My Kingdom for a widow’s mite!

I know this; it is me, myself, and I that puts God in a situation where he must discipline me from time to time and I have no one to blame for the consequences of my rebellion and disobedience.  Unlike Eve, I’m not pointing a finger of blame at my spouse or at that sly ol serpent – NOPE, it’s nobody’s fault but my own -each and every time.  

What I’m “fixing” to tell you can easily be misunderstood and misinterpreted, but let me plainly say, I am not advocating anyone do things the way I do things.  I’m just trying to share something I’ve learned about myself and where I am in my personal relationship with Christ. So don’t take this as me saying, you should do like I do, because that’s not what I’m communicating here, whatsoever.

As some of you know, before I started up my two businesses I had concluded that for the rest of my life I was no longer going to live by the 10% tithe rule.  I felt it no longer applied to my life, and I just couldn’t believe that it reflected what the Holy Spirit was calling me to do.  I started really paying attention to the true lesson from the story Jesus told about the widow woman putting her two measly coins in the temple's offering plate. He explained how much more it was considered to be, because she didn't give out of her abundance, as others had done, yet rather from her heart.   I thought if the Warren Buffets and the Bill Gates of the world could vow to give 50% of their wealth away to help others then certainly I should be willing to do the same.   Why should I only give 10% when I have the potential to give so much more to do God’s work?

Now I admit, that would've made a lot more sense if I had been rich at the time.  That revelation per se` came at a time when I had been unemployed for 9 months and was drawing about $249 per week in unemployment benefits.   Not exactly the breeding ground for benevolence, wouldn't you agree?    But, I knew that I knew that I knew this was what God was calling me to do.  Dale on the other hand just kinda ignored my craziness since it seemed harmless at the time because we had NO MONEY to begin with.  I suspect she realized at that point she had married a certifiable nut job, but she has stuck with me anyway.  She did agree, it was God’s money to begin with, and not merely ours to do as we please with it.

Soon afterwards I opened my investigation business and things began to take off.  A year later I started up a second company, a bail bonding business and things really began to hop, as they say.   This was 2009 / 2010 and even though our economy was still very much in ruins, now all of a sudden that 50% thing was starting to involve REAL money.  I guess it’s one thing to let go of $50 to $200 occasionally, but forking over $500 to $2,000 at a time - that’s when things can get a bit testy in how committed we are to something.   I can honestly say through the good weeks and bad for nearly five years now, we’ve held firm to our mark at the 50% line, and because of it today our bank accounts are still very unimpressive and our lifestyle is pretty much lackluster. Not exactly the formula many use to judge success by I suppose.

Again let me state, I’m in no way advocating anyone use this as their benchmark for their own finances, it’s merely our story.  This I truly believe though; if our desire to obtain prosperity is for any reason other than to share it unselfishly with others, then our gospel is fundamentally wrong.

One Sunday morning not long after I began my business I made the decision to bond a guy out that I believed was a bit higher risk that what I was comfortable bonding.  It scared me to some degree because of what effect the potential loss would have on us, but for whatever reason I believed it was the right decision at the time.   It was a fairly large bond, so my fee was fairly large as well. As I was leaving the jail and trying to make it to church on time the thought came sweeping into my mind that I was simply going to give ALL the money I had just made to God and ask that he protects me from any loss with this bond.  That’s exactly what I did.  I put every single $100 bill in the offering plate, and it gave me a huge sense of relief.  I knew I was still responsible for the bond, but from that moment on I never worried about it again.  

Soon that took on the role as a covenant between God and me.   Whatever cash I had on me when the offering was taken up on Sunday, I gave.  Regardless if it was at our home church or one we were visiting for the first time - all our cash, every time.   A pretty simple plan to follow, huh?  

We kept giving, and God kept providing, just as His word promises. Over and over it happened – we’ve never missed a meal and have never been late paying a bill.  As the old saying goes, He out gives us time and time again.  Giving 50% of our income away including the Sunday morning cash has literally changed our lives in a very positive way.  It has given us financial freedom that I don’t believe we would have found any other way.  Dale has always been very conservative financially and I’ve always been far too liberal and through this we’ve both been able to grow quite a bit in the area of finances.  NO were not rich, YES, we still have bills to pay, and NO we don’t loan people money (so don’t even ask) LOL.  What we do, do is invest in people’s life where and when the Holy Spirit leads.  

Back to the cash deal; there have been weeks where we’ve given $3 and some weeks it was in the thousands.  Again, it sounds crazy, but it gives me such a sense of relief not to hang onto that cash on Sunday mornings.   Last year this covenant was tested pretty severely as Dale was forced to finally quit work altogether, thus further reducing her income to about half of what it was when we first met.  The state of Alabama decided they wanted an even bigger piece of the bail bonding pie and invoked additional fees and taxes.  In turn the number of bonds available to companies like mine was drastically cut and by the end of the year I had only made about a third of the revenue from bonding as I had just two years earlier.   Things got really tight as you can imagine.   

