A Real Example This Day Today of God's Type of Giving

Someone made a comment about my entry of Wednesday August 24. The comment was related to where I said "God does not need anyone's money." The comment was to explain why the concept of tithing is so rampant.

Tithing today is an unintended con game by men who do not know their Bible, who may not want to know their Bible, and who Paul called "disorderly" in II Thessalonians 3:6-15.

To say that tithing is a requirement and that we should turn a tenth of our income over to our pastor in the offering plate we have to commit the blasphemy of saying that God changed his mind. First there are three tithes: the tithe for the festivals, the tithe to maintain the Levites and the temple and the tithe every three years for the poor. That's 23 1/3 percent. More important is that the Bible is quite clear that the tithe is to be paid to the Levites, the sons of Levi, who own nothing. Does your pastor claim to be a descendent of Levi? Does your pastor own any property in his own name? If he is so concerned about fulfilling the Bible, does he perform the required blood sacrifices at the altar? If he answers no to any of these questions, where is his scriptural basis to change the tithe to 10%, have it paid to him so that he does not have to get a job to support himself, and possibly use your tithe to buy luxuries for himself? If the duty of the Levite has been transferred to him why does he not do the other duties of the Levites that are closely tied to the tithing? What is his scriptural basis for doing the Levitical duty of collecting the tithes yet changing the requirement of owning nothing?

The Macedonians were desirous, quite possibly after much prayer, of giving money to Paul to aid in Jerusalem. There was no sermon of requirement to do so. We do not know the whole story but we do know that the Macedonians were poor and quite likely their own needs were met in ways that were miraculous but which could have been explained away as something that would have happened anyway.

Today I went to a hot air balloon festival in Loveland Colorado. I went with my daughter, her husband Matt, and the children Amber, age 10 and Jacob almost 2. We arrived early. Many people were already there. A truck with a balloon trailer arrived and parked right in front of us. The driver, a balloon pilot, did not see his ground crew. He asked for someone to help. Matt volunteered. The man could have waited for his crew or he could have searched for people who had already volunteered to help. Matt got in the truck and he and the pilot went to another part of the park. After watching a balloon ascend, Amber walked over to where Matt was helping. The pilot made an offer to take Amber in the balloon. There was himself and another adult. He did not have room for another adult due to weight yet he could take a child. Amber got her first balloon ride. Let's look closely at what happened.

1. Balloon rides were being offered for $200. This man was not selling rides because he was sponsored to display an ad.
2. There were volunteers already on a list to assist as volunteer ground crews.
3. This pilot happened to stop right in front of us. He needed help. There were 14 other pilots there.
4. Matt volunteered with no other motive than to be of assistance where he could. He gave of his ability to move things with his hands.
5. Matt was able to provide an opportunity for Amber that was worth $200 yet the pilot did not lose as he had already been paid.
6. Amber walked over to that balloon rather than staying with the rest of us. Normally she might not have done that. Had she not gone over to be with Matt the balloon pilot would not have known of her.

It is possible to explain away these circumstances as coincidence and chance. I believe that God provided a giving opportunity for both Matt and the balloon pilot. This is an example of God's type of giving. Matt could have easily paid for her seat but of all the 15 balloons a seat on this balloon was not for sale at any price.

This example also becomes a way of answering the person who made the comment.

David Sneed

God's Economy: Poverty + Joy = Adequate $

Look at II Corinthians 8:2. In King James it reads "How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their generosity." 


What was going on was that Paul was telling the Corinthians about the Macedonians. Even though they had little they wanted to give to aid the people at Jerusalem who had lost all to the Romans. 


Paul was not commanding them to give. That would have been a type of taxation. The people were actually begging Paul to take their offerings. The actual amount they had to give was not large. These people gave according to their ability. 


God does not need anyone's money. The One who spoke the world into existence can speak anything into existence at any time. 


When giving is done freely the resource is adequate to meet the needs. 


We all know what happens to taxes. Someone once said that government is taking money from the left pocket, transferring it to the right and losing half of it on the way. Taxes are never adequate to meet needs. 


Giving from the heart is God's plan. And it is not just money. Giving can be of whatever resource one may have. Yes this is a great mystery. 

