Think about
Giving
Brian Kluth who is the President of Christian Stewardship
Association recently wrote, in a column of the association’s magazine Stewardship
Matters, the following:
"The first chapter of Haggai says, "Is it a time
for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while [God’s temple] remains
a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your
ways…you earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. You expected much,
but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?…because
of my House which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.
Therefore…I called for a drought…on the labor of your hands.’" Old and
New Testament Scriptures both teach that when we withhold our giving from God, we are
opening ourselves up to destructive spiritual forces.
I asked a friend one day, "Whey do you faithfully give
to the Lord?" He told me, "I can’t afford not to give to Him. I am much
better off with 90 percent and God’s blessing than 100 percent without His
blessing." Another friend told me, "When I give to God, I have enough. When I
don’t give to God, I don’t have enough."
God desires to bless and care for us. But if we choose not to
acknowledge Him in our giving, the money we try to hold onto slips through our fingers and
is never enough, regardless of our income."
He also noted that Barna Research discovered that although 17
percent of Christians say they tithe, only 3 percent actually give 10 percent or more of
their income to the Lord’s work.
