Did you know that tithing existed before the law, was a part of the law, and still has benefits after the fulfillment of the law? In part 12 of How to Attack Lack, Ashley and Carlie explain the process of tithing through faith in detail.
Transcription
Announcer: Why live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life. Welcome to the Abundant Life Program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.
Ashley: Hello and welcome to Abundant Life. Thank you for joining us today. We’re right in the middle of a series. We’re talking about how to attack lack in your life. Lack in your finances in particular. We believe God wants us prosperous. God wants you prosperous. He’s paid the price for your financial prosperity, but sometimes we don’t see it manifest in the day to day. Sometimes we still have lack in our finances. Sometimes our month is longer than our paycheck, if you know what I mean. And we want to find out why that is. And we want to attack that lack. We believe lack is not godly. We believe lack is not God’s best. So we want to make sure we have no lack in any area.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: That’s God’s will for us.
Carlie: That’s good news.
Ashley: So if you’ve missed previous programs, then I would really encourage you to get those because we’ve covered a lot of stuff. Now we’ve covered a lot of things to do with lack and attacking lack and prosperity, and about how it’s God’s will for you to prosper. And, it’s God’s will for you to prosper and be in health. It’s God’s will for you to have an abundance for every good work so that you’re able to give and help other people. That’s God’s will for you. And if you’ve never had that before, then I’m telling you that’s the truth. It’s God’s will for you to prosper. He paid the price for it, Second Corinthians 8:9, “Jesus paid the price for your prosperity, and he wants you to not only prosper yourself personally, but also have an abundance for every good work, have in abundance to give others.” Deuteronomy 28:8, sorry Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 28:8 is a good verse-
Carlie: That’s a great one.
Ashley: … talking about blessed in your store houses. But we’re talking about Deuteronomy 8:18 says that, what does it say?
It says, “Remember the Lord, your God.”
Carlie: It says the power to get wealth.
Ashley: “Remember the Lord your God because it’s He who gives you the power to get wealth.” So God has given you the power to get wealth that he may establish his covenant. So really the power to get wealth is about establishing God’s covenant and it’s about prospering so that we’ll have some to give away. We’ll have an abundance to get away. And that’s what we’re looking at at the moment. We’re right in the middle of talking about giving, the different types of giving and about how powerful giving is.
Giving really is key. We’ve already looked at the work of your hand and how the work of our hands is now blessed. And what we do is blessed. Really looked at stewardship and about how we steward what we already have, how we look after the small things, praise God and God will give us more and how we look after what’s already coming into us, our income, if you like, how we’re steward in that is very important, not consuming everything that comes in.
So we really looked at the work of our hand. We’ve looked at stewardship. Now we’re looking at giving. Probably the most important part of prospering. But all three of those things we [inaudible] in. But the giving part, if you don’t understand the giving part, then it can be dangerous. I know a lot of people that just give everything away and they say, “Why isn’t God blessing me? I give everything away.” And part of that can be laziness. It can be easy. I’ve been there, I’d just give and God’s going to give back to me and it’s going to be okay.
Carlie: You twist the hand of God.
Ashley: It’s almost like you’re blackmailing God, and that is not good. And there’s more to it than just giving everything away. In fact, God says, “He gives seed to sow, but also bread to eat.” And if you don’t understand what’s bread for you to eat, what’s his provision for your needs, and then what seed to sow, then you can short circuit the system, and I’ve already talked about this, but you don’t eat seed. You’re going to be hungry again. And you don’t want to sow bread. It’s going to rot. So you want to make sure you eat your bread and sow your seed. And at the moment we talk about tithing and about how the tithe was established before the law and the tithe was part of the law. And now the tithe is still good after the law. So before the law, we looked at two verses, we looked in Genesis. I believe it’s 28, Genesis 28, Genesis 14, sorry. In Genesis 14, where Abraham willingly gave a tithe to Melchizedeck. So Melchizedeck turned up on the scene and Abraham gave him 10%.
