Honor God with everything you own ...
Honor God with everything you own; give him the first and the best. Your barns will burst, your wine vats will brim over. But don't, dear friend, resent God's discipline; don't sulk under his loving correction. It's the child he loves that God corrects; a father's delight is behind all this. -Proverbs 3:9-12 MSG
Sometimes we read about honoring God and we do not understand the joy that is involved in giving to God from our hearts. We reading about giving him our first and best and our mind takes us to tithes and percentages.. and our brain trumps our heart.. and we are robbed of the joy connected with giving. We forget about Paul's words to the Corinthians: "God loves it when the giver delights in the giving." When our heart is involved in the giving we experience joy.
Sometimes we can read of God's discipline and we think that He is out to get us. These verses paint a different picture. In this passage we see how discipline is the natural consequence when we do not honor God with everything we own. It is not the case where a parent is spanking their child but more the case where they allow their children to experience the consequences of their bad choices. God longs to bless us but often we ourselves hold back his blessings.
Help me today Lord to cheerfully honor and bless you with all that I am and all that I own.
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To me, that's the biggest difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The old stresses giving the tithe as a way of giving to God. The new tells us that it's all his. We are simply stewards who are to use what he gives us for the Kingdom. We are to live generously. We can tithe, but it shouldn't stop there.
ReplyDelete"We are to live generously."
DeleteSo true Fred. Generosity is a when we trust with all of our heart ... tithing is all about leaning on our own understanding.