Honour the Lord With Your Wealth

Proverbs tells us to honour the Lord with your wealth and with the first of our income. This means that whatever we earn, we take the first percentage (10%) and give that back to God, this is called tithing.

My Father John Alley was a missionary in Papua New Guinea many years ago and had the task of teaching new christians all over the country to tithe. He worked for the Salvation Army and back in the early 1980's tithing was so low in all those new churches that it averaged less than a dollar per person per year.

My Dad used the scripture in Proverbs to teach the people that giving actual money is honouring to God. A lot of people have a hard time understanding this and refuse to give.

Another scripture comes into play here, Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also." Most people who don't give simply show that their heart is not really into things of the Lord - because if God has the heart, he also has the wallet.

What is really odd is that there are so many great promises in the Bible for those people who do tithe, but that not knowing these promises, the new believers of Papua New Guinea embraced tithing and chose to give - and God did bless them.

However today in churches we emphasize the promises trying to get people to give but it doesn't seem to have an effect - and when people do tithe the promises don't seem to flow so easily.

This could be because of a wrong motivation - people are giving NOT to honour the Lord but rather giving to get - giving to receive the promises. It doesn't work as well this way. Also when people are encourage to give for other reason that simply love for Christ it doesn't seem to motivate as well.

Let us all be tithers and yes, inherit the promises, but let our motivation be to honour Christ - it's the best way.