Does God Need Our Money?

Let’s begin by considering why we are asked to pay tithing. Does God need our money? It’s kind of a weird thing to think about. He doesn’t need our money, so why are we asked to give up what we worked hard for? What if the reason that we pay tithing isn’t because He needs our money, but what if it’s because we need Him? What if it’s to teach us that lesson? I don’t think that is the only lesson we can learn from tithing, but it is a lesson I learned years ago. That it wasn’t about Him needing what I had. It was teaching me that I needed what He had.

When we were a young married couple, with probably two kids at the time, and we were working hard, with my  husband still going to school, we didn’t have a lot of money. That’s usually how it goes, right? Well, one day I was writing out a check for our tithing payment. (That was back in the day when you had to write it all out. Oh, weren’t checks wonderful?) The check amount was over $200. At the time it was so much money, and I thought, “Wow! God’s asking a lot of us.” We were working really hard. We were trying to be good. We were doing what we could, but God was still asking a lot. That was a lot of money for us at that stage of our lives.

God’s Grace – An Unexpected Blessing

Well, I put it in the envelope, and we paid our tithing, like we had a habit of doing. Then, a couple of days later, we were in the car and we were going through the mail. As I think about it, I don’t know why we were going through our mail in the car. Probably because the kids were buckled up and occupied, and I could do it without worrying about them getting into things. Anyway, I sorted through the mail and found that there was a check in the mail. Seriously you guys…this check in the mail was almost the exact same amount as what I had written to pay our tithing. I was amazed, to say the least.

Now, I don’t understand God’s grace. I’m in awe of it, I’m inspired by it, and I’m so grateful for it. Earlier that week, as I was paying our tithing, I had had a moment of entitlement, and maybe a little greed. I wanted to keep that money. I felt like we worked hard for it and we deserved it. And I think that a lot of the blessings that we have, we feel like we work for them and we earn them. But, we can’t earn our way to heaven. We’re just not that good. We need grace too. 

And that’s the lesson I learned from this check. I’m sure it wasn’t just getting the check in the mail. It wasn’t about the money. It was about Heavenly Father saying, “Yes, you can work and you can get money.” And seriously this check was super random. I don’t even remember where this check came from. It was a very unexpected, large sum of money that we didn’t see coming. And I know it was from Him. I’m sure one of His earthly servants sent it to us. But it was a message from Him, to me, about His grace. We can work hard, earn money, and be blessed for our efforts, but other blessings come just through His grace. That was a really cool lesson for me to learn. 

If you haven’t paid your tithes recently, I encourage you to do it. And then I encourage you to look. Ask God to show you the blessings that are coming into your lives because of your obedience to that and other principles. I think you’ll be astounded at what you learn and what you find, specifically about the differences between works and grace. They’re both needed, they’re both necessary, and they’re both pretty cool.