Test me in this, says the Lord.

Story by Kristine Barnes.

My dad was frugal. He grew up in the Depression Era with a deceased father and 10 siblings. Dad was on his own from age 12. He and our mom had seven kids, I am the eldest. Dad was the Appliance Manager at Sears while Mom stayed home with all of us. 

As a child we never lacked for necessities, or went hungry, yet I always felt we were among the poorer folks in our neighborhood. This thinking was based on the childish importance of dessert and vacations. It seems my friends had access to both. 

Dessert, in our home, were the occasional cake, plain Jell-O, or an off-brand sandwich cookie; one side vanilla, one side chocolate. When I did get my hands on something extravagant, like a candy bar, I would never eat it all at once! It was stashed in my bedroom. I’d take only a few bites each day. This plan failed miserably one time when ANTS discovered my hidden treasure, which then had to be tossed into the trash, although I did briefly consider eating it anyway. Ants are clean, aren’t they?

My college experience was paid for with a grant (here finally, an advantage to being part of a larger family) and a loan, which I paid back immediately after quitting school to get married to a childhood friend. Bad idea!!

My groom’s father had purchased an old farm which included a dilapidated 2-story brick house. It was enchanting to me, so I was thrilled when he offered to allow us to renovate the house and live there. Another bad idea!

We spent all our time, energy, and earnings on that place. In addition, my father-in-law decided it would be fun to have a herd of Black Angus beef cattle on the land. His son and I could take care of them, since we were already living on the property. Bad idea!

Those cows were nothing but trouble, breaking out of fences, dropping their new-born calves on the frozen March fields, needing water from a pump that would freeze up in winter, and devouring alfalfa from the crops we planted, harvested, and baled … weather permitting. Our marriage ended after ten painful years. I moved to North Carolina due to a job transfer, to a new life, and a new spouse, courtesy of God.

Many years later, Gary and I attended a church where a young couple with several kids gave a testimony about how they tithed. This was a word I’d heard back in the church where I was raised, but it never meant anything to me. It was an old word, a biblical word, it had nothing to do with life today. I remember wondering how anyone could just give away one-tenth of their earnings?! We were barely getting along on our wages as it was. Give 10% to the church?? Impossible!

But that testimony stuck with me, and I began increasing our giving very slowly, trying to believe that it could be done without our going on welfare.

God sent an impressive test the year Gary began a brand new job, with a brand new start-up company. A few months into this venture, he was hospitalized for appendicitis. Or so we thought.  His doctor removed the appendix, which turned out to be completely healthy. Three months later, Gary was released. He had survived a vicious encounter with pancreatitis, and had even been written about in the medical journals as the baffled doctors worked first to diagnose him, then to save him.

During Gary’s incarceration at Rex, I was still paying our bills. His new company very graciously had agreed to continue to pay a portion of his wage while he was sick. They were, as I said, a brand new company with no plan for a situation where an employee goes on extended sick-leave. They only learned how “extended” as the summer dragged on, with Gary spending much of his time in the ICU during his three month stay.

My problem was, with a smaller income, how much should I be giving to God? Surely He didn’t expect the same amount now! But for some reason, I felt strongly that I should, as it says in Malachi 3:10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

So I continued to write the checks to church for the same amount as always.  The hospital bills came in figures I’d only seen before in a Monopoly game, but I kept paying all our bills, and sending the hospital $50 per month. Somehow it all got covered. We never went hungry, never needed food stamps.

Now as Gary’s talent, expertise, and value have grown over the years, he brings home a comfortable wage, and we continue to tithe, even off the Adjusted Gross Income shown on our tax returns. We have had some rough times but I had long ago learned to trust God completely in the matter of income, so we have never taken a break from tithing even when we were coming up a bit short. 

I have no clear understanding of how this works – I just know that any time we were faced with a situation where we owed a larger amount of money than anticipated, little unexpected things would happen, little bits of money would appear, and the finances would fall into place.

We are still frugal. I reckon that lesson from my Dad will always stick with me. But the lesson I have learned from God is, TRUST ME:

Malachi 3: 10.Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

And so He has…