As sad as this seems, I was actually once a fairly skilled network engineer. I also was a senior technical implementation and engineering manager on one of the largest outsourcing contracts in the history of IT and my team was responsible for oversight and design for the technology infrastructure for the entire US Navy and Marine Corps. Yet it seems that the mystical secrets of blogging escape me.
I said I would try to make a post once a month or so, and after the first post somehow two months have slipped by. Not a very auspicious start to my blogging career. I could make all kinds of excuses about time and ministry work and this and that, but the truth is just like anything in life it comes down to a matter of priorities. What do we value? What is important enough for us to spend our time, money, effort, etc in support of it?
That really ties into a critical lesson we have been striving to instill here. The lesson revolved around the idea of the tithe as we were teaching on the Scriptural tithing principles to several groups we are discipling. The fact is, however, that so often we only think of the tithe in terms of money, when in truth, if we let the concept permeate our whole lives, it can and should be so much more.
First and foremost, even if we only consider the monetary aspects of tithing many Christians have the wrong idea about tithing. They feel "well it is my money, I earned it, and I will decide what best to do with it." Unfortunately this flies clearly in the face of what the reality of our financial well-being should be. What we should realize is the principle from Deuteronomy 8:18 "But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." (NASB) So what we rightfully should see is not that "we earned" our money but rather that God gave us the ability and opportunity to earn it. We should not look at the idea that we are giving God 10%, but rather that God is giving us 90%!
As I said though, tithing goes so far beyond money. I often say when teaching on this that if someone shows me their checkbook and their calendar, I can show them what they worship. While that may be a bit exaggerated, the principle is sound. I know firsthand how time can easily get away from us. Even with us living overseas and serving as missionaries, it is easy to spend so much time preparing for teaching (i.e. work) that personal quiet time, prayer time, and time in God's word for just Him to talk to me can easily get buried under the avalanche of "good works" that are there.
The work we do certainly is what God has called us to do, and we see Him blessing the work here and the Holy Spirit is clearly moving in our city and He is giving us a chance to participate in His work here. He has not, however, called us to do this to the exclusion of our personal time with Him. If we do not set our own time with God as a priority, soon we may find ourselves stumbling in the darkness while trying to share the light. I recently found myself in that exact situation.
God opened up a clear new avenue for me with writing Christian Fantasy novels in my personal time. It is a great outlet, and God blessed the effort immediately. Many authors struggle to get a publisher to take notice of their work, yet one of the first publishers I contacted, Tate Publishing, a large Christian publisher, loved the manuscript and immediately worked with me to get the first two novels lined up for release early 2014. Additionally God kept opening up more and more new study groups for us here and we are now discipling regularly nearly a hundred people each week between the various groups. It looked like a dream come true as we saw our work bearing fruit and more opportunities continuing to manifest.
Unfortunately, between the writing, the teaching, the research, the new lessons as well as our administrative duties and the work I have to do for the English School to keep our visas here, I realized one day that I felt so empty, so drained and so irritable that I almost did not even recognize the person staring at me from the mirror each day. It was in searching for what was wrong that I realized it had been a long time since I had spent my personal prayer/quiet time alone with God. I was in the Word every single day, as Scripture fed both my novel writing as well as the studies I was preparing for, but going to God's word to prepare to feed others is NOT the same thing as going to God's word to feed oneself.
I quickly remedied this issue and now I once again feel the energy and focus to get done everything that needs to be done and to remember to have the time to return to the efforts of this blog which I do feel is an important glimpse into our lives as missionaries.
Tithing the paycheck (or the mint and dill and cumin) while neglecting the "weightier provisions of the law; justice and mercy and faithfulness", in particular faithfulness to our time alone with God in which He refreshes and grows us in Christ-likeness, is not the way we should live. Giving God only our money but not our time and faithfulness will only serve to leave us cold and empty shells before God and before men. We certainly should tithe, but we should also not leave the other matters of our time, justice, mercy and faithfulness undone.
This lesson came to me at great price and with much difficulty and trial. I hope that by my words and sharing this experience with you all that this may serve to save you from having to learn the lesson in the same way, but rather give an early warning to help keep you on track with both the attitude and disposition of your finances as well as the prioritization of your time and effort and faithfulness.
