Christian Podcast Us vs Them- A question about your money Should a Christian tithe

Welcome to episode 265.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am going to continue to talk about choosing a side and us versus them and all those different one-on-one, mano a mano kind of titles that I can come up with. But I believe this is a very important topic, and it's one that I'm struggling with right now, and I've told you about that last episode. It's a money thing for me, and we've all got soft spots. You know, because I'm bearing my soul, if you will, and I'm talking about money issues. And it's not a money issue. I want to set the record straight. I'm not— I don't have a money, quote, problem. I have a problem with money, and it's my problem, and I'm working through it. And it's just an improper understanding. It's based on a lot of bad input that I've had over the years, and you don't realize how you shake hands with ideas and you let these thoughts become strongholds in your life. And I think that's what's happened in my area or my life. I have tried to chase after things, and because of my personality, the ready, fire, aim— that's why I'm here on this podcast, it's why I'm doing this— is because I have that jump-in-it muscle. Although I want it to be good and I really want it to be the best I can do, I do know that I have to get in and do it before I can get better at it. I don't know if that makes sense, and I don't know, it sure seems like after 265 episodes I would have it down a little bit on how to do this podcast thing. And I'm really getting the hang of doing the recording and editing the audio. I've got that down a little bit, but the video is still whooping my backside. And so I'm still working on that. And if you're on YouTube and if I've got this posted Then praise God, it happened again. I got a good video. But we are working through— I am, and you are along for the ride, I guess. And as I talk about this issue, we're going to talk about other issues that come up that we're fighting when, when we take on the world and we take on Satan and we take on our body. We're going to talk about that probably in upcoming episodes, but we are talking about a spiritual battle that goes on in this physical realm. And I know that gets a little woo-woo, and it gets that spiritual warfare. I've kind of come against that a little bit. I think we all do it wrong, present company included. But we are not fighting anything that we can see. We do not walk by sight, we walk by faith, which means we have to read it in God's word, and then we have to picture it. We have to picture it with our heart. And I don't know that I've done a great job of explaining that, but it's something— it's like your imagination. It's like you picture— like if I was to tell you to imagine, close your eyes and imagine what an apple looks like. And then I tell you, now make it a red apple, for those of you smart alecks that had a green apple in your imagination. And then I want you to imagine it having one green leaf, this red apple with a stem and one green leaf., and then I want you to imagine a worm coming out of the top of that apple. And I believe if you're driving or if you're working out, if you did that exercise, your imagination, your heart has pictured that apple. You have the ability to picture something in your mind. It's more of a heart thing. I don't even know if I'm explaining it. Again, it's a little more difficult to explain than to just do. But we all use it. We all use our imagination. And sometimes our imagination, when you start worrying and you start being concerned and anxious about things, you use your imagination to picture something or project something into the future that hasn't happened yet, but it has a negative connotation that you are worried and anxious because you are imagining something that's going to go wrong or bad. That same imagination that you're using for negative and anxious and worry can be used for a positive outcome. And that, I think, is called hope. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So hope, I believe, is the positive use of your imagination or that heart, your eyes of your heart. And everything is guided If you're a Christian, everything I believe that is of God will be driven through your hope and faith and grace muscles. And if you haven't built any of those up, then you're forced to use your 5 senses. And I believe that's why a lot of the church, and present company included— I don't claim to have all this figured out, but I'm at least digging into this, and I'm trying to help you as I'm helping myself. I want to help you picture these things. And with money, this was a glaring example of something I'm doing wrong in my walk. Now, when I say I'm doing wrong, I've just got a misunderstanding. And the reason I say that is because the windows of heaven have not just opened up over me, and I can tell I have opposition when I start talking about putting courses together and masterminds and things like that. I get pushback and I get fight based on when I start putting figures on, and I can feel the punk just beating me up. Well, what makes you think you're worth that? Or what makes you think all this? So if you followed this podcast, you know that I've struggled with this to a degree. I want to go on the record to say that I do not struggle with tithing, and I learned early on, and I want to talk about tithing in this episode because early on when I first got saved I tried to do everything by faith. I'm telling you, I read my word. I was told to read the word every day. I was told to pray every day. I was told to hang out with people who praise God and believed in God every day, to people that would lift you up and not pull you down. And I did all that, and I plugged myself into the church. So I did a lot of the things. I got involved, I got things going, and I started walking in my Christian walk. Well, then I got the message on tithing, and I got it early on, and I got it from a guy named Dennis Peacock. And this guy was, to me, he was amazing because he was well educated. He was a whole lot smarter than I'll ever be. This guy was very intelligent. He knew the Word of God, and he pictured God in heaven asking Jesus. He said Jesus was our mediator between God and man, and so when we prayed He kind of pictured, and I kind of related this because I try to picture things too, but he pictured when I pray, like say I'm praying for God to bless me, when I said in Jesus' name, then Jesus would turn to the Father. If Jesus was at the right hand of the Father, he would obviously turn to his left, and on video I'm turning to my right, but he would turn to his left and say, Father, Greg is asking for you to bless him. And the first thing God asked Jesus Does he tithe and offer? And Jesus had to say yes or no to