Get On God’s Team—here’s My Giving-Tithes & Offerings

Get On God’s Team—Here’s My Giving

Proverbs 3:1-12 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

We are in part 3 of our encouragement for us all to get on God’s Team where ever we are today. The purpose is do the work that Christ died for in order to reach others for God. The first week we looked at getting on the team by giving God our service. The second week we looked at getting on the team by giving God our time. Today we are going to get on God’s team by giving God our money.

Let’s play a game of jeopardy and see how many of the question you can answer correctly .

• Who does The Bible calls the richest person up to his time. (Answer: Who was Solomon).

• What does the bible call the root of all kinds of evil? (Answer: What is the love of money- 1 Timothy 6:10).

• Who gave 50% of the wealth he had to the poor on the day he got saved. (Answer: Who was Zaccheus.-Luke 19:8).

• Who said, “You Should Have Given A Tithe without neglecting justice and the love of God.” (Answer: Who was Jesus- Luke 11:42).

• Who gave the largest offering ever in the Bible? (Answer Who was the poor widow—She put in all she had to live on, two copper coins)

One thing we learn from the poor widow is that God is always more impressed by the smallness of the amount we have left after giving than God is impressed by the amount we gave.

Let’s do one more game. I am going to give you a million dollars and the opportunity to bid on three things. If you are not the highest bidder, you will automatically lose the item you are bidding on. Let’s get ready to bid.

• What’s the most you are willing to bid for your eyesight?

• What’s the most you are willing to bid on being able to move your body from the neck down?

• What’s the most you are willing to bid on having a sound mind and being able to think straight and clearly?

Think for a moment about how much you valued each one of those things. Now think, how much did you pay God to make those things possible for you? How much are you willing to give to God today out of appreciation for these and so many other things God has made possible in your life.

All of a sudden, God asking us for a penny out of each dime we manage to get doesn’t seem that much? Why is it that we have to lose something to appreciate having it in the first place. Wouldn’t life be richer if we could appreciate what we now have now, and joyfully give thanks for it, paying whomever we can for making it possible.

Getting on God’s team is partly about knowing where our victories in life actually come from. It’s knowing where our blessings come from. When we read like we did in Proverbs,” honor the Lord with your wealth”, do you see it as an opportunity to get on the team with our giving, or do you see it as an attack on our possessions.

One thing I do know about God, is that God is good, and God wants to bless us. Even in the verse in Proverbs, God had a good reason for telling us to honor the Lord with our wealth. The verse goes on to say, Proverbs 3:10 (NIV2011) 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.

God is saying if you can honor me with your giving, I can give you more than what you would have had in the first place. I will also see to it that you have a good time celebrating it.

The writer of Proverbs knew that some of us would have a hard time believing this so he wrote earlier in the verse, Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV2011)

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Two things need to happen for you to get the kind of return God wants to give you with your money. The first is to trust God and quit trying to figure things out your self. Your math is not God’s math. The second thing is to recognize that your money is tied to every other area of your life. What you do with money, determines what you experience in life?

I have seen God do things with money in my life that I could have never done on my own. My wife and I have always been tithers. Even in seminary, when we didn’t have a lot of money, we gave 10% of our income to the Lord. We were at a small Presbyterian Church, and because we tithed they thought we were rich. It wasn’t that we were giving so much. It was that others were giving so little.