If you’re a business person you know the hard truth in the fact that regardless how much money comes in each month, there’s always a certain amount of expenses you have to cover to stay afloat - and stay afloat is about all we did the last six months of 2013.  Crazy as it sounds we still gave away 50% of what we took in, but unlike prior years the amount of cash, used cars, groceries, clothing, and number of months we paid utility bills for others became less and less.  As I learned early on in school, 50% of nothing is still nothing.  Fortunately, God gave us more than nothing last year!  He continued to provide our needs, and we continued to help others with theirs. 

2014 started out with a drastically different trend.  From New Year’s Day right up through the end of April my bail bonding business was rocking and a rolling once again.  I did as many bonds in the first 4 months of this year as I had done in the last 7 months of 2013.  What a relief it was!  Financial accountability naturally comes with a certain amount of stress regardless whether you “worry” about it or not, so to be able to have a little breathing room was a welcomed change.   

Then I did the unthinkable, I broke my covenant with God.  Even though I had not done it during any of the tough times we had seen over the past four years, for whatever reason on the last Sunday of April I did.    That day I had a pretty good amount of cash in my pocket when I got to church and I purposefully and willfully refused to give it to God because I decided I wanted to do something else with it. Seems harmless on the surface doesn't it? After all, we were still giving away 50% of everything I make, why can’t I, for once just keep this little bit of cash for something I wanted to do with it?    

What harm could that do, I thought to myself; I’ll get back on track next week and everything will be fine.  Things are going well.  I’m doing plenty of bonds. He’ll bless me with a another good week and I’ll do what I've done for four years now and everything will be fine – God doesn't care, He’s got plenty of money anyways.

"Not so fast" was the answer that came back - the month of May was the worst month I've had in business in five years.   I would’ve saved money by staying home in bed every day.  It was a financial disaster!  To go from boom to bust overnight really put things back into perspective for me.   There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think back to that Sunday morning I broke the covenant I had made with God.  If only I had not done that.  If only I had done like I had done so many Sunday’s before – good weeks and bad.  I had never once held on to what wasn't mine, but now I had.  

Regardless what anyone else thinks or whatever their interpretation of scriptures is, I know for a fact what I did was wrong for me in my situation, and the consequences were very real. 

Last Saturday morning I was drinking a cup of coffee at the beginning of the day and I thought about this whole situation again.  I told myself I would never again hold back from God what I had promised to give Him.  That very day He blessed me with a couple of bonds and all of a sudden I had quite a bit of cash in my pocket.  This next thing, I really wish I didn't have to admit, but that very same night I thought; man, I've got to get this money in the bank first thing Monday morning before our bills come due.   I decided I would put some of it in the offering (about 10% in tithes for that week) and everything else would go to paying bills, since we've been so short for a whole month now.  I couldn't even keep it together for a full day!  Yuk, I'm so easily led astray sometimes!   I hate that!   

About 4am last Sunday morning the Holy Spirit woke me up and said; put ALL of the money in the offering, just as you had promised to do.  I even envisioned myself placing the money in the envelope and putting it in the box at church.  It was so real, so unmistakable.  So, last Sunday I did just that, and then for the first time I confessed to Dale what I had done a month ago and what I had just done that morning.  As always, she was supportive and encouraged me, what a blessing her patience with me is.

I really wish I had one of those feel-good endings for this journal entry, that I could tell you how God has blessed me with a huge pile of money this week, but that would not be true.  It’s been a good week, but not one of those really good weeks we've had in the past.  Nevertheless, its been one in which I know He has provided everything we've received and needed.  God has certainly blessed us again and again as He always has, and I can say once again; we haven’t missed a meal or a bill.  I'll continue to keep my head down, work hard, listen to the Holy Spirit and give God the praise and the glory for all that He is doing!

Here's the lesson in all of this:  Making a covenant with God in any area of our lives is a very serious commitment.  Whether its with our finances, time, talent, giving up an addiction, or whatever it might be - we must take it very serious, God does! Now, I’m not talking about one of those early-morning, porcelain-hugging hang overs where you promise God if he’ll just stop the puking you will never drink again, or at least not until the weekend.  

No, I’m talking about making a real commitment to Him in an area of our lives where we know for a fact He is either calling us out of something old or calling us into something new.  One of those life-changing commitments that we know in our spirit you and God are in agreement.   I found out, when you break that type of covenant, as I did, regardless the reason you use as justification, there’s consequences to follow, and you have no one to blame but yourself.  As with the widow’s mites, just as it was with why Cain killed Abel, it’s never ever been about the amount you give, or really even about what it is giving - yet rather, its always been about what’s in the heart of the giver!   doug