The Blessed Life

I just began reading this book - well, technically Clay gave the book to all the staff to read and I took it from Nick - titled The Blessed Life by Robert Morris. I didn't know anything about the book when I picked it up, I wasn't even sure what the author meant by "The Blessed Life", but I knew Nick needed to read it and he doesn't have the time so I figured I'd read it for him. As I began to read it I became very excited - and a little uncomfortable - but definitely inspired.

Now the definition that the author uses for "blessed" is having supernatural power working for you, as opposed to "cursed" which is having supernatural power working against you. Turns out "The Blessed Life" refers to a life overflowing with miraculous blessings from God due to being obedient and putting Him first in your life. In one majorly specific area of your life actually: Finances.

I'm fairly confident in saying that every Christian is at least aware of the fact that we should give 10% of our income to the Church. I am also confident (and disappointed) in saying that the vast majority of Christians do not even come close to doing this. As a matter of fact, the book sites a study done in 1998 that shows Christians in the U.S. made an estimated $5.2 trillion that year and the total amount given to all ministry related causes (this includes missions, special events, etc.) was $92 billion. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but if you o the math it's only 1.7%. That's a far cry from 10%!

The Bible tells us that those who obey God will have everything they put their hands to blessed. I have read it before and I understand the principle of tithing, but I have to admit that I have not always been faithful in my giving. I have had the same excuse that most Christians give, "I can't afford to tithe." In reality, what I am actually saying is that I don't have faith that God can handle my finances. I've been asked before, "How are you going to trust God with your salvation if you can't trust him with your finances?" That's a pretty good point in my opinion.

In this book it tells us that God MUST be first, and the best way to put him first in your life is to give him the firstfruits of your income. I mean, after all, God did give us everything we have. We don't actually have ownership of our money, He gives it to us and all He asks is that we give him the first 10% in faith. In faith, that's a hard concept to grasp, giving a tenth of your income before the bills are paid, before there's gas in the car, before the groceries are bought. Giving a tenth of your income and trusting that God will cover the rest.

The amazing thing is, that this kind of faith (and lack of faith) was exercised throughout the Bible. God proclaims that the first born among the children in Israel are His in Exodus. Old Testament law states that the firstborn of all the clean livestock was to be sacrificed and if it was an unclean animal it was to be redeemed by sacrificing a clean and spotless lamb. All of this was to be done with only the promise that the animals would continue to reproduce. It was to be done in faith.

Now really thing about this whole sacrificing the clean firstborn and redeeming the unclean firstborn. You see, even God demonstrated this principle of faith to us. John the Baptist sums it up perfectly, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He was, of course, referring to Jesus, our perfect, clean, spotless savior that was sacrificed to redeem a unclean and sinful world. Jesus was God's firstborn, he was God's tithe. And he was sacrificed before we turned to him. While we were still sinners Christ died for us. He demonstrated faith, that by sacrificing the first the rest would be blessed. This was life changing for me.

There is so much more, but I'm gonna give this some time to sink in. I highly recommend that EVERYONE reads this book. I'm sure I'll be posting more in the future.