Key Passage: Proverbs 3: 9-10

 

Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine (KJV).

God deserves the best from all His creation. All our possessions are His, and all that we have are gifts of His grace. It is therefore foolishness to think that we could withhold the same from Him and yet prosper.

The Scripture says, “Honor the Lord ….” Our giving to God should be an act of devotion and a mark of respect and honor to a Great King, who is our God, our Father, our Provider, our Helper and our Redeemer. It should reveal how high we esteem Him and how much we value His love for us.

God expects us to give Him “our substance”, and not just our leftovers, our change and such unworthy gifts that only beggars could be cheerful to receive. He wants things that are weighty in measure, great in quantity and high in value. He wants things a great king would be pleased to receive and which would provoke him to unlock the doors of favor and abundant supply to his subjects. He wants “the firstfruit of our increase”, which are the first and the best of His manifold provisions to our lives. That is sacrificial giving: the one that costs us something (2 Sam 24:24).

The resources we give to God are for the building of His Kingdom on the earth; and that Kingdom is great and has great needs. The demand of preaching the Gospel and establishing people in the faith has enormous material costs and God depends on us, His people, to carry that burden. Though the people of Israel were in the wilderness, God did not demand for their leftovers to build His tabernacle. He demanded for their best – gold, silver, bronze, precious stones and high quality materials - things of great value, worthy of building a dwelling place for the King of kings and the Lord of lords. The same God will not expect anything less from us, His end-time saints.

Sacrificial givers are not fools; they are rather people who understand that that is the price for entering into a covenant partnership with God that brings them into the manifold blessings and abundant provisions that only God can give. King Solomon offered a thousand burnt offering to God on one altar and God gave him a “blank check”, saying that he should ask for anything he desired and He would give it to him (1 Kg 3:5). We must be willing and ready to honor God in the same manner if we must enter into the kind of abundance that God desires for us.

Pray: Help me Lord to lay down my first and best at your feet, and thereby launch into Your covenant prosperity.

 

Written by – Evangelist Oguazi Onyemobi