That was established. That was before the law. And then again, we looked at Genesis 28 and in Genesis chapter 28, Jacob gave a tithe and he actually made a vow to God and said, “God, I’m going to give you 10%, whatever you give me.” So there’s two incidences where there’s clearly established the principle of tithing before the law, then tithing was part of the law. We looked at Malachi 3 and about how tithing was part of the law. And if you didn’t tithe, then there was a curse if you didn’t tithe. And that was part of the law. But now Jesus redeemed us from the law, praise God, Galatians 3:13, “We have redeemed from the law.” And now if we tithe now after the law, we get all the benefits of tithing without any of the downside, if you’d like. So tithing has been established before the law, was part of the law, but is still good after the law.
We also talked about tithing, is it takes faith to tithe. And tithing is something that you have to do by faith. Because if you don’t believe there’s a God, if you don’t believe this stuff works, then why would you tithe? There’s no logical reason to tithe. If you need extra money, why would you give 10% or more away? 90% is less than a 100%, but not in God’s economy. In God’s economy, when you tithe, what you’re doing is, is you’re just saying, “God, I’m seeking you first. I’m trusting you in my finances.” And then you’re allowing God, you’re giving God permission into your finances. And he will increase you and prosper you. In fact, people say, you robbed God, Malachi 3 talks about how you rob God, if you don’t tithe.
And I tell people, “You know what? If you don’t tithe, you’re robbing God.”
Carlie: [inaudible].
Ashley: Sometimes, okay, amen. You have to finish it off, right? You’re robbing God of the opportunity of blessing you. We have to give God permission to bless us in our lives. It’s not automatic. God’s given us free will. God won’t save you against your will. He won’t heal you against your will. And he won’t bless you in your finances against your will without your permission. So although God is all powerful, and I totally believe that, he’s not all controlling and he’s given mankind free will. Which is amazing when you think about it, he’s actually chosen to give us free will. And part of that is we have to invite God into our finances. And that’s one of the powerful things about tithing. You are inviting God into your finances.
You’re saying, “God, I want you to be first place. I want to make you the priority of my finances. I want to honor you with my money. I want to honor you in every area of my life. And money is a great reflection of our honor for people. I tell people, if you want to find out where the passion is or where the heart is, then look at their finances. How are they spending their finances? In fact, Jesus put it this way. He said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” So you can look at someone’s bank account and find out where their treasure is, where’s their heart, wherever they put their treasure, that’s where their hearts at, where they spending money on, that’s where their heart’s at. And we just talked earlier about, we love to travel.
Well travel costs money. So some of their money goes towards travel. That means that we put a priority on travel. We like to travel. We like restaurants. So my money goes to restaurants. We like eating different kinds of food. So you can see that there’s some… Now, if you’re a grandparent, I bet you, I could look at your bank account and I’d see that your money has gone towards your grandkids, because you love your grandkids. So where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, and on a much… They’re just small examples, but in a much bigger scale, if your heart is really with the Lord, if you really want to honor God, and you really want to give back to God, then you would want to tithe. You’d want to give to God, because it’s showing that you’re putting an emphasis on your relationship with him.
And God’s relational. God doesn’t need your money. God doesn’t even use money in heaven. What is this is about? This is about connecting with God at a heart level and I don’t fully understand how this works, but I do know this, our hearts and our finances are connected and where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. And that’s why it’s so powerful when we give to God, it’s part of worship. And it’s powerful when we do that because it’s the action to our faith. James puts it this way, he says, “Faith without works or faith without corresponding actions you could say, is dead.” And I believe that tithing is the corresponding action to trusting God with your finances. We never want to have any type of condemnation or judging people if you don’t tithe and whatever.
It’s not about that, God’s mind is made up about you. He loves you. He’s accepted you as his child. So this is not about you got to please God or anything like that. This is about you. This is going to help you. Tithe is not about God. God is the biggest giver. This is about you. Paul puts it this way in Philippians 4:17. He says, “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that it bounced your account.” See, giving is more to do with the giver than it is about the recipient. And that’s why God wants us to tithe, because he wants to bless us. Even in the law, even when tithing was part of the law, the emphasis of the tithe was on God blessing us.
