Economy

Meditation
Malachi 3:10—“Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this way,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.”

We miss the opportunity to see God dynamically minister if we insist in attaining personal security.  In the Scripture noted above, the Jews were withholding from God their assets and God accused them of robbing Him.  If we are afraid to give to God because it threatens our financial comfort are we any less guilty of spiritual thievery?  If every believer truly tithed ten percent, the church would not have financial woes.  Today the demonstration of this truth is rarely found in Christendom but plainly obvious in the Mormon cult where obedient tithing enables the Mormon community to take care of its followers and amass a financial fortune which enables them to propagate their false teaching worldwide. 

God actually calls for us to test Him by wholeheartedly giving to His work.  Do you know of any person who has ever been able to out-give God?  Go ahead! Ask God what He would have you do with your resources.  Put Him to the test in this matter.  Lay aside an insistence on self-reliance.  Get ready to see God do the spectacular!  You’ll reach a new spiritual dimension in faith.  Once you see God is faithful self-reliance is revealed for its true tenebrific state.  The path to spiritual enrichment begins by letting go not by storing up. "Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest; then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9,10).  
 
Inspiration
We have deified economy, placed insurance and economy on the throne, consequently we will do nothing on the line of adventure or extravagance.  To use the word economy in connection with God is to belittle and misunderstand Him . . . You cannot lay up for a rainy day and justify it in the light of Jesus Christ's teaching.  We are not Christians at heart, we don't believe in the wisdom of God, but only in our own.  We go in for insurance and economy and speculation, everything that makes us secure in our own wisdom.—Oswald Chambers in Shade 0f His Hand
The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
 
©1997 Daniel York  ARR. Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  If you would like to receive these devotionals go to www.firstcause.org and click on the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.      
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)