God's Insurance Policy

“Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10 In the lives of most people, the priority is making money. Now, there is nothing wrong with making money. Indeed, a righteous man will provide for the needs of his family. But the question is HOW does he go about it? Well, he gets an education in the field that he is most interested in, then he gets a job. This is all good. However, his livelihood will always be under threat. What if he loses his job? What if he experiences a disaster in his life and it takes all he has to recover? What if someone steals his identity and takes all his money? What if the stock market crashes and he loses all he had in his savings? There is a better way. You might call it “God’s insurance policy.” The Word of God instructs us in the wise way to see to our needs being met. If a man or woman will follow the instructions of the Lord, he can rest assured that the Lord will take care of him no matter what. The Lord says that if one will honor God with his possessions and with his tithes, his life will be filled with plenty and his cupboards will overflow. Let’s take a look at Malachi chapter 3: “‘Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and TRY ME now in this,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.'” Malachi 3:10 What a person does with his money is a huge indicator of the faith level and the character of that person. No one wants to part with his money, so to suggest to him that he should honor God with his possessions will usually meet with all the excuses why he cannot do that. Yet the secret is that if he does it God’s way, many times those reasons disappear. If all would follow this directive from God himself, it could eradicate a lot of poverty. You can’t obey the Word of God and lose out. However, the ways of God are “foolishness” to the world. Does this all sound like foolishness to you? “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 To those who believe, the ways of God are the ways to salvation, happiness, and joy. If one desires his assets to be protected by the Lord, he needs to start operating in the “foolishness” of God’s Word, because the Word of God is faithful. God has made the sustenance of his “house,” the church, dependent on the tithes of the believers. When a believer brings his tithe, God has promised to pour out upon him a blessing way out of proportion to what he has given. One of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my walk with God, is to deliver this message to people who are poor. To tell a poor person that the way out of poverty is to obey the Word of God and bring a tenth of what little he has – well how does one have the courage to say that to a person struggling just to survive? Yet this Word has not failed in any instance in which I have had to tell this to someone. Without fail, each one later reported back to me the wonder of what God did in response. Why is that? It’s because when a person is willing to part with a tenth of his income, in doing so he is demonstrating where his faith lies. In parting with his money, he is stating that his faith is not in the world system, his faith is not in his ability to make money, his faith is in the Word of God. And God will honor that. But let’s not stop there. Many only quote the passage in Malachi this far. But the next verse is an extremely important part of the promise: “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes…” Malachi 3:11 A man might have a lot of money, but his resources can be consumed by “the devourer.” The devourer can set up circumstances in which a man’s income, however great, becomes worthless by going into a bag with holes. Left to himself, the man who does not honor God with the tithe God requests, will oftentimes see his income go to waste. The more he makes the greater the holes. He just can’t get ahead. “And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Haggai 1:6 But God promises to rebuke the devourer for the man or woman who makes the decision to place his trust in the Lord, and not in himself. He will find that all his needs are taken care of. God’s insurance policy has to be received by the person who has made this decision, and it’s a commitment he is to keep all the days of his life. If there are ups and downs to test that commitment, he has to remember that he signed on to God and he must weather the storm. He will find out in the end that you can’t out-give God. That person will lack for nothing. Pray with me: Father, just the suggestion that I should part with a tenth of my income causes fear inside me. I’m struggling just to get by, so telling me to give some away – defies common sense. But I realize that the test of faith takes place when one is called upon to defy common sense in order to obey your Word. HELP ME TO TRUST YOUR WORD and be willing to obey you, and to do what you have prescribed. Help me to let go, to transfer my trust base from myself to you, knowing that one does not lose out with God. I pray for the courage to step out in faith, defy common sense and the ways of the world, and place my trust in your Word, knowing that what you have said, that you will do. I thank you Father, for the protection you offer and I choose to believe.