He says, “i’ll open up the windows of heaven, and I’ll bless you so much that you won’t be able to contain it.” So the emphasis was always on God getting stuff to us, not God taking from us. It was always about God trying to get more to us. So that’s where we looked at, at the tithe, about how it was before the law, how it’s still good after the law. We looked at the tithe is faith based, it takes faith to tithe, it’s also an equal playing field. The good thing about the tithe is whether you make a million dollars a year, or if you make a thousand dollars a year, it’s the same percentage. It’s the same amount if you like, that you’re given, you’re given the same percentage. So everyone can tithe and everyone can do this.
And now today, I want to cover some practical things. Some of the questions we’ve had come in about tithing, and we’re going to answer some of those questions. Some of the common things. Frequently asked questions-
Carlie: Frequently asked questions.
Ashley: … about the tithe, and practicalities about the tithe. But one of the first things people ask is, where should I tithe? Where should I tithe? Now, this is interesting. Senior pastors or pastors of churches, always they’re out here saying, “You’ve got to tithe up your local church. You must tithe your local church.” And then teachers and traveling evangelists and people that travel. They always say, you’ve got to tithe where you’re fed. And there’s always this tension, like, do I tithe to my church or do I tithe off where I’m fed? And it’s interesting that obviously they’re going to emphasize those different angles because the pastors want you to give in the churches and the teachers want to give to the teaching ministries.
Here’s what I believe. I believe you should be fed at your church. If you’re fed at your church, then there’s no problem. You tithe to your church.
Carlie: So what happens if you’re in a church that’s not feeding you?
Ashley: Why? Why are you in that church?
Carlie: That’s a good question.
Ashley: Exactly. So I would encourage people. And I’m not telling people to leave their church or anything. I’m just saying really you should be in a church that’s life-giving. If you’re not in a church that’s life giving, and I know a lot of people, this is a different subject. So I don’t to go into this too much. But if you’re in a church, I hear from people that say, “Well, I’m in the church and we’re going to change the church from the pews.” That’s almost impossible. What that usually leads to is a church split or rebellion. It’s really difficult to change a church being there as just a member of the congregation.
Carlie: You don’t have the authority to do that.
Ashley: You don’t have the authority to do that. The pastors have the authority to do that, not you. So I wouldn’t go to a church trying to change that church. Now, if there’s literally no local church to you that’s life-giving, and it doesn’t have to have everything perfect. Here’s the other mistake people make, when it comes to choosing churches, they want everything perfect. And they’re like, “Well I can’t go to this church, they don’t believe it’s God’s will to always heal instantly so how can I go to that church?” Or “I can’t go to this church. They don’t believe that there’s…” And they almost split hairs.
Now are these things important? Yes. They’re very important. I’m not going to compromise. If you ask me, I’m going to tell you. It’s God’s will to heal every time. God’s a good God. And he wants you healed. He wants you well, every time no exceptions. Every person that come to Jesus for healing was healed every time, full stop. But I can work with people and I can be a part of a church that might not believe that thing because everything else they’ve got [crosstalk] they believe in Jesus. Amen. They believe in Jesus. They believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, they believe the word of God. They believe the basics. And we can do a whole series of one of the basics.
Carlie: I mean I’m sure that we don’t agree with everybody’s opinion in our family. I’m sure we have differences in our family. That doesn’t mean we don’t love it and don’t love one another. And I’m just a big believer in, if you want to know what church to go to, you pray and ask the holy spirit, he’ll show you.
Ashley: That’s novel.
Carlie: How about we do that rather than consumer shopping churches and figuring out, grading them, doing the church rotations. And when I don’t like the worship at that one, but the word’s pretty good, but their coffee sucks. [crosstalk]. I mean, how about we just go to the church that God shows us to go to. And then we go with the attitude of being a blessing. If we go to church with the attitude of being a blessing, anything that we receive, in the way of being fed as sheep, if you like, is a bonus.
