To Tithe or not to Tithe

[1]

 

Isaiah 25:1 King James Version

25 O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.

 

Alan[2] phoned me the other day and told me he had reached a low spot in his finances. “I have reached the end of my finances. I owe $100 tithe. If I pay the tithe, I will have nothing to live on for the next two weeks. What shall I do?” He was experiencing a major crisis of faith as well as finances. He has been paying tithe for the better part of a year, and all has gone well. Now he was completely at the end of his rope.

Immediately I thought, “Been there—done that!” I didn’t say that of course. But my life flashed before me in an instant. I remembered our second year as missionaries in Tanzania, 1968. The mission organization had miscalculated my salary the during 1967 and wrote me that they were going to have to take it out of this year’s salary. “We know you will need some money to live on, so we will send you $20 a month so you have some cash.” Even in Africa, that was a mere slap in the face. Yet God came through beautifully.

Years later, at Helderberg College in South Africa, the organization had forgotten to take out our U. S. Social Security tax for two years. It was calculated on what our salary would have been in the States. In Africa our salary was roughly a quarter of that. So when they took out the equivalent of 3 years SS tax, it left us very little to live on. Besides that, the country was experiencing double digit inflation, and we received no cost-of-living adjustments. But, true to God’s promises, we came through debt free. Then God organized, against our desires, for us to transfer to the States. That definitely turned out to be the best move for us at the time.

In the States we have been essentially a one salary family. Throughout our whole married life—58 years in June, we have tithed our income. Most of the time we have tithed after taxes. I have reasoned that my taxes go to finance various wars including Afghanistan and Iraq, support for unwed mothers, and welfare for people who choose not to work; so, I could not, with a clear conscience, count that as “increase”.[3] Even in the States I have seen our bank balance come down to less than $10. God has always stepped in—sometimes at the very last minute—to help us.

Now that we are retired, we are living very well. When I get concerned about what will happen to us if runaway inflation destroys our savings, I remind myself that God has never let us go hungry or without a home to live in. He will see us through.

I reminded Alan that in Malachi 3:10 God has urged us to “Put me to the test and you will see that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out on you in abundance all kinds of good things.”[4] If he chose not to tithe, God would understand, but if he chose to pay his tithe and trust God, he would experience a great thrill as God rewards his faith. This is the only point in our Christian experience where God urges us to test him!

Lord, thank You for challenging us to test You. And thank You for coming through time and again for us, often in the nick of time.

 

---

[1] https://thechurchadmin.com/do-church-members-have-to-tithe/

[2]  I have changed the name and circumstances, but the experience is very real and happened within the week of this writing.

[3] Deuteronomy 14:22 (KJV) Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.

 [4]  Today’s English Version (1982)

Driving Through a Tropical Storm

 

[

[1]

 

Psalm 37:5 American Standard Version—margin

⁵ Roll thy way upon Jehovah;
Trust also in him, and he will bring it to pass.

 

Three weeks ago, Nancy[2] phoned us distraught. “Hospice told me that Linda will die today!” We were threading our way through the mountains and canyons of southeastern Utah. She had caught us in a spot where we actually had phone coverage. We all knew that this day was coming. Nancy’s little sister had not been eating or drinking for over a week. She wasn’t responding to anybody.

“We’re so sorry,” I said. “Please let us know when you plan a memorial service. We’ll be there,” I promised. Later the date was set for September 10.

As the date approached, I kept an eye on a Pacific hurricane called Kay. Unlike almost all of the Pacific hurricanes that tend to pass safely out to sea in the Pacific Ocean, Kay had turned and started going north. On Friday, September 9, Kay had slowed down enough to become a tropical storm but still carried strong winds and lots of rain. Since Nancy’s home is in Yuma Arizona, about 250 miles from us, we left home about noon on Friday. By this time the storm was starting to splatter our car as we drove east on I-10. It was enough to slow traffic leaving for the weekend, and for about an hour we endured the stop and go.

As we turned south to go along the coast of the Salton Sea, the sky became downright menacing. We had rolled our way upon the LORD when we started. We trusted that He would protect us we entered a terrific downpour. Suddenly my phone barked into life. “This is an alert. This region is in a severe storm area. It is in danger of flooding. You should not be driving unless you are evacuating or fleeing the flood. Take cover immediately.”  Then about five or ten miles down the road. We got another such amber alert. And later another, and another.

