"Blessedness"

"Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever." (Psalms 112:3)

 It is usually not my way of doing things, but today I feel God tugging at my heart to share about giving. Back in 1982, after my wife and I were married, my boss approached me about buying on of his properties. To make a long story short, I was just starting to get good at doing inspections and soliciting Real Estate agents; things were starting to pick up, and I was making about $600.00 a week in commissions from my sales; which was 25% of the net sales. When my boss approached me with the offer, he informed me that I could not afford this purchase on my current earnings, and that in order to afford the payment my weekly earnings would need to be more around $900.00. So we did the numbers and figured, based upon the number of inspections and the percentage of money earned, I need to increase my inspections by 50%. I was very interested in his offer, but I told him that would pray about, talk to my wife, then we would pray about it and give him an answer. It was really not that hard to hear God's answer, because He reminded me of the lessons I learned during our marriage counseling about tithing. So even though we could hardly afford it, I felt the Lord telling me to tithe my goal, which was $900.00 per week, so my tithe was $90.00, faithfully and without hesitation. It was the end of the year, so it was pretty much a New Year resolution. By March my weekly earnings were averaging $900.00 and we were entering Escrow on our first home. I was so impressed with the way God was good on His word, that I decided to begin each year by increasing my sales goal by at least 20%, which seemed rather reasonable; and I started each year off by tithing my goal. By 1989 my tithe goal had reached $350.00 per week, which meant that my weekly earnings were $3,500.00, on average. I had felt that I had reached the limit in what I could do, and increasing my goal any further just did not seem possible based upon time working and spending time with my family. I was working at least 14 hours a day, five days a week, but refused to work on weekends; which I still do in my current position. As much as I am hesitant to share this, I am also eager to let any of my brothers and sisters that are hesitant to trust God with their finances, Don't be hesitant to trust Him! God means what He says and He will bless your giving. It's not about giving to earn, it's about you increasing your wealth, but learning to trust God in the process, because God loves a cheerful giver...

"O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him." (Psalms 34:8) KJV