But remember we need to be Christ dependent, not codependent. And if we are relying on a pastor of a church to feed us, and that’s the only food that we get, that’s pretty sorry. We have our own relationship with Jesus and we can get everything for life and godliness directly from that relationship. So when we go to church that takes all the pressure off. We don’t have to hear the perfect sermon. We don’t have to have all of our doctrine in the same place to love one another and be part of the family and be a blessing, and receive blessings, but give blessings as well.
Ashley: Amen. That’s the other side of the coin, if you like. So either way, and I agree with that. I agree, you should be trying to go to the church to give and go there as serving and to give and to plug in and things out in community and things like that. But it would be good as well if he was learning from the church, but you don’t need to rely on the past of the teacher. You can get the word of God yourself and the holy spirit can teach you yourself. But the point is, people say, “Tithe where you’re fed,” and I can understand why they’re saying that. But I personally believe the tithe it belongs in the church, but if you’re not being fed in your church, then you’d want to give to the ministry you’re being fed from.
So if you’re being fed from a ministry, if you’re watching a particular ministry, maybe you’re part of their live stream or their live Bible study, whatever they do. And you’re getting fed from that church, then I believe you should give them as well. Now here’s what I don’t believe. I don’t believe in splitting the tithe. And these are my opinion-
Carlie: This isn’t gospel.
Ashley: This isn’t gospel, don’t make a doctrine out of this, but I personally don’t believe in splitting the tithe. And I know some people they’ll split the tithe and give some to a ministry and some to the church and things. I personally don’t agree with that. That’s my own personal opinion. And maybe I’m doing myself wrong here because at Terradez Ministries-
Carlie: We’re not a church.
Ashley: We’re not a church but we receive donations and we receive partnerships. So maybe people are going to stop giving their money to us. Who knows.
Carlie: That’s big enough to deal with it.
Ashley: But anyway, my personal opinion is that the tithe should be at your church and you should be going to a good life giving church.
Carlie: And if you’ve prayed about what church to go to, then you won’t have an issue with that anyway.
Ashley: Amen. So that’s my personal opinion. Now here’s another thing that when I teach at churches as a guest speaker, I even say this from the front, a lot of the time. If there’s a guest speaker in the church, sometimes the congregation will take their tithe, they’re going to tithe for the church and they’ll split it and give some to the guest speaker and some to the church. And I tell the people from the front, I say, “I do not want any of your tithes.” And I genuinely genuinely mean it. If they’re tithing a $100, I want them to give the $100 to church. If they have extra money they want to give to me, give it to the guest speaker, to the offering. That’s fine. That’s great. But I don’t want them to get that $100 and give $20 to me and $80 to church or $50 to me and $50 the church.
The tithe should go where you give the tithe. And you shouldn’t split the tithe is my opinion. But you can give extra, remember we’re talking about tithes and offerings, not just tithes. So find out wherever you’re being fed and give there. I believe it’s right to give, sometimes I’ll listen to a message. It’s happened to me the other day, I listened to a message as a podcast, and someone was saying that I really got blessed. I received something. So I wrote a $50 check and sent it to their ministry. And so where you’re being fed, it’s good to give. So I believe you should give where you’re fed, but I think that the tithe should belong to the church, should belong to your church where you going.
That’s a storehouse. That’s where I would give the tithe is my opinion. I can’t give you a scripture or verse on that, but that’s my opinion on that. Tithe where you’re fed and that should be the church. And then another question that people have is, “Should I tithe? I’m in debt.” This interesting.
Carlie: So sometimes I’ve heard of people putting their church giving on a credit card. Well, there’s different reasons for using credit card and giving. Some people use a credit card for convenience. They pay their credit card off every month, but other people are giving off their credit card because they need a loan to pay their debts.
Ashley: So they’re actually using debt. They’re paying their tithe or they’re giving on a credit card in debt.
Carlie: Yeah, so they’re seeing the tithe like a debt and then paying it on a credit card, which gets them more into debt. So where do you stand with that?
Ashley: Okay. So first of all, I would never give out debt. So I wouldn’t go into debt to give. So if you’re getting into debt to give then there’s a problem there. Don’t do that, I wouldn’t do that. What should happen is, when your income comes in, wherever your income comes from, it doesn’t matter where, it’s not so much important where it comes from, but wherever your income comes from, I would take it 10% of that right off the top when it comes in.