The rain was not as bad as when we drove through tropical storm Elsa, but it was a lot worse than we normally see in southern California. We pulled off at a truck stop about half way down the massive Coachella Valley. We had to ford a swiftly flowing river of muddy water to get into the stop. We rested about a half-an-hour there and ate a cinnamon roll. Then cautiously we drove back through this tan river and onto the highway.

We reassured ourselves in the knowledge that we were in the Lord’s hands, and we drove on carefully. So far Kay was no match to tropical storm Elsa, that we had driven through in northern Florida on July 7, 2021. The trip took us a little over 5 hours. Nancy was extremely relieved to see us. She had three friends coming from the San Diego area. They had phoned and said that Kay had washed out a stretch along I-8, and a boulder had run into a car driving along there, so they had turned around and gone back home.

Thank You, Lord, that we can trust You when the going gets dicey.

---

[1] https://watchers.news/2022/09/09/tropical-storm-kay-considerable-flooding-possible-in-the-southwest-u-s/  Yuma Arizona is just a little southeast of the “o” in “San Diego” on the satellite image that was taken on the same day, September 9, 2022. We were driving through Coachella Valley to get there.

[2] As per request names have been changed, but the events are true.

Dimensions and Trust

[1]

Proverbs 29:25 King James Version

²⁵ The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.

 

While I was teaching at Ikizu in Tanzania, they held a camp meeting on campus. There were far too many people to use the large campus church for meetings. So, they stretched ropes between several trees and then covered an area with thatch grass to shield attenders from the equatorial sun. By this time, I understood Swahili well enough so that I could attend the meetings and understand what the presenters were saying. One was Bekele Haye, an Ethiopian who spoke in English because he didn’t speak Swahili, and his message was translated, so I heard it twice.

He told the people who wished they had been born white that that was a foolish wish. “I went out one day with a white missionary and worked in the fields all day. The next day, all of the white man’s skin peeled off, so he was in bed in great pain. I was out working in the fields again.” Then he went on and told the people that Africans had been Christians long before Europeans. They got the message of salvation from the Ethiopian whom Phillip baptized. “We should be missionaries in Europe and America, rather than they being missionaries to us. Christianity is really an African religion. We failed to carry it to the world, so the Europeans are doing our work.”

Another speaker was Mrs. Wangai. I have forgotten her first name and her maiden name. She was a Kikuyu from Kenya. She told the people about her experience as a teenager during the British control of Kenya. The Kikuyus are the largest tribe in Kenya. During the 1950s many people of the Kikuyu tribe started guerilla warfare against the English. They were called the Mau-Mau and were fighting for the freedom of their country. They also distrusted anyone who was a Christian because they saw them as being supporters of the colonial regime. To gain followers, a Mau-Mau group came into her village. They lined up all the people and then one-by-one demanded that they swear an oath, denouncing Christianity and pledging allegiance to the freedom fighters. This pledge often demanded sexual favors and drinking a strong native beer that had several opioids in it. Those few who refused were put into a hut with no windows and with guards at the door instructed to kill anyone who tried to escape.

She refused to take the oath and was sentenced to death. They bound her and put her into this prison hut to await her death in front of the whole village. She lay on the floor and prayed for deliverance. After a while her bonds dropped off of her, and she felt herself being lifted up and moved towards the wall away from the guards at the door. She told how a hole appeared in the wall and she was passed out through the hole. Looking back from the outside, she could see that there was no hole. A voice told her to flee into the bush and await the departure of the Mau-Mau from her village. She fled into the bush and hid for several days. When she returned about three weeks later, she found out that everyone in that hut had been executed. She went to the hut and examined it. There was no evidence that there had ever been a hole in the wall.

At the time, there was enough evidence of the truth of her story that I believe her. As I mentioned in a previous blog, if our three-dimensional universe is part of a higher dimensional space, then an angel—who lives in this space—could easily have picked her up in his space. The knots on her bonds would have disintegrated, as I mentioned in my blog. She could be moved slightly out of our universe and transferred past the wall. To her eyes, it would look like she was passing through a hole in the wall. After all, our eyes can only see in three dimensions. She later finished high school and married a Christian man who became a pastor.

Does my explanation change her story of the miracle of her survival? Does it lessen the miraculous nature of her experience? Not at all. We have absolutely no physical access to anything outside of our universe, of course. Does it support my spatial concepts? Maybe.

Needless to say, God fulfilled His promise that if she put her trust in the Lord, she would be safe.

Lord, help us to place our trust in You and keep it there.

 

---

[1] https://civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com/5652/the-mau-mau-rebellion