Posts Tagged ‘titihing’

RevolutionaryLove.TV- The Sequel

Monday, December 15th, 2008

“RevolutionaryLove.TV- The Sequel.” Last year Revolution Church did a series called Revolutionary Love. It was great and I am glad that we are revisiting the series.

Week 1: The message today was about Sacrificial Giving. Boy did I need to hear this. David and I had discussed and prayed about what gift we should give to the church for the Christmas offering. After making a decision we felt good about we were dealt a financial blow in the amount of $6000 in attorney fees for Madilyn’s bmom. We had $1700 left in our adoption escrow account, and our attorney sent this to the other attorney prior to Thanksgiving. Once we returned home from our Thanksgiving Break we had a message from the attorney wanting to know when the remaining $4300 would be paid. She wanted her money now. We bit the bullet and sent the rest of the money not really knowing how our fiances would play out for the rest of the year.

After hearing the message on sacrificial giving we decided that the amount of money we had decided to give the church was STILL the amount we need to give. Well we like most people do not just have this kind of money sitting around (especially after spending so much on the adoption). We will be giving sacrificially… meaning we are going to cut out other stuff to make this gift to the church happen. We are going to sacrifice and give to God what we know we need to give. We know God will take our gift and do a great work with it, and we will be blessed by giving.

At the end of the service the offering plates were passed and we each drew a card that contained needs of a local women’s shelter. We drew diapers, toothbrushes and aspirin. I told Caleb that since he had drawn the card out of the offering plate that he should use his own money to help meet the need. He is such a stand up kid. He gets $20 a month, pays $2.00 in tithes leaving him $18 for the month. He decided that he would give $10.00 to help purchase items for the women’s shelter. He could have been selfish and offered less but he gave 1/2 of his monthly allowance to this cause.

Caleb and I went shopping and purchased 2 bags of diapers, 20 adult toothbrushes, 8 children’s toothbrushes and 8 bottles of aspirin. At the checkout the cashier smiled a toothless smile and said, “you must have some headache.” I told her our church was collecting items for the women’s shelter.” She looked like she was about to cry and said, “Thank you, they helped me when no one else would.” WOW…..

Tithing

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

So I missed church on Sunday due to illness. During Davids recap of the service I really felt like I needed to write or email about our experience with tithing. So here goes. Close friends and family may find parts of this hard to believe.

I am so glad that tithing will NEVER be an issue in our house. During the past year the only thing that has changed is that we now tithe and we did not do so before. We have seen first hand the benefits of obeying God in this area of our lives.

In 2006 we basically stopped going to church (hard to believe). It was too hard with all of the foster kids. Once we stopped going to church we also stopped tithing. Thats when things began to get a little rough. Paying the bills became a nightmare. There was never enough money and stuff always got paid late. There was never money for extras and our budget needed a budget. I would get sick just thinking about paying the bills.

Then in July of 2007- our house was empty (no foster kids). We saw a sign for a church in a movie theatre and we decided to attend. Needless to say we really liked it, so we continued to go. We wrote a tithe check during our second visit to the church.

Since then we have been faithful with not only paying our tithes but giving extra. God has blessed us in many ways since we became faithful with tithing. I believe that I am a giver, but I never had anything to give until now. Through our faithfulness God has allowed us to bless others and he has blessed us. Look what GOD has done through us obeying him in giving of tithes: (I am only listing a few).

  1. Revoluntary Love Christmas: We were blessed and were able to give more than I thought we could give. It felt wonderful to put the gift cards in the basket and know we were making a difference. This was a large gift and we look forward to doing it again next Christmas.
  2. Must Thanksgiving: We were able to provide dinner for more than 1 family.
  3. Single Mom : We were able to provide her first and last months rent to move into a better place.
  4. We were able to give a “wad” of cash to some very deserving people we were told by God to do so and we did even though it seemed strange to us.

Prior to our tithing we would not have been able to give anything to any of these people.

Were we tested? YES. In Jan. of 2007, my pay got cut by $1000.00 per month. But we still were faithful and paid our tithes. A few weeks later David needed to hire another contractor, which increased his pay, almost the exact amount that mine got cut.

Has God blessed us? YES. Not only can we give to others but this past year we have been able to give to ourselves. Tithing has made our lives better. Through our tithes we bless our church, and the church is able to bless others. Through tithing we have been blessed and have been able to bless others. We will continue to be faithful in tithing and know that God will continue to bless us.