David Sneed

God's Economics vs Man's Economics

Economics is defined as the science of matching unlimited needs with limited resources.

In a simple way we can all understand that no matter how much money is available there is never enough to buy what we want. There is something worse.

We all know people who want more and more money. They give up their life for the accumulation of money. They have much more money than they can ever spend.

God's economy works differently. God's economics is defined as the matching of unlimited resources with what is actually needed.

In the Bible in II Kings 4:1-17 we have the story of the widow with a great need. Her husband had died. There was an unpaid debt and the creditor was planning to take her two sons to work off the debt. She cried out to Elisha. He asked what she wanted him to do. She told him that all she had was a pot of oil. Elisha told her to go and borrow empty vessels from her neighbors. "Borrow not a few" he said. Then he told her to go into her house, shut the door and begin to fill the vessels from her pot. She filled them all. When all the vessels were filled her pot was still full. She went to Elisha and he told her to sell the oil, pay the debt and then live off the rest. This woman first had a need. She had nothing to fill that need. She was desperate when she went to Elisha who she knew was a man of God. She was in dependence on her husband's fear of the Lord. She did as she was instructed and was delivered. It is important to note that she stopped borrowing vessels before greed set in. Then she was alone in her house, away from Elisha, and alone with God. There with what resource she had God dealt with her need.

Why is that principle so difficult to understand and to obey? We live in fear of not having enough money. Money becomes our deliverer. Government exploits that knowledge by promising us more money, money that can only be obtained by taking from someone else.

 God is our Provider if we but trust Him. He can do the impossible if we seek Him and not view Him as a genie in a pot ready to grant our wishes. He can take whatever resources we have and multiply them if we but bring those resources to Him and seek Him in faith.

David Sneed

Are You Dealing with Effects Rather Than Causes?

Today my wife and I read I Kings Chapter 18. It is long but a captivating story.

Ahab was a man who dealt with effects and not causes. He solved problem symptoms and accused Elijah of making the problems.

In this chapter we see that Elijah was confident of his God and of his relationship with God. He knew that his God was the only God. He did not do as many preachers do today. He did not say that all religions are valid. He did not do comparative sermons. He did not suggest tolerance. Elijah was not looking for the approval of men.

What Elijah did was set up a test of which God was real. When Baal did not respond he mocked those who believed in Baal. At the end he killed the priests of Baal.

I won't spoil it for you but go read the chapter and think of how confident you are in solutions that you have been sold. Look at what Ahab was doing. Look at the steps that Elijah took and commanded. Think of what you believe about God. If Jesus is the one are you putting all of your confidence in His words? Or are you worshipping other gods and following them?

David Sneed

Why Giving is Better

There is a story in the Financial Times of Aug 20/21 titled "The 600 Million Dollar Man." It is about Robert Wilson who has given away $600 million in the past 25 years much of it to conservation and preservation. Why conservation and preservation? "The idea of 'But for my money it would be gone forever' appeals," he says.

"Yabbut he has a lot of money," many will say. Let's try it another way.

Megan McArdle is a writer for the Atlantic. In one of her recent articles she wrote "When I was interviewing for my first job with the Economist, they asked me flat out why an MBA would be wiling to take a job that paid $40,000, Part of the answer was, of course, that I needed a job. But that's not what I said. What I was was also true: 'I'm only going to be on the planet for a few short years. I want to do something that's a lot more important to me than making money.' I got the job. It now occurs to me that I might not, if my answer had sounded anything like I need a job."

By giving we can get so much more.

David Sneed

How to Bargain With Life

This is an oldie. Author unknown.

"I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn,dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid."

Why the Golden Rule?

Everyone knows the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This rule appears in eight religions. Why should we do this?

Go to Luke 6:38 in the Bible. "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."

Plain and simple whatever you do unto others will be done unto you only more so.

David Sneed

Free Education Plan

There is a free education plan that was used by George Washington Carver to be able to know all about peanuts and bring to the world uses of peanuts that had not been known.

