Do You Invest Wisely with What God Blesses You?

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this, says the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."  (Malachi 3:10)

Hey Gang:  Wow! What a fabulous promise to God's children.  But, to quit there is to miss a profound second part to His promise, "Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruit of the ground; nor will your vine in the field prove fruitless," says the Lord of hosts." (vs.11). 

Do you think God is tying our giving to His protection of us from the devourer?  I will confess that in my early years of walking with the Lord I came across this verse and it scared the begeebies out of me because I was not a tither.  I was at best a very sporadic giver and sometimes gave what was left over.

There is also a very key principle here that we need to get tucked away in our mind and heart: God challenges us to test Him.  As I read the Word, I find that many of the pillars of the Christian faith were also tested.    I also believe that testing is an essential ingredient of the faith.  When God laid it on my heart that I should quit my job, sell my house, pack my family, travel across the country into never-never land, I would suggest to you that God was testing to see if I would obey and do what He had in mind for me to do.

But let me take that a step further.  In those two years, when I was the ‘unemployed director of a non-existent boys home’ I learned a whole barn-full about testing!  Perhaps most important was, if I did not test Him and put one foot in front of the other, I was going to learn all those lessons that Solomon laid out for our edification about idleness and not getting up off our backsides and taking the first step. 

I had occasion recently to have a discussion with a young man who is preparing to go into the mission field.  He was dealing with some deep-seated frustrations.  He believed he was ready to take on the challenge of God's calling but, in his opinion (like I was) he was stuck in a waiting mode.  I shared with him that all that he was doing, every ‘jot and tittle’, was God's way to prepare him for what he would need in the future.  In the two years I was waiting for the door to open, I did a zillion different things from moving cows to building furniture and pastoring a small church.  

When God said, “Okay, go for it!"  I found myself caring for horses, building the furniture for the house and, many other things that I had tucked away in my experience bag.  Most important was the time I spent in the Word, in those two years, tutored by a dear lady. This built the foundation that would carry us in those very formative years of ‘hanging on’ as God moved so swiftly. 

Sooooo, my young warriors, read the verse for today and zero in on God's promises! Bring it all into His storehouse and test Him.  It is when you do this that He will bless your sox off.  I know because I have been there!    

Blessings,

 Gramps