Carlie: Is that what we call the first fruits because it’s the first 10%? Is that-
Ashley: No. First [crosstalk] we’ll talk about that.
Carlie: Okay.
Ashley: And then maybe this program, maybe another program, it depends on time. Now you say that, I believe first fruits is the first fruit of an abundance. So if you’ve had an increase somewhere, if you had a promotion or if you have a business deal or maybe something’s happened and there’s been a promotion, there’s been increase and you’ve seen God increase you in some area, then you give the first fruits of that, then you give that. That’s an honoring to God. That’s a recognition that, thank you God for promoting me.
Carlie: But that’s something different.
Ashley: Thank you God for giving me this deal.
Carlie: That’s different from your weekly income so just to make it simple for people. If you want a thousand dollars a month, then your priority would be take a 10th of that and then give that portion and then you live off the 90%.
Ashley: Yeah, you get that $100 and you give that. And I will do that at the beginning of the top. So there shouldn’t be a reason for you to try to have to go into debt to do that. So here’s the deal, I would tithe. We’ve always tithed all our life, since we’ve been married and even before, when I got born again at 16 and I think it was pretty soon after I got born again, I started tithing. So we’ve always tithed. So I would tithe whatever the financial situation, whatever financial situation you’re in, I would tithe. As the money comes in, I’ll take that 10% and tithe because I believe it’s a spiritual principle and I believe your 90% will do a lot better when you tithe than a 100% without tithing.
That’s what I believe. And I believe that’s scripturally based. I believe there’s one who increases, there’s one who scatters and increases more. Proverbs 11:24. We could go into all sorts of things about that. So that’s what I believe. I don’t believe in giving extra on top of the tithe, if you’re in debt. If you’re in debt, then I wouldn’t give, I would concentrate on getting out of debt. If you get out of, especially consumer debt, let me just… Man, I’m getting into things again. Anyway, I’m there now. So consumer debt versus non-consumer debt, if you like. Some people said, “We’ve have a mortgage, that mean I can’t give?” No, I believe there’s, I don’t want to say there’s good debt and bad debt because I don’t believe that. I believe debt is never God’s best. But if you have consumer debt like credit cards, store cards, high interest loans, things like that, I believe you want to get out of those quick because they-
Carlie: These are debt associated with an asset, in that case.
Ashley: No there’s no asset, the thing isn’t raising value, but a mortgage and things like that, there are assets and there are things that are going up in value. The things that you need, if you like, that you have to have. So I’m not saying if you’ve got a mortgage, you can’t give. What I’m saying is you want to get out of those consumer debts. And I would personally get out of those credit cards and high interest loans and things like that before I give extra.
Now I say all this to say, unless God tells you differently. Now there’s been times I’ve heard stories of people, they’re in debt. They give their tithe as it comes in, and then they felt God impressed them to give extra. They didn’t go into debt to give, but they gave out of the money they had extra, even though they had consumer debt because God directly, told them to do that. And if God’s given you a word to do that, then that’s fine. I don’t want to tell you not to do that. But I’m saying this as a general rule, if you’re just looking for some principles, tithe when the money comes in, whatever your financial situation is, 10% of the top when it comes in. But then any extra given, I wouldn’t do that until I get rid of those consumer debt. Get rid of those credit cards, get rid of those store cards and those high interest loans. Get rid of those.
Carlie: Yeah, you don’t want to be slave to the lender right.
Ashley: You don’t want to be slaved to the lender Proverbs 27 says that, “The borrower becomes slave to the lender.” You don’t want to do that. What you want to do is, you want to get rid of those consumer debts because ultimately you’re going to be able to give more like that. Long-term, you’re going to be able to give so much more and you’re going to be in such a healthier place. So get rid of those consumer debts, use that money to pay off consumer debts. And I believe that’s honoring God because stewardship is huge for God. And that is honoring God. Getting out of those consumer debts is honoring God as well, but tithing, I would tithe come rain or shine, snow or whatever I would tithe. But the extra offerings I wouldn’t give unless I’m out of those consumer debts, is a principle we’ve gone by.
