The question was direct and simple. Did we always pay our tithe?
This question was asked in a Women’s Bible study. We are in the thick of studying Sermon on the Mount. It has stirred some things in our hearts and our conversations. In the Sermon on the Mount one of the challenging things Jesus talks about is giving. Which leads to questions about giving what, and to who.
Who Has Our Hearts
Back to the original question, the answer is NO! We have not done a lot of things that would have made life so much better. When we got married we were both Christians and still far from God and His ways. We had the world by the tail, which means the world had our hearts, and Jesus was just the icing on the cake of our lives.
God Doesn’t Share
I probably loved God, but I loved the world too, and that is not how it works. God doesn’t share when it comes to our hearts and affections. I would have probably gone to heaven if I had died because God is kind and full of grace and mercy, but I also didn’t get away with having my cake and Jesus icing too.God is a good Father and disciplines his children.There comes a point when we realize we need Jesus to be everything, and everything in life is all about Him.
“Im just a sinner saved by grace,” is a beautiful thing but not if that’s where we’re stuck. We were saved for so much more. Jesus calls us saints, and His chosen children, and that is where life can be truly lived. It took too much time to step up into that more fully. Staying infants and naughty toddlers for far too long is unhealthy and unhelpful to everyone.
Where’s the Bar
Knowing the love of God is so much richer than living to the lowest bar we can get away with. My prayer is for our children and grandchildren to be raised higher, much sooner in their journey. Start strong and grow from there. Let me tell you, they are all years and years ahead of me in maturity from where I was at their age. Praise Him.
Live Life
There is so much life to be lived and it won’t be lived when Jesus is icing. Jesus is Life not a yummy addition to cake or life.
Yes, I was in Christ and sinning my head clean off. I didn’t get away with it, my life and story have the scars and healing work to show for it. ‘Just sinners saved by grace’ that are stuck in that line of thinking tend to do things to stay in that line of living.
I wish I could say if I had known then what I know now, I would have done better, but that isn’t true. Maybe I did know, I don’t remember if I knew better all the time, but I know God better now. If I can spare one person, not only from hell, but from living like hell on earth then I will speak up.
Sharing what I have learned the hard way, even though it doesn’t need to be hard, just narrow, is sharing the truth in love.
Winning
Wrestling with stuff on the daily….is life on this earth. It’s tough out here, but to know the peace that comes with staying close to God and in His word, desiring to live His way, is WINNING.
We will never have it all together until we are together in heaven but I pray for eyes that are fixed on Jesus. May we live up to the calling of Saint, not sinner.
Be holy as God is holy.
Colossians 3:12-14
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
