July 31, 2006
Cheerful Giving
God loves a cheerful giver, but sometimes giving the tithe is about as exciting as making the payment on my credit card bill. I don’t think God wants the tithe to just be a line item on the budget. A few years ago, rather than weekly or monthly tithing, I began ‘saving up’ my tithe. Although Paul’s instructions to the churches in Corinth and Galatia (I Cor 16) can be read to mean that tithes are to be given to the church for the church to ‘save up’, I believe it can also mean to ‘save up’ on an individual basis. I’ve found that giving offerings in a larger lump sum has renewed my joy and excitement in giving. I love the spontaneity of contributing to needs of God’s people as He reveals them me.
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Gail;
----The body of the Lord and His purposes are so much bigger than any one of us. So He fulfills those purposes by each one of us being designed and put together by Him to fulfill whatever bit of purpose that He has established for us to fulfill. Together, then, we all become knit into a body which should fulfill all of His intended purposes through all of our various differences.
----Through the years of my Bible study I have come to see the tithe as being an element of a relationship with the Lord that once had to pass through a human priesthood in order to get to Him. In the instructions of the New Testament to the church I see the teaching of generosity of the heart rather than a portioning of the purse as being an element of a relationship with the Lord that goes directly to Him, without the necessity of intervening others. I see the sharing in the brothren's burdens as being elevated by Paul instead of the maintenance of a church building. And I see making available support for those elders who serve particularly well exhorted in the New Testament rather than hiring employees to preach.
----Now those differences are only the shade of a heartbeat appart, but in the churches of the last two thousand years, hearts have beat in many shades. Yet, my heart gets its greatest joy of giving from putting my money directly into the hands that need it. It gets little joy at all from dropping a dollar into the offering plate of a well-to-do church.
----But that is just the little piece of purpose to which the Lord has raised me. It should have no meaning to anyone else any more than: find what cranks up the cheerfulness in your heart and give in that way, especially if it is in tithing to a church.
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