You can’t out-give God.  Sorry for the cliche, but it’s true.

Before Jennifer and I got married we had ‘the talk’.  Not the sex talk the money talk.  And things didn’t add up.  Too much month at the end of the money.  But after much weeping and nashing of teeth we proceeded with the wedding – and with tithing.  10% right off the top.  No questions asked.

Now my wife and I made a whopping 45K a year, maybe that.  And while in TX we paid off her student loans, a car, bought an old beat up pickup with cash (which I’m still bitter we sold before moving), all of our credit cards, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Trust me it was a lot.  But we were paying off stuff like mad.

Fast-forward to 2007-2008.  Each year we would try to increase our giving by some amount, 1/2%, 1%, something.  Then we started having babies. :0)  And babies cost money.  We thought, ‘well God would want us out of debt first, right?’  So we decreased our giving so we could sock it towards debt.  It wasn’t a lot.  It just took us back to 10%.  Funny thing happened.  Money felt tighter.  So we re-evaluated.  And decided to go back to God’s math.  Guess what.  Money doesn’t feel as tight as before.  Oh trust me.  We still budget, and shift, and shuffle, and pinch pennies.  But in the end we realized that when God is first in the finances everything else falls into place.

If you’re not giving 10% off the top I challenge you to START there.  Sure its a jolt to the system.  But when you do it as long as I have it seems normal (and you’ll swear by it to all of the doubters).  I promise the math doesn’t make sense.  But is it supposed to?  Instead, maybe God’s math is supposed to do just that – make you look at God.