Another question is, “What about if my spouse is unbelieving and my spouse doesn’t believe in tithing?” So this is a good question. We’ve had a lot of people ask us this, they’re in a relationship where their spouse is either an unbeliever or their spouse is just not in agreement with tithing. So either way, basically their spouse doesn’t believe in tithing and they don’t want to tithe. And this can be a point of contention, right? I mean, people could be… They can fight over this in their marriage and financial, we spoke about this in an earlier program, but financial difficulties is the number one reason for divorce in America at the moment. So we know that financial issues are a big deal in a marriage. And we don’t want this to become a rift in your marriage and something that’s going to create contention in your marriage.
So what I will say is whoever is, if husband or the wife, you can still tithe out of your portion of the money if you like. Let me explain that. So I had a friend and her husband didn’t believe in tithing, and she really wanted to tithe and she was like, “God, how can I deal with this? I really want to tithe, he doesn’t want to tithe?” First of all, you can’t tithe for them and take their money if they don’t want to do it.
Carlie: That’s not going to go well.
Ashley: That’s not going to go well. Now in love, you can tell them why you want to tithe and the benefits of tithing, and maybe they’ll come along for the ride. Maybe they’ll agree. Well, let’s give it a try and they’ll try it-
Carlie: This is bigger than just a financial issue at this point. This is talking about when we are unequally yoked is how it puts it scripturally. There’s all kinds of contentions that are going to come up because the thing that you’re passionate in your life you’re not going to be able to share that most precious relationship with your spouse. But I do believe that you can be loving and honorable and honoring to your spouse. But it comes down to getting on the same page of priorities. One thing that can be very helpful for married couples that are in this situation is to agree a budget, is to lay out together a list of priorities. And within that budget, I think we’re talking about the same person here, agree an amount of money that is fun money or whatever you want to call it, but it’s for you as individuals to spend.
So it could be 2% of your overall budget, a $100 a week, whatever it is that you’ve agreed that you’re on the same page for. And there’s an agreement that between you, you can spin. Ashley gets his portion of the money as according to the budget. And he can spend that on whatever he wants to spend it on. If he wants to go and buy new clothes, if he wants to go out to the movies, if he wants to go with his friends, whatever he wants to do is up to him, how he spends that agreed portion of money, that way you’re in unity. And then from that portion that is yours, you can give it to the church. You can-
Ashley: You can tithe off it if you want because-
Carlie: Exactly. And that way, I think you can come to a place where we are honorable to our spouse. Because here’s the thing, the devil just wants to get in and cause disunity and contention and strife. But you know what, when we love others and put that first, love never fails. And I don’t think it has. I don’t think that issue is a big enough issue to rip a marriage apart. And we’ve seen it, because it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine, right? So don’t let that become a sticking point for you.
Ashley: Amen. And unity is much more important in your marriage and this is something that people can get so hung up on this. They’re like, “I have to tithe in as…” If you can’t be in agreement in your marriage, hopefully you can be. But if you can’t be, there’s some practical things you can do. Like Carlie is saying, we don’t do this because we’re in unity. We agree. So we have one set of money. We don’t have any separate money because we’re in unity of what we do with our money together. We’ve got the same goals. We believe the same things. But if you’re not in unity and you can do that, you could use that portion, that’s yours. And you could honor God with that. And you can tithe off of that or give that away.
And remember, it’s not about the amounts we’ve got. So it’s okay if you just tithe with that, it might be a smaller amount than if it was your whole income, but you’re still honoring God in that situation. So that’s what I would say. Don’t let it cause a rift in your marriage. Don’t let it separate you, don’t let it become a point of contention. You can discuss it lovingly and openly, but that’s what I would do. I would use that separate section of money to tithe off of. That’s one way around that. That works out.
