Everyone Tithes

30 Day Church Challenge:  Day 21
Read pgs 108-111 30DCC guidebook

"Return to me, and I will return to you," says the Lord Almighty.  "But you ask, 'How are we to return?"  "Will a mere mortal rob God?  yet you rob me."  But you ask, "How are we robbing you?"  "In tithes and offerings...bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this."  Malachi 3

"No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  you cannot serve both God and money."  Jesus, Luke 16:13

So, what's a "tithe?"  The word is so old and churchy, that to folks who don't know the lingo, that word must seem downright creepy.

Who gets my tithe? 

It is a very old word.  It is a very "Bible" word, coming out of the ancient Jewish faith.  A "tithe" is a portion. It is a part of what an individual or family has, that is set aside for the work of God.  Specifically, in the Old Testament, the tithe is the practice of setting aside the first ten percent of one's income to be given away.

Today's devotional from our guidebook says, "everybody tithes."

What?

If you are like 99.9999% of folks out there, giving away 10% of your hard earned income is probably not something you do.

So, it's more like "nobody tithes," right?

Well, maybe not.  After all, as today's reading asserts, everybody does put the first ten percent of their income somewhere.  It's really just a matter of "where" we choose to tithe.

So, where does that first ten percent go?

Necessities?  OK, maybe we should ask where the last ten percent goes.  I know I tithe to Starbucks a whole lot more than I should.  Maybe we tithe to the credit card company, or the bank more than we should have to because we bought more house than we really needed.  Maybe I tithe on a boat payment or at the golf course or the latest smart phone.

Sound too extreme?

The Old Testament prophet Malachi goes so far as to say that spending "God's money" in a tithe to anything other than the work of God is "robbery."  That's pretty extreme.

He goes further, saying that God invites us to "test him."  God invites us to prioritize our income from the top down, setting aside some portion first.

Jesus goes even further, I think.  "You can't serve two masters...God and money."

So we have to choose.  Who is our master?  Everybody has one.  Where does our tithe go?  Everybody tithes.

Grace, Peace, and Stewardship --
Adam

Today's Small Step:  Take the 90 Day Tithe Test.  Commit to giving 10 percent of your income to the work of your faith community over the next 90 days, then evaluate the experience, and see if you have found God faithful to continue to meet your needs.  Could you be called to give even above a tithe?

Today's Big Idea:  "You can't serve two masters," Jesus said.  How does our spending and giving reflect that statement in our lives?