Living Changed: Provision预览

Test God in This

A devotional with Leah

In Christian circles, people often describe God as our Provider. That doesn’t mean God is a genie in a bottle ready to give us anything we ask for. However, I do believe it means He gives us the desires of our heart when those desires align with His will. 

Throughout the Bible, we see evidence of God’s generosity. In the beginning, God gave Eve to Adam so he wouldn’t be alone. He gave Hannah a child after she had prayed to conceive for several years. Of course, God gave us the best gift of all when He sent His son Jesus so we could have eternal life with Him. 

God is still giving us gifts today. He gives us peace, strength, comfort, and wisdom. He’s faithful to care for our every need. In return, He asks us to seek Him, spend time with Him, and trust Him. He asks us to surrender control and offer Him our whole lives. He wants to be first in every area of our lives, even our finances.

Every good thing we have is from God. In truth, it all belongs to Him. When He gives these gifts to us, He expects us to look after and be good stewards of what He’s given us. Part of His expectations is that we tithe by giving the first 10% of our income back to Him through the local church.

Tithing is not about what God wants from us, but what He wants for us. When we live in alignment with His will by tithing, He is faithful to bless us. It may not always look like the blessing we want, but God is always true to His Word. God even invites us to test Him in this through His prophet Malachi, saying that when we tithe, He will open the floodgates of Heaven and give us more blessing than we know what to do with!

Years ago, my family was walking through an economically devastating bankruptcy. The bottom was falling out of our personal and business finances, and we had babies to feed. We had been lukewarm in our faith, but financial devastation brought us to a place where we didn’t know what else to do but trust God. When God moved our hearts to tithe in the middle of this season, we were afraid. It’s one thing to tithe when money seems to be flowing, but it felt like a major leap to tithe when we needed every penny just to keep our heads above water. 

I can still remember the feeling of surrender and also asking God to prove Himself. We didn’t have gas or food money for the week, but we gave anyway. Then one night at church, an acquaintance handed me a check saying that she always gave to someone when they adopted a dog (which we recently had). Amazingly, it was enough to get us through the week. Her gift to us felt completely out of the blue, and it built our faith.

I’m not saying that if you start tithing, God will send you checks from strangers. What I am saying is that when you surrender control of your finances and choose to put God first, He will pour out His blessings on you in ways you can’t predict.