Tithing and Attitude

Today in church, we had one of the hard hitting, tough to preach, tough to sometimes hear messages. Obviously, the economy is not so hot right now, and if you think about it, as it affects our bank accounts, so it directly affects the church. Since the church relies mostly on ties for income, a failing economy equals a stressed church financially. Ken Wytsma, our lead pastor, gave one of the most amazing sermons I've heard addressing what tithing is and not why the church necessarily needs us to give our "first fruits", but why God needs our first fruits. Ken portrayed the image of a farmer taking the first bundle of goods that he grew and offering it to God. It wasn't his whole crop, or some of his crop after he took what he needed, or the part of the crop that he didn't really want. The farmer gave away his "first fruits" and placed his trust in God, that He would provide enough of a harvest to provide for his family. So the farmer did this without knowing and more importantly not worrying, if a tornado, plague or drought would come along, and the rest of his harvest would be lost. He had such a strong and trusting relationship with the Lord, that the farmer wanted to give Him the first of his ripe fruit and then trust.

Ken also made the point (one that I had never really noticed) that in scripture, God asks us to bring our offering to the Lord and not give our offering to the Lord. What's the difference? You bring something isn't necessarily yours, but you want to offer it for something else. You bring a birthday gift, because the gift is not for you but for the enjoyment of the birthday girl/guy. Same with God. Our money is not our own, it is a gift from the Lord, that he asks us to give back to our community and church to help keep the community of people alive. He made the visual illustration of cutting open an apple. We eat basically 90% of the apple; the other 10% of the core and seeds (usually) goes back into the earth to recreate another apple tree, to produce more fruit. This image is the same with tithing, whether it's our money or time, we should be giving (or bringing) a portion of ourselves and income, whatever we can, back to God, because it really isn't ours in the first place.

Lastly, Ken talked about our attitude. I will be the first to say that this has been and still is a great struggle for me. I am usually the realist (or pessimist) in many situations and being married to the optomistic idealist (Evan :)) makes things complicated at times. I know that a lot of times if only I changed my attitued about situations, the situation would suddenly be a lot less stressful and upsetting. Ken used a quote which I totally believe is true, however is not always to abide by. I copied this from Ken's blog:

Here is a brief meditation from Chuck Swindoll that I quoted in a sermon this morning. It had a profound impact on my life... hopefully there is someone else out there who it will speak to as well.

ATTITUDE

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes

Today in church was just one of those Sunday's where I really feel like God wanted me to really open my mind and not just hear what He was saying but actually put it into practice.

Today's sermon on podcast