Offer Your First-fruits to the Lord

Scripture: Leviticus 26:3-5

'If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, then I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. 'Indeed, your threshing will last for you until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until sowing time. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in your land.

Insights: In today’s verses we see the Lord promising to bless the people in their agricultural or financial realm.  On Sunday I used this as a spring board to express our side of this equation and our blessing the Lord with our finances.  In other words, God requires we give Him the first-fruit of the produce we receive from His blessing of abundant crops.  A first-fruit starts at ten percent of our gross income.  Now I emphasis that it starts here, because the reality is we are living under the age of grace and ought to regularly seek the Father out and ask Him if we ought to give more.  In fact, we ought to get to the place where we are living on the minimal amount and giving the majority of our income to the Lord for the advancement of His kingdom.  The Lord expects these first-fruits as a test on our obedience to Him, as well as, a reflection of our trust in Him.  There are going to be times, Beloved, when it makes no sense whatsoever to tithe to the Lord, but it is what the Lord requires.  Your actions, in that situation, are going to prove whether or not you believe the Lord is going to be faithful.  If you obediently give, then you are proving your faith.  If you say, things are too tight, I can’t afford to give, then you are still proving your faith.  In this later case, you are proving your lack of faith.  Beloved, let me challenge you to be a blessing to the Lord and faithfully give your first-fruit tithe to the Master.  You will be better off for it in the long run, even if it does not make sense right now.

Questions:

1. Are you withholding your first-fruits from the Lord?
2. Do you understand the requirement of tithing is actually a testing of your faith?

Prayer: Father, all that I have belongs to You.  Help me Lord to live my life in complete and total obedience to You.  May my financial stewardship show this kind of faithfulness to You.  Amen.