Getting Robbed

Suppose you were held at gunpoint and robbed. What a scary thought. Then suppose the robber said, "Give me 10% of all you have in your wallet." You give him the 10% and he takes off. How do you feel now. Pretty lucky I suppose. Yet when God says, "Give me 10% of your first fruits (the income you earn), many say "uh-no." Yet God promises that if we give of our income, he will bless us until we can't contain it. Sometimes those blessings are financial, But often times they are spiritual blessings that are far more valuable than we can even imagine. God also says that when we don't give, we rob him, and in turn we rob ourselves and the people around us of the blessings God wants to pour out.

Being in ministry, we haven't always made a ton of money, and have often gotten stuck in situations that looked impossible. But we've also been blessed. One person who blessed us was our Pastor Mike Smith who performed our wedding. As poor college students, we didn't have any money to give him. So we promised each other that we would bless him if we were blessed. And we were in one of those desperate situations, really needing a car, but having no way to pay for one. One day, someone handed us an envelope with $1000 in it. We were shocked! But we wanted to keep our promise, so we sent half of it to Pastor Mike, and kept the other half. $500 wasn't enough to buy a car, but we were happy for the blessing. The next week we got a thank you card from Pastor Mike. He wrote that his washer and dryer both died the previous week, and that they didn't know how they could afford new ones. Then he received our gift. We couldn't believe it. Then a week later someone handed us a box. It contained 50 $100 bills! We were blown away! That was enough to buy a nice used car!

If we really believe that God is really God and all knowing, then he knows our needs. And he is faithful to meet them. When we give our lives and our finances to God, he sees it. He knows he can trust us with spiritual riches. Trusting God with our 10% of our income seems like a no brainer when you think about it. Trusting him with everything we have seems to be the only wise choice. Trust Him, he is Good!