Someone also asked us, “When do you tithe?” So when do you tithe, real simple. This is First Corinthians 16:2. So First Corinthians 16:2, let me back up to verse one. First Corinthians 16 it says, “Now concerning the collection of the saints,” this is Paul talking about the offerings. “Concerning the collection of the saints as I’ve given orders to the churches of Galatia.” Paul’s talking to the churches and saying how the collection should be taken out. “So you must do also.”
So this is instructions from the apostle Paul, how to take up the tithe if you like, how to take up the offerings of the church. “On the first day of the week, let each one of you put something aside.” On the first day of the week. So I believe it’s a concept where Sunday is the first day of the week. When you go to church on Sunday, that’s a great time to give your tithes. And I wouldn’t store up your tithe. He was talking about storing up your tithes until he comes, until he can take the collection. But if you get to church once a week, it’s great to give your tithes once a week or the other way of doing it is give your tithe as the money comes in.
So if you get paid monthly, then give it once a month as the money comes in. If you get paid bi-monthly, every two weeks and then pay as it comes in. But I would pay it when it comes in. I wouldn’t stack it up because then what happens is you end up spending that portion of the tithe and they haven’t got it to give any more. So give it when it first comes in. If it comes in, you haven’t gone to church yet, then you could, like Paul said, you can lay it aside, separate that money. That’s what Paul’s getting at, separate that money. So it’s ready for when you go to church, you’ve got your tithe ready. Keep it secret.
Carlie: Just on a practical note, there are lots of churches that do a direct deposit, which means you can take your 10% straight out of your bank, out of your wages when it comes into the bank. And that’s nice, if you struggle with planning. It’s automatic, you said at one time and you just know it’s taken care of. And then what’s left in your bank account is for you to follow your budget. And then that just makes it simple.
Ashley: You can do that. And some people like doing that. I personally don’t do that.
Carlie: You like to write the physical check.
Ashley: We don’t do that. I like to write the check. I like to give in every offering. So if we’re at a conference and there’s five offerings, I’m going to give you every offering. I can’t help, but give him the offering. So that you can store it up, make sure you keep that money separate is Paul’s point here. Keep that money separate when you tithe. Remember tithing is a positive thing, tithing is about God getting stuff to you, it’s meant to be about God opening these windows of heaven to you and blessing you. So always come at it at that angle. Never come at it like it’s a debt you owe. Come at that you get to tithe and praise God. God’s going to use your 90% and is going to increase it.
Amen. So tithe is a good thing. So praise God, we’re going to come back and talk about other types of giving, about offerings, about firstfruits and about benevolence and things like that. But we want to pray for you before the program ends.
Father God, I thank you for everyone watching and listening to the show today. I thank you, they are blessed. I thank you because you going to bless them in every area of their life. I thank that you want to bless them in their health, you want to bless him in their relationships. You want to bless him in their finances. And I thank you Lord. As they’re listening today, holy spirit, you’re ministering to them. You’re giving them wisdom. And I thank you for breakthrough. I thank you for breakthrough, especially as we’re teaching them finances in the area of finance, we speak breakthrough in their finances in Jesus name. Amen.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: Praise God. Well, thanks for being with us today. We’ll be back real soon. And until next time, don’t just settle for living a normal life, when you could be living the abundant life, we’ll see you next time.
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Ashley: I want to thank the partners of Terradez Ministries. Thank you for your support. You know what? By your financial support, we’re able to go out and touch the world for Jesus. We’re seeing people’s lives turned around. We’re seeing people healed. We’re seeing people set free. We’re seeing people born again and your gifts are enabling us to do that. So we want to thank you and thank you on behalf of all the people we’re touching. Praise God. Thank you for your partnership. We appreciate you. We’re praying for you. We know you’re going to increase as you sow seed into this ministry. So we’re praying for you regularly. Thank you for your partnership. We love you all.
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Ashley: So the principal was set up before the law, then tithing became part of the law. So there was a curse associated with it. But now, we’re new covenant believers, we’re no longer part of that law. Jesus said Galatians 3:13, Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law. Praise God. So now when we tithe, we get all the benefits without any of the curse.
Carlie: That’s a great deal.
Announcer: Join us next time for the Abundant Life Program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.