A dollar bill was given to each of us with the intention of placing it in an envelope to be put in the offering plate at Sunday School every Sunday. My father was making sure that we three girls got into the habit of giving. It really wasn't teaching us how to budget our own resources, but it instilled in me the fact that God expects us to give.
When I found my church home in my new location, I began tithing from my earnings. Something prompted me to begin rounding up about a year ago. It was an act of faith, because I didn't have any more resources, but was concerned about the state of our world.
That is when things started happening. Sometime in April the government sent me, along with many others, a $1200.00 check. Then, I was offered six weeks off work because of the 'plague' and with pay. I did take advantage of that. We had a contest at work in May and I won two $25.00 gift cards, winning two contests in a row. Within those two weeks, a friend just handed me a $50.00 gift card to a nail salon. I was being amazed at all this when I remembered God's promise - "Give, and it shall be given to you in good measure, pressed down and running over" - Luke 6:38.
Later in August while I was in Iowa for my grandson's wedding, my son and daughter-in-law presented me with a wonderful and expensive, by my standards, shopping spree. It just doesn't stop!! You can't out give God. He will be a debtor to no man, or woman. He really means it when He says in Malachi 3:10 "Test Me" "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 a blessing until it overflows."
This is not the kind of testing that is crossing the line of going against God's will, but it is extending faith and showing God that you trust Him and know He will provide, somehow. It is giving Him the opportunity to bring glory to His Word. I am having fun at this 'rounding up' and am saying, "Father God, bring it on!"
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