The plan is succinctly described in the Bible in Jeremiah 33:3:

"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. "

David Sneed

Passing Through Deep Waters

Often in life the floodgates of distress are suddenly opened and we are overwhelmed by trials. We echo with new understanding the words of the psalmist as he exclaimed in anxiety, "Save me, O God for the waters are come in unto my soul." (Psalms 69:1) Yet we need not fear for our loving Heavenly Father holds the waters in the hollow of His hand. He measures them out in sufficient quantities to cleanse us, but He will never allow them to drown us. In our time of grief, we are never without His abiding presence and constant help.

Not long after arriving in the New Hebrides as a pioneer missionary, John G Paton and his wife rejoiced in the coming of a baby son to gladden their home. But the joy was short-lived. Soon death took both his wife and child, and Dr Paton had to dig their graves and bury his loved ones with his own hands. In writing of this experience he testified, "If it had not been for Jesus and the fellowship and grace He afforded me, I am certain I would have gone mad or died of grief beside their lonely graves." Marvelously strengthened from above, the bereaved servant of God found that the promises of the Word were able to sustain him through the heartache and sorrow of his tragic loss.

Have you been going through deep waters, Christian? The Lord is near and He beckons you to walk close to Him. His sovereign purpose in these trials is not to let you drown but to help you pass through the waters of woe and on to higher ground! H.G.B

In His Word there is a promise
Like the promise in the bow
That however deep the waters
They shall never overflow.
Anon.

There is nothing like the high tide of trial to test our spiritual stature.

This particular piece helped to sustain my wife and me during a time of grief many years back.

David Sneed

Is this the Great Commission in Practice?

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19, did he intend that we dress up dark-skinned people in warm climates in coats and ties, and teach them to sing white country gospel songs from the 50s in English?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikpiRn0MyXg

Good Question from Jay Leno

"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control,
mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms 
tearing up the country from one end to another,
and with the threat of swine flu 
and terrorist attacks.
Are we sure this is a good time 
to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"



Jay Leno

This Does Not Bother Me As A Christian

I read something in a letter to the Editor in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on July 29, 2011. It could all be false. I don't know. It's part of a subject that bothers many Americans, Christian and otherwise.

According to the letter, one Jean Paul Ludwig emigrated from France to the United States in 1924. About March of 1977, while he was residing in Connecticut, Ludwig was assigned social security number 042-68-4425. Several of my children got their social security cards in Connecticut and their cards have the same first three digits. The numbers are assigned based on location where issued. This Ludwig spent the last few months of his life living in Hawaii. He never collected social security benefits and so his death was not reported to Social Security. One Madalyn Payne Dunham worked in the Probate Office in the Honolulu Hawaii Courthouse and had access to the social security numbers of the deceased. Dunham is the grandmother of Barak Obama. Obama, according to the letter, has that same social security number though he never lived in Connecticut. Did his grandmother provide him a number because he could not get one?  If Obama has a social security number starting with 042, he could explain. Investigations of this are not being done officially. Eyes are blinded for a reason. As a Christian I don't have a problem with this.

Good or bad, Obama and anyone else can only be President if God allows it to be. There is good reason to believe that our elected officials of both parties are leading us to ruin by voting us money from the public treasury albeit borrowed money. There is some reason to believe that Obama is leading the United States to ruin at a faster rate than anyone else might do it. If it is so it is not because of him being a legal citizen or an illegal alien but of God allowing him to be in that position. The United States could well be under judgment. The uniqueness of all the circumstances around Obama could possibly be so that God is letting us to know that He allowed it. If this is so then God may have given us enough clues so that we could take steps to deal with our sins before total destruction ensues. God gave Ninevah a second chance.

Jonah arrived in Ninevah and let the people there know that God would destroy them in 40 days. The people believed God and were spared because they repented.

The Northern Kingdom of Judah was destroyed by the Assyrians because God allowed it to be.

I cannot predict the future nor do I know God's plan for the United States. I do know that if God does not judge the United States then perhaps He owes apologies to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the Northern Kingdom of Judah and to others.

If Obama leaves The United States in ruin, as Clint Eastwood in the High Plains Drifter did to the town that did not repent, history could well show that the United States had the opportunity and the legal means to stop it.

David Sneed