tithing

i am not going to attempt to persuade you to begin tithing, or tithe any more or less than you already do. actually, that last phrase was incorrect. "tithe" literally means "a tenth". so if you are a christian, and you desire to tithe, but you only give 2%...well, you're not tithing. but i digress.

jake and i have always tithed, but only recently have we been convicted that we were doing it wrong. we have always gotten a paycheck and given 10% of that paycheck to our local church. but really, we weren't tithing on our income. we were tithing on our take-home. you know the whole "give to God what is God's and to caesar what is caesar's"? well, caesar was getting a whole lot more from us than God was! so we decided to begin tithing on our gross pay. but then we thought "how in the world can we afford to do that?" we had trimmed our budget down so far. but we prayed, and we crunched, and we just decided that we would do it, even if we couldn't see how it could possibly work. and you know what? it works just fine.

because we operate on a zero-based budget (from jake's income), we needed a specific dollar amount to allocate to our tithe. so we looked at the past six months of his pay, chose the highest amount, then rounded up. just to be safe. and that is the dollar amount we give. so yes, technically it's more than 10%. but guess what? we are told to tithe, as christians. we aren't told to only tithe, but we are told to at least tithe.

i challenge you to pray about how He would have you handle your finances. and if you're mad at me and still think i know nothing about you...you're invited to dinner. we'll pull out the checkbook registers. and i will show you what it looks like to not be able to afford to give any more, but do it anyway.