Proverbs 17:22….Laughter is good medicine:
I went on a new 14 day diet, and all I lost was 14 days—-Sheila Kay
A biblical #tithe is 10% of your income. Let’s not argue if this 10% is off your gross income (as I believe) or your net income, since Christians only give an average of 3% anyway.
While some believers feel tithing pre-dated the Mosaic law (which was given around 1450 B.C.), they feel it is still in effect today. #Tithing was first mentioned in Abraham’s day (around 2100 B.C.). Other believers don’t think it’s mandatory today but that it’s a good estimate, not a maximum, of what we should be giving.
After all, Malachi 3:8-12 says that if we don’t tithe, we’re robbing God. This is the only place I know of where God challenges us to test Him in. He says if we tithe, He will see to it that we will live better on 90% of our income than on 100% of it. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Yet God often uses “the foolish things of this world to confound the wise” (1st Corinthians 1:27-29). Statistics seem to bear this out. Christians who tithe are more likely to be debt-free or have much less debt, not have a car payment, pay off their credit cards in 30 days and have more assets than Christians who don’t tithe (www.stateoftheplate.info). Granted this raises more questions than we can go into here but the results still stand.
Various polls have put the percentage of Christians who tithe between 3-5%. If true, this is a shame. Among tithing believers:
-70% tithe on their gross
-23% tithe 10%
-54% give between 11-15%
-14% give between 16-20%
-9% give more than 20%
Among non-tithing believers:
-38% say they cannot afford to
33% say they have too much debt
18% say they cannot because their spouse won’t let them
Yes, I realize that government taxes take up more of our income than it did in, say, 1960. But God’s promise is still true. I also realize when some people start living for the Lord, that they may have previous debts. By starting to pay down those debts to get their finances in order, they are showing where their heart really is. Also, they could start giving a certain amount and increase it by 1% per month.
As Henry Brandt said, “The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart”. Christians in America have a lot of treasure but precious little of it goes to the Kingdom. Even the poorest of the poor in America are better off than 99% of the rest of the world.
Why do you think Christians have trouble tithing and do you think these are legitimate concerns?
For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard
