Why do we tithe?

Last week, our preacher asked us to share a tithing testimony at church. Dave told me he would read it if I wrote it, so I did. I decided to share it here because I wrote it like I was writing a blog post, and I've alluded to tithing here before.

When Dave and I started looking for a church, I gave what I could at the churches we visited because that’s what I knew. You’re supposed to put money in the offering plate when it goes around. It wasn’t much, because I was a broke college student back then. I remember having a conversation with him about tithing and if it really means 10% and doing the calculation to figure out how much 10% really was. It was a lot! It was hard to fathom giving that number, for both of us, but we promised each other that we would tithe when we found a church. It was important to me, so he agreed.

When we got married and joined a church, we were paying for law school and we bought a house. There may have been a car payment, too. We had entry level jobs, and we were just like every other young married couple. Money was tight. We went from broke college students, to broke young married people, but we kept our promise and tithed every month. We made our budget so that we tithed once a month, just like we paid all of the bills. There were months when I knew that if I wrote the check to the church, we would have to get very creative to pay the car insurance or the student loan payment. I wrote it anyway, and somehow it always worked out that there was enough money to feed us and pay the bills. There were months that we sat down together with the checkbook in confused amazement that everything was paid because it just didn’t seem possible. Maybe I was bad at keeping the checkbook, but I like to think that God’s math is just different than mine.

Over the years, we got better jobs and with every adjustment to our income, we have recalculated the monthly tithe amount to make sure it’s still ten percent. Money gets spent so easily and life is so expensive, that if we didn’t do it that way, we probably wouldn’t tithe – at least not the actual 10%. We made it a priority when we had nothing but hand-me down furniture and debt, and we still make it a priority today when we are beginning to teach our children to tithe, because we believe we are commanded by God to give our resources and our time to serve the church. In the old testament, God commanded the nation of Israel to tithe grain, produce, and livestock to provide for the Levite priests as they served in the tabernacle. He commanded that the people leave a corner of their fields untouched during the harvest to provide for the poor. The commands were very practical then, and they still are today. We also believe that God will provide for us, even when we give sacrificially, because He has proven it over and over again, and because the Bible says so.

We tithe because it is our duty and our honor to serve the Lord.

“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Corinthians 9:6-7