God loves and blesses a cheerful giver

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"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Cor. 9:7-8 NIV)

Susan and I love to give and have done so from the first day of our marriage. We saw in this promise Biblical principles to help us understand and receive blessings from putting God first in our financial matters.

I'm happy to report that God has always blessed us dramatically according to this promise in His Word!

What this promise says and what it has taught us about giving

  •  "God loves a cheerful giver."   We saw early on from this promise that God loves those who give cheerfully, and we wanted to do and be what He clearly said he "loved"!
  • "Give what you have decided in your heart to give." We always made sure we gave to things we truly believed in and cared about; something we could support wholeheartedly without reservation. We made sure that what we were giving to was producing good results and good fruit.
  • "Not reluctantly."  We fully trusted in the Biblical principle of tithing and understood from God's Word that the first part of our income (10%) belonged to God and not to us. Therefore, we never considered it to be "our money" but always considered it to be "His money". Therefore, as soon as our paycheck arrived, we happily wrote our tithe check first, to put "His money" to work for Him.
  • "And God is able to bless you abundantly." And we believed the promise in Malachi 3 that He would bless us for being faithful in this respect. We were convinced that God was able to bless us abundantly, we expected Him to, and He always has! Above and beyond, in fact!
  •  "In all things at all times, having all that you need." We believed God would always meet every need (Phil. 4:19), and it has always been so!
  • "You will abound in every good work.” We expected God to give us good work to do, to provide employment, and that He would bless us and prosper us in whatever we put our hands to. That, too, has consistently been the case!

According to Malachi 3:10, God says to test Him on this promise: "Test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows." 

And we HAVE tested Him by our consistent giving throughout the years, and He has always kept his promise! We are blessed!

Mike French