My teastomony re tithing
For more than 15 years I tithed because I was taught “don’t tithe and be cursed ; Tithe and you will be blessed that much that you won’t be able to contain it. Of course there were the usual scriptures to back up what was being preached so I thought that I was being obedient to God. We were always struggling financially and on two occasions I went to the elder/councillors and asked why it wasn’t working for me. I told them what I was earning and asked them if I was mismanaging my money. They didn’t say that I was mismanaging my money. I asked them if there was any sin in my life that I needed to address. They didn’t say that there was sin to be addressed. The first time I saw them they said that my problem was a spirit of poverty, even though the preaching was “Test God , pay your tithe and God will bless you”. They cast out the perceived spirit. Nothing changed. The second time I went to them they said that my problem was that I was not believing God i.e. I wasn’t exercising enough faith even though they preached just pay your money and test God, the blessings are guaranteed. I tried to believe and have faith for the blessings but things just got worse.
I got to the point that although I had faithfully tithed for over fifteen years I didn’t have enough money to pay a bill for servicing my car and feed my family and pay my tithe. I knew that I was supposed to pay the tithe and money would miraculously appear or someone would give us food. I considered the situation. If I didn’t pay my tithe God would curse me, if I didn’t provide for my family then the scripture said that I had denied the faith and was worse than an infidel, and if I didn’t pay my bill I would be a bad witness for Christ. I decided that the only thing to do was not to tithe. I decided that it would be better to be cursed of God than to be a bad witness or a bad provider. I wondered that if the blessings haven’t arrived after over fifteen years, then would the curse take that long also.
It was then that I got really really desperate. The teaching was all backed up with scripture, I had followed that teaching, I had had a spirit of poverty cast out and I had believed to the best of my ability, but it simply wasn’t happening. I desperately cried out to God to show me what was wrong. I believed the word of God and I believed that I had been following it but it wasn’t happening. There must be something I wasn’t seeing. I turned to Malachi and read....
Mal 3:8 “Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
9 You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me,
It was like a search light was on the word tithes. I had been trusting in these verses to be blessed and had paid a tithe and offerings. Now it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t fulfilled the conditions to be blessed and that meant I had been under “a curse”. The condition was pay tithes (that’s plural). The Israelites had three different tithes to pay. I had paid one tithe which meant that I was robbing God of the other two. Now I had a problem. How was I going to pay three tithes on my gross income, and I had fifteen years of second and third tithes to pay and not only that the scripture said I had to add a fifth for the late payment. This meant that if I paid every cent of my wages after tax to the church it would take many years to catch up and be blessed. Now a second thing dawned on me. That was that all these tithing regulations were in the law of Moses.
Gal 3:10 For all who rely on the works of the law,(tithing) are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” 11 Clearly no one who relies on the law,(tithing) is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”[
f] 12 The law,(tithing) is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.”[
g] 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,(tithing) by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”[
h] 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
Now the scariest thing about this is in
Gal 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (tithing)
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised,(receive tithing), Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised,(receives the law of tithing), that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
So I stopped tithing and God has blessed us.
Ps I believe in being as generous as we can.
blessings
