Weekly Devotion Five: The importance of giving
Luke 6:38- Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.
On thing that is essential to following God is to give. But why? God does not need our money; He lives in a place with streets paved in gold and the seas are crystal. What is the point of giving our money to God?
Easy. He wants to know where your heart is at.
Luke 6:38 clearly says that the same measure we use to give is the measure God uses to give to us. So if we give joyfully, praising God for our financial harvest, God is going to joyfully give it to us.
Likewise, if we are stingy and give only a little and only because we feel obligated to, God will us the same measure in giving to us.
God doesn’t look at amounts, although He knows if you’re robbing Him. See, we’re told to bring our tithe (the first ten percent) and our offerings into the storehouse so that our vats may be filled with plenty. In other words, we give and God blesses our giving and returns it back to us… but with that little “something extra” on it.
Now tithing is not a get rich quick thing. You can’t take your ten percent and expect God to give it back plus interest just so you have more money. God is our provider. He gives us what we need first, then adds the desires of our heart onto that.
He does promise, however, that He will do what He says in His word if we are giving out of our love for Him. Look at Malachi 3:10. It says “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in My house. And try me now in this and see if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.”
That is quite a promise, but it all starts with us. There is no promise anywhere in scripture that doesn’t first require us to do something, like have faith.
Ten percent may seem like an awful lot at first, and it may even be hard to do and still take care of everything you need to. That’s OK. God knows this and He is waiting for your faithfulness so that He can be faithful.
Think of it this way: You decide to go on a trip and want to save for it. You put the money under your pillow so you won’t lose it, then right before your trip something comes up and you take the money to pay for that. If you had instead put the money in the bank, then you would have had the principle and the interest on it. Then you could have taken care of the unexpected expense and still had some left over to go on the trip.
Sound financial planning God’s way starts and ends in your heart. It is only through your faithfulness that He can be released in you life to bless you financially. And He wants to, it’s His desire.
Make this statement today: I will trust God in my finances because I know He will be faithful to do what He promised.
DK
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