So I Give More, and Have More?

I have never been good at doing what I’m told.  Everything in my personal testimony has been a story of having to learn the things the hard way.  Rather than taking the Bible as God’s promise to us and following its words, I’ve always been a skeptic and thought to myself, “that’s not going to work, at least not for me.”

So about six months ago, when my Christian friend at the office started encouraging me to begin fully tithing, I was naturally suspect.  She had been telling me that when she tithed and was faithful to God, God was providing more and more for her financially.  While it was a nice story, I didn’t have the faith that it would work for me.  

I had heard testimonies at my church to the same effect, that in a time of dire straights, one family had given God their last $900 in faithful tithing even though it was going to make them broke.  They relied completely on God’s provision in the face of losing everything and trusted that He would provide.  A few days later, when they were worried about making their mortgage payment, a stranger appeared at their doorstep and said he loved the way their front porch looked.  He wanted to know if he could film a commercial with their house as the backdrop.  The family was surprised, and when they agreed, the man paid them exactly $900.

Stories like this had really been encouraging me, but it was always a struggle for me when it came to trusting God with my finances.  I had never fully tithed before, and even the fact that I had started giving $20 a week was a big deal for me.  I wouldn’t have been even giving that small offering a week if it hadn’t been for my mother visiting my church with me a few months earlier on one of her trips down from the Bay Area.  I remember how convicting it was when she asked me if I was tithing, and when I said no, she asked “Who do you think pays for these wonderful Pastors?  Who pays for the seats you’re sitting in, the rent for this theater, the musicians and choir that make your worship powerful, even the electricity in the room?  Do you think all of this is just free?”

I had always been a poor financial steward of anything God had blessed me with.  Regardless of whether I was making $40k a year straight out of college, or the $160k I was making at my law firm, I always ended up with a net zero balance each month.  My spending had been out of control.  I had gotten caught up in the LA lifestyle, which is bigger, faster, better more.  So it was in this self-induced poor financial state that I was really convicted one day in church.  They shared the powerful verse of Malachi 3:10:

“‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’”

Test me in this.  It was like the words were highlighted for me.  I had never trusted in God enough to have control over any area of my life, let alone my money, which I had wrongly thought I earned and were mine alone.  But given that I wasn’t doing a good job with my own finances, I remember praying really hard that day, saying “God, I trust you and I’m going to test you in this.  I’m going to start giving you a full tithe from today until you make your promises fulfilled in my life.  I pray that you will take control of my financial situation as you have promised, and that through this tithing you will bless everyone who comes to this church, and especially my sister, who until recently hadn’t gone to church in almost 15 years, and her two young girls, who I can’t allow to grow up not knowing you.”

That prayer was pivotal to me, that moment and that decision for faith.  2009 was a year all about me testing the waters with God, one toe in, to see what He could do as I gave Him more and more of the reigns to my life.  And flashing forward to the present, God has been more than faithful to his promises and answered my prayer to the “T.”  I don’t know how to explain it at all, but even though I set aside the first 10% for God now, my financial situation has been completely redeemed.  Every month I look at my bank accounts, and I can’t understand it, but instead of scraping by month to month against my spending, my savings are constantly increasing.  By giving more, I have more.  It’s a paradox that can only work because our God is the God of all.

And as I’ve been faithful to tithe and trust God more, He’s truly been bringing incredible blessing into my family and restored my sister’s growth with God.  I remember almost fifteen years earlier being on a family vacation with her in Hawaii and crying because she admitted to me that while she still believed, she didn’t go to church anymore because it wasn’t really relevant to her.  In fifteen years, she’d become a doctor, gotten married, had two kids, and being a regular church was far from her radar.  I think if you had asked her a year ago, she would’ve never thought she’d be in church again (even if she never stopped believing).  But God was faithful to us, to the point of overflowing.

My mother called me one day, full of excitement, that she had just been staying for a weekend at my sister’s house and she was noticing a real change in her and in her family from years before.  “Something’s really changed,” I remember her saying.  “The whole family prays together at every meal, the children know and talk about Jesus, and your sister seems to be more at peace.  Praise God!”  It was definitely God.

And to me, there’s no better proof than what my sister just said to me this week.  Someone had broken into her house, and instead of being angry, scared or full of frustration, the first thing my sister said to me about it was “God’s protection is really with our family.  Thank God that none of us were in the house when the intruder broke in.  God really protected us.”  To me, that filled me with joy from head to toe.  For my sister, the one that had broken my heart 15 years before, to be sitting there on the phone with me talking about God’s protection and God’s love was incredible to me.  I never would have expected any of this (financial stability, a sister back in church and committed to teaching her children about the Lord), but it’s amazing what a little faith and a big God can do.