Have you ever thought: I cannot afford to tithe in this famine. Remember what God did for Issac during a famine. He will do it again for you because God is vitally interested in your finances. He wants to multiply and protect them. But He won’t be able to—unless you open the door for Him to do it. When you tithe, you give God the legal right to intervene in your financial affairs, to bless you richly, and to defend you against the destruction the devil brings. When you tithe, you lay a foundation for success and abundance. You establish deposits with God you can draw on when you need them.
Honouring God
Proverbs 3:9-10 says to honour the Lord with the first-fruits of your increase so your “barns be filled with plenty.” You cannot seperate the glory of God from the goodness of God! This is a very basic principle for success. If you want God to honour you and bless you in any area of your life, you’re going to have to honour Him in that particular area. If you want God to bless you financially, you’re going to have to honour Him with your money, or as this verse puts it, with the first-fruits of all your increase. In other words, you have to tithe. Give God His first. Do it in faith, expecting. As you tithe, worship Him and be grateful for what He has already done in your life. It is amazing what He can do.
Protecting Your Harvest
Here’s a simple truth about tithing: Give God what is His, and He will protect what is yours. When you honour God with the 10 percent that belongs to Him, He’ll get involved with the rest. The other 90 percent will go further than ever before because you’ve got the supernatural power of God in your finances. The tithe from your income belongs to God, and it lays the foundation for your financial success and abundance. There is a protection plan that’s attached to the tithe. Everything we have is protected—our finances, our home, our goods.
Gloria Copeland says: “If you’re not a tither, I guarantee you, you can look back in your life, and you can see where your fruit was destroyed, where your situation didn’t work out, where your job didn’t come to full fruition, where you weren’t able to do what you intended to do. That’s what happens to people who don’t tithe. What’s missing? THE BLESSING!”
Test God
“Try it! Let me prove it to you!” Malachi 3:10 is the only time God says “prove me on this!” This is the only time in the Bible where God instructs us to prove Him, and it is the one area where most people have withdrawn from proving God. He tells us the devourer will be rebuked, and the floodgates of blessing will open up over us (Malachi 3:10-11, NIV).
Does God mean tithe one week and see what happens? No. You’re not a tither if you give once or even for a year. It isn’t an experiment or a hobby—it’s a lifestyle. A tither is a tither from the heart. So, don’t just toss some money in a bucket and wait to see what happens—you try the Lord in this area with a tither’s heart. That is when harvest comes. And, as Jerry Savelle says, “If you’re not a sower [or a tither] you’re not entitled to a harvest.”
Like anything else, God looks at the heart. One who puts a tithe in the bucket in a grudging manner and out of obligation is no better than the one who fights tooth and nail against giving God anything at all. If you want to live in the benefits of a tither, you’ve got to first become a real tither—consistently—with a tither’s heart. No matter which way you slice it, tithers are blessed.
