Welcome to Open Heavens Daily Devotional written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye
TOPIC: Upgrade Your Tithe
TODAY: Tuesday 9, May 2017
Memorise: And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the children of Israel brought in abundance the firstfruits of corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and of all the increase of the field; and the tithe of all things brought they in abundantly. – 2 Chronicles 31:5
Read: Malachi 3:8-12 (KJV)
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
Bible in One Year: Deuteronomy 9-10, Jeremiah 28:5-17, Hymn: Sing hymn 10
MESSAGE:
If you want to experience the blessings that God promised His children, you must be prepared to fellow divine financial principles. Do you know that your seed will determine your harvest? 2 Corinthians 9:6 says,
“But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”
From the above scripture, we learn that if you spare or hold back a good part of your seed, God will also hold back a good part of the harvest He wanted to give to you. On the other hand, if you go beyond the norm in your giving, God will also do the extraordinary regarding your harvest. This is why I encourage you to grow in all forms of giving. It is wrong for you to remain on the same spot in your offerings when God keeps increasing you. Do you know that you can provoke a change in your financial situation by increasing your offerings even when your income has not changed?
In addition to growing in your offering, you can also grow in your tithe. You can go beyond the basic level of tithing which is 10%. The Lord once told me to exceed my tithe and watch what He would do; He said I could call the difference a seed. Sometimes in 1979, I attended a Kenneth Hagin conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had about 17,000 people in attendance.
During the meeting, there was a fund-raising event. The brother who took the offering challenged everyone to give their very best, and surprisingly, he added that he and his wife would match the total sum we all gave. Astonished by his challenge, we were certain he would be in the red by the time our offering was counted. When we had all given our offering, a total sum of $13.5 million was raised; surely, we thought, we would be unable to match this! However, to our great surprise, when the total was announced, he said, “Is this the best you all can do?” He and his wife then wrote a cheque for that exact sum. When I saw this, I said to myself, “This man must know something I don’t know, and I am going to find out what it is.”
Wise people always gather knowledge; they seek to know what made a great person great, so as to apply the same principles. By the time I discussed with this brother, I learnt that five years before, he started a business with $500 and struck a deal with God that God would receive 90% of his profit while he would keep just 10%. As at the time he was telling me his story, his business had grown into a $50 million company. I took up this challenge and increased the percentage of my tithe. What can you do that you have not done before, to change what you normally receive from God? Rise up and do it now.
Prayer Point: Father, grant me the grace to upgrade all areas of my life.
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