Malachi 3:10 "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.”
2 Corinthians 9:7 Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
So here I am talking about tithing—why? Well Chris and I are on a new adventure when it comes to church and it is the adventure of a lifetime. Okay so maybe that is a bit dramatic but for us it is a big deal. Both of us began our church adventure as children going with our families. There were few Sundays that our families did not go to church. Chris often talks about having to go to church when they were on vacation. After we got married and moved to our first home, we began looking for a church. When we moved back to our hometown looking for a church was a bit more of a challenge, the church we were married in had gone through some changes and our families had left. I thought it was important to find a church home. This was a longer process than we anticipated and there were a few months when we did not go to church. Finally, however, the week before our first son was born we found a church home. We soon settled into to this church family and there have been a few more church moves since that one but one thing remained the same—we gave.
Chris always wrote the check to church before he paid any other bill, there were times when I would say but “God won’t shut off our electricity.” The amusing thing is that we never really were at risk of having our electricity shut off. My husband is a very good caretaker but more importantly, he is faithful to the Word. We did not start tithing right away but we gave every week and we increased it regularly to the point where the tithe was what we were giving.
So what do these two paragraphs have to do with one another?
We are currently not a part of a “traditional” church. We were part of a new church plant for two years and we decided that it was time for us to do it a new way. Church to us needs to be different from what we are used to, we want to be active in the community. We want to be active in the lives of others, going through the Word and learning from what God has to teach each of us. Right now, we are a church of 2, Chris and myself. We meet weekly at local coffee shops and we send the meeting times out via twitter—theProject_KC. We rest firmly on Matthew 18: 20, "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." So far, we have not had any visitors, but we don’t mind, we enjoy going through the Bible together and we are learning from one another.
The rub is in tithing—when you are part of a church, it’s easy to write the check and drop it in the plate. Rarely do you consider where that money goes. For us, there is no plate. We get to decide exactly where our tithe is going. Each month we think that we might not be able to think of another place to give and without fail, God drops a need in our path. Friends on mission in Europe, an old friend and his family preparing to go to Africa, a community development in Nashville, a church plant in Colorado, friends desiring a return to Central Asia, an eye mission in Haiti and many more.
You see there are more needs than we have money to give. That is the joy, we are able to give to people we know and it is a joy to know where and who is receiving our tithe. I am constantly waiting for God to show me the next need we will be allowed to be a part of. We have been blessed and we are humbled by God, we have not always been the best stewards of the gift God has given us but we have always tried to honor Him in our tithe. After all, it all comes from Him and ultimately it all belongs to Him.
