try Him

"bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, 

and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, 

and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."  Malachi 3:10

for a really long time drew has been trying to encourage me to believe two truths: 1) i can't out-give God, and 2) it all belongs to Him, anyway!  now, i know upon saying those two things that you would probably say, "of course i believe those things!"  but the proof is in whether or not you live them.  and i have to honestly say that a lot of times these two truths are hard for me to live.  however, over the past few months i have been trying to live differently.  i have been trying to live a generous life.  drew bought me THIS BOOK for christmas {although we promised we weren't going to buy anything for each other}.  go out and buy it now.  do not wait.  it is amazing, and made me see just how little the sacrifices are that i am making.  it was just another way that God spoke to my heart about living generously.

with that being said, i have to share a story about something that happened...proof that God blesses a generous lifestyle...this year, christmas was completely different for us.  over the last quarter of this year, we began to try to live with a good bit of a "salary cut" in anticipation of our new move.  we tried to put money in savings and towards the new church.  this meant christmas looked different.  we were cutting back on gifts; our budget was crazy small; we were cutting costs at every corner.  this has been a great learning experience for us, but very hard!  exactly a week before christmas drew emailed me and told me that he had gotten three letters in the mail from good friends of ours who are taking mission trips this coming year.  he felt that God was telling us to give, not a large amount, but just to give.  i unfortunately  was harder to convince that that was what God was telling us!  however, God reminded me about the generous living conversations He and i had been having, and so i agreed that we needed to give a little to each man.  as i wrote out the checks, i thanked God that we had the money in our savings account and prayed that He would bless the mens' trips.

the week before christmas, we had plans to go out with two couples from our church.  both couples wanted to go out as a "good-bye" dinner...and both times the couples paid for our meals!  this was an unexpected blessing.  i had worked these two dinners into our grocery/eat-out budget and this just gave us extra money that we weren't expecting.  a few nights later, we got a call that a realtor wanted to show our house!  unfortunately it was right during the dinner hour, so we went ahead and decided to go somewhere for dinner.  while we were there, we saw a sweet family from church who - you guessed it -ended up secretly paying for our meal!  wow, talk about a blessing!  and when we added up all of the meals that were paid for by other people, it was more than the amount we had given the men for their mission trips! 

God is good.  He can be trusted.  He doesn't always give money back as money.  but this was proof for me that i can't out-give Him.  it all belongs to Him, anyway!  try Him and see if He will not indeed bless you in return.  i can promise He will, because He has promised He will.

happy friday!