I tithe and give under the obedience of God’s leading.
During times when I am in doubt of the amount God impressed in my heart to give is more than what I wish to, I would pray about it and eventually just follow my heart. The attitude that I have kept is, even if I heard wrongly from God, it is still money sowed into good grounds.
While sowing into the kingdom of God will bring returns to us in various forms,
I realized that as I continue to do so, God has also developed my heart in the area of giving and helping others in times of need; be it for spiritual reasons or natural reasons.
When I was a young Christian, a few of my seniors blessed me with Christian books which have helped to enrich my spiritual understanding of God immensely and at the same time developed a hunger in me to read extensively. When I was tasked to take care of a group of church members, I too started to seek out opportunities to bless them with books which I have read and hope that these readings would bless them at the right time. In this aspect of giving, the value the book I perceived could bless them often far exceeds the tangible cost of the books that I need to pay for them. In such instances, I would not be overly concerned about the price of the book although some of them were expensive to me. It was a pick and go attitude.
In the area of helping people with natural needs, I too start to realize my heart starts to seek out opportunities to do so. I become sensitive to situations that I come across and conversations I have with people around me be it Christians or non Christians. I wanted to see where I could contribute financially through practical gifts, cash etc. Moreover such acts of gift will help soften the heart of non Christians whom I want to share the love of God with them as God leads.
Luke 16:9, “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”
Luke wrote about using money (unrighteous mammon) to make friends with non believers to make connections and eventually share the gospel with them.
Not only God gave me the desire to help others, I realized that the desire to make my contribution a bigger impact to the recipient or organization increases as well. I seek to see how I could significantly help in various situations as God leads within my means.
I could relate to Pastor Amos when he mentioned that he does not bat an eyelid when it comes to God’s leading in the area of giving while he is more “careful” with spending in his personal life.
Acts 20:35, “I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’””
I definitely feel blessed in my heart with the joy and liberty to help others within my means. God bless us to be a blessing to others.
Like what Pastor Amos mentioned, one of our purposes is to help others to be a success.
To side track a little, there was a time when I was pondering on the below scripture and thinking to myself:
Philippians 4:19, “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
God is faithful in meeting our needs and not our wants and His will is always to bless others through us. This implies that if I continue to develop this heart of giving to others, perhaps it will come to a point that such acts of giving would eventually become part of my need; and this could be one of the many reasons I give God to bless me financially even more!
Steve
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