut the master replied, \u2018You wicked and lazy servant! If you knew I harvested crops I didn\u2019t plant and gathered crops I didn\u2019t cultivate,<\/em>\u00a0why didn<\/em>\u2019t you deposit my money in the bank? At least I could have gotten some interest on it.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThen he ordered, \u2018Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten bags of silver.<\/em>\u00a0To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.\u00a0Now throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.<\/em>\u2019<\/em> (Matthew 25:14-30 NLT)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But trust goes both ways with God. He wants us to trust Him not just concerning the money, but also with our general well-being.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I chose the translation of the verse at the beginning of this post specifically for the phrase \u201cGood things will come to you like rain falling from the sky.\u201d\u00a0 To the people hearing this prophecy from Malachi firsthand, in the middle of the fourth century B.C., this would have been a literal message. They weren\u2019t concerned with having new Cadillacs; they were concerned with their crops, as there was a great drought going on at that time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So, in context, what God was saying to Israel at that specific time was, \u201cYou want me to stop holding back the rain? Fine. Stop holding back your tithes. I DARE you to test me by giving back the first 10% of what you only have because I gave it to you in the first place.\u00a0 Do that and watch what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Today, many folks who are not proponents of tithing argue that this was a specific message for a specific people in a specific time; therefore, it does not apply to us today.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But for me, I just couldn\u2019t get past those words, \u201cTest me!\u201d \u00a0God is always testing me to prove my faith; now He wants me to test Him?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how it worked out.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The first thing that I had to wrap my brain around is that tithing is not something you do when you can afford it. It\u2019s 10% of what you have, even if that\u2019s very little. Therefore, it isn\u2019t about the amount you\u2019re putting into the collection plate. It\u2019s about trusting that God will bless the 90% you have left.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Once I got over my guilt about the tiny little checks that I was writing each Sunday and just went with it, I started to notice things happening in my budget. Like how I never ran out of money at the end of the month, regardless of how bleak things appeared at the beginning.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Over the years since then, I have noted many other instances where the math just didn\u2019t add up at first, but things worked out better than I could ever have planned it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n After our honeymoon, my wife told me that her dream vacation would be an Alaskan cruise.\u00a0 Those aren\u2019t cheap, but I told her then that if we started saving, we could set a goal to do that for our 10-year anniversary.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We saved for nine years, at which point, I said, \u201cHoney, we can do this, but it will wipe out our savings.\u201d\u00a0 We went forward with the plans.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Long story short, we went on that cruise and land tour in Alaska. Counting the flights out and back, it was a two-week adventure. In my life, I have owned several cars that did not cost as much as this trip.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Not only that, but we had beautiful weather the entire trip (which just does not happen in Alaska). At nearly every stop, the guides on our excursions were amazed at all the \u201crare\u201d things we got to see, such as orcas, humpback whales bubble net feeding, the Hubbard Glacier calving, and the peak of Denali in clear sunshine, just to name a few.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, God poured out his blessings on my family during this trip, but really, it was just an obvious and visible manifestation of how He has blessed us, and our finances, all along.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Even during the extended periods of unemployment that I have had, I have never felt like we were \u201cin need,\u201d because God doesn\u2019t respond to need.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He responds to faith.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And that is what tithing is all about. It is a tangible expression of the faith that God will meet your needs and then some. And he blesses it every single time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Do any of you have stories of God\u2019s faithfulness regarding your finances? I\u2019d love to hear them! Please drop them in the comments.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n More about money in <\/em>P<\/em>art 3<\/em><\/a>, coming very soon! To make sure it doesn<\/em>\u00b4t sneak past you, as we say here in the Midwest, click on the Free Newsletter link<\/a> to subscribe.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Test me! If you do these things, I will surely bless you. Good things will come to you like rain falling from the sky.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5016,"featured_media":1184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[545,380],"tags":[578,572,569,566,452,575],"class_list":["post-1178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-god-and-money","category-spiritual-growth","tag-erv-bible","tag-how-do-you-know-if-you-have-gods-favor","tag-old-testament-vs-new-testament","tag-tithes-and-offering","tag-trust-god","tag-well-done-good-and-faithful-servant"],"yoast_head":"\nTithing<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s about trust.<\/h3>\n
Like rain falling from the sky<\/em><\/h3>\n
So testing God is exactly what I did.<\/h3>\n
The most significant example is this.<\/h3>\n
And we still had over three quarters of our savings intact.<\/h3>\n
![\"Husband](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1779\/2023\/09\/Talkeetna-River.jpg\")