Robbing God - Malachi 3:6-18

First off, let me assure you, that God does not need our money, our talents, our service, or our righteousness. In fact, all these things are things that we are needful of for God to provide for us, and in us. However, God does want to bless us; He wants us to experience the fullness of His will and power in our lives; and in the life we will experience after this one. I truly believe that there will be two separate areas of service in heaven; one being on the inside of the gates, where those that are there will be serving God and basking in His glory; this is the reward for those that denied themselves and served God. The other being on the outside of the gates, serving each other; this is the place for those that did not serve God, but rather choose to serve themselves. You may disagree with this assumption, but I feel it will be so. Regardless of what we may think heaven will be; we are called to serve God in our daily lives. This is done in many ways; one way that we serve Him is by walking in obedience, and doing those things that bring Him glory. The spectacular thing is, when we do the things He wants us to do, we get blessed. One area of that service is in the giving of our tithes and offerings. Just as I previously stated, God does not need our tithes and offerings, but rather, we need to give them out of obedience and with a cheerful heart. God wants to bless us beyond measure; and when we are truly blessed, is when we count on Him for all of our needs. This concept is really hard for some of us to grasp; I think it is because of our Elementary School up bringing; you know what I am talking about, that basic arithmetic that taught us about Sally and her apples; "If Sally has 4 apples and gives 3 away, how many apples does she have left?". Well, that does not work in God's economy, in His economy it goes more like; "If God has 4 apples and gives 4 apples away, He still has 4 apples, and then some!". We can not out give God. Sadly, the number of believers that do not understand this is overwhelming; it is only about 3% - 4% of those that say they are a child of God, that will actually trust God to provide for them in this area. That might sound a little harsh, but it is true. In Malachi 3:8 it says the following, "Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. But you say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings." This is one of the verses that I learned early in my walk, within the first 6 months. One of the books that I was required to read for our premarriage counseling, was 'Your Money Matters". In this book I learned that God wants us to trust Him in every area of our life, especially in Him providing for our every need. In fact, God wants us to test Him, and see if He will not perform it; in verse 10, God says the following; "Bring ye all of the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." My wife and I were married on July 31st, 1982, and by the end of that first year I had paid back my boss for providing a place for my wife to stay while I was in jail for six months and for the cost of the Lawyer he had got to defend me; about $9,000.00 worth of debt that I owed him. I was faithfully tithing 10% of my gross paycheck, as well as any other income that came in; and God was blessing me with the ability to pay back my boss at a rate of $500.00 to $1,000.00 per month. Then at the end of 1982, my boss approached me with an offer to purchase one of his 30 plus properties; and here is what he said; "You are currently making about $600.00 per week, but in order to afford this property, you will need to make $900.00 per week; do you think you can do it?". My rate of pay at that time was based completely on 25% of my net sales; and so for me to receive $600.00 per week on a paycheck, I needed to produce $2,400.00 per week in net sales, (net meant after cost of the job had been deducted, such as the cost of the fumigation, or the shower pan, or the floor, etc). One thing my boss had shown me was how to figure what I was averaging in commission for each Termite Inspection I performed; regardless of whether or not I sold the job. So I figured that it came down to $75.00 per Inspection at a rate of 8 Inspections per week; so in order to afford to purchase this property, I would need to increase the amount of Inspections I did by 50%; or to do 12 Inspections a week. I accepted his offer before the New Year and prayed about how I could bring it about; and one way that God showed me was in 'proving Him' on whether or not He was able to supply for all my needs; so I decided to tithe 10% of my goal, instead of my actual income. This meant that instead of the $60.00 per week I was giving from my gross pay, I was now giving $90.00 per week based on my new sales goal. This I started on the first week of 1983; by March of that year, my weekly checks were $900.00 per week; and we moved into our first home on Easter Sunday. After that experience of proving God at His word, I made it a practice of every years end to set a goal for the following year that surpassed the last year by at least 20%; and then I would tithe accordingly. In 1986, we bought our second property; this was a really big house, that was once owned by the Mayor; and we did not sell the first property, but instead rented it out. By the time I quit my job there and moved here in 1990, my weekly pay checks would have been $3,500.00 per week; but I choose to keep them down around $2,000.00 per week and leave the rest on the books; but my weekly tithes were $350.00 based on my sales goal at the time, which were $15,000.00 a week in net sales. This I share not to brag about what I did, but to show what God did. This I know more than anything; God is more than able to, and will provide for our every need. He wants us to take Him at His word and prove Him; making Him the Lord of our lives in all that we do; but we can not make Him Lord, if we do not trust Him to provide for our daily needs.