that question of Father God. Now Father God already knows the answer. We've talked about this before. Nothing catches God off guard. But Jesus would then, because he is our mediator, he's our representative in heaven to Father God, and he would have to tell Father God, yes, Greg tithes, or no, Greg does not tithe. And so a lot of these prayers, and I want to go to Malachi, and this is a very popular, a very well-known tithing scripture. And I want you to listen because the way Dennis Peacock explained this to me, or to picture this, was that he, he then said, if Jesus had to answer God that no, Greg does not tithe, Dennis Peacock put his hands behind his back and he said it's like you tie God's hands behind his back if you do not tithe, if you do not give 10% to the place that feeds you. One of the reasons I do not want to be a 501, and we talked about this and I didn't tell you why, is because I do not believe— I'm not a pastor in the church, and I don't know that I'm going to daily feed you. Now, I may get to that, and I have Church at the Well, and I've prayed about all of that stuff, an internet community, and I'm working through all that. But the 501 is where you gather and where you are fed daily and where your family goes and where you can be baptized in water and you can be taught and you can be encouraged and all of that stuff. The places— God's church, his local church, I believe is where the tithe needs to go. And I believe that I am well qualified to speak on the tithe because from a very, very young age in my Christian walk, I tithe. I gave the 10%. I heard that the tithe, the number 10, is the number of testing. There is a spirit, and I picture this because I got to picture everything, but there is a spirit on money. If you can picture a spirit, mammon, where it says in Matthew 6:24, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. And mammon, it is a spirit that sits on money, and that is one of the spirits that's going to come in the last days. You were going to be offered— if you are left behind, or if we go through the tribulation, regardless of how you feel, if you take the mark of the beast, they are going to use money as a way to make you enter into the mark, or you're gonna— you're not gonna be able to buy or sell. So there is a spirit on money. I think that spirit is mammon. What you want— and I've pictured this— you want the Spirit of God on your money. And so when I tithe, then I— the first thing I do— and I'm not going to teach on tithing this episode, I'm about to run out of time— when I give my 10%, and it's the first 10%, I tell you, if I get $1,000 $100, the first $100, as quick as I can get it, I give it to my local church. So I get that 10% out of my checking account, I see that as God's money, and I give it to God. And then once I give it, then I'm released of any responsibility. My responsibility is where I go to church, where I tithe, where I sit my local backside, I guess for lack of a better word, And I'm going to read Malachi, and Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament, and it's in Malachi 3:8. Will a man rob God? You have robbed me, but you say, in what have we robbed you? In tithes and offering. You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me in this. Says the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such a blessing that there is not room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field, says the Lord of Hosts. And that's Malachi 3:8-11. But that's kind of a famous scripture on tithing. And I want to go on record, I do not believe that you have to tithe. I do not believe this was the Old Testament, but I do want to go on record as saying, you know, you're not going to be cursed if you do not tithe, but I think maybe your money is. But what I want to do is I want to kick and have in my mind, I have kicked the spirit of mammon off of my money, and I get it off as soon as I can. If I hold on to some of God's money then it's like the spirit of mammon can come on and attach. And then it— again, I go back to what Dennis Peacock says. It talks about having God's hand tied when we ask Jesus to help us, and then Jesus goes to Father God, and Father God says, well, is he, is he tithing? And then it says, well, my hands are tied because I can't rebuke the devourer for your— for his sake because he's robbing me of the tithes and offering. And I know that I've got a bunch of different conflicting things going on, and it is a very complicated topic and one that we're gonna have to go into the next episode. But I wanna open up this, I wanna tell you that I do not believe that I am cursed for either tithing or not tithing. I believe that the curse has been lifted. Jesus died, cursed is everything that hangs on a tree. Jesus died on the cross so that he would lift this curse. But I do believe that there is a blessing and a huge blessing with tithing, and it's all about humility. It's all about faith. It's all about taking something that has value here on earth and applying it into the spirit realm. And I believe it's a beautiful first step if you're looking for— if you've struggled in your Christian walk, I want to encourage you to read and pray and ask the Holy Spirit if you should be doing this, because I want you to listen in 3:10. In Malachi 3:10, bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and try me in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven. I can't find any other place in the Bible where God says try me in this. This to me is a direct challenge, and it says, hey, see if this isn't true. If you bring the tithes, and I have got to go on record to say that I have been one of the most blessed since I've tithed. I have been one of the most blessed individuals, I think, in the world. I believe that the peace of God follows me around. I believe that I have had a really great life. I mean, I've had ups and downs and I've had struggles.

It does—

the Bible doesn't say it's going to be easy, it just says that God is gonna be with me with every step. And I don't think God, even if I didn't tithe, I don't think God will ever leave me. I just believe that, it's in the Bible, so I believe it's true. I believe since I began early on with this tithing, I believe that it has opened up avenues and opened up doors for me that may have been closed. And I just wanna end that there. I've looked up at the clock and I've gone way long. And this is a big old can. That I've opened up, and then I'm going to leave here. But I just want to set the record straight: I am a tither. I don't tip God. I don't just give when I feel like giving. I give 10%. Every time I get an increase into my storehouse, I give it to God. And I want to encourage you to pray about doing the same thing. But let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the Holy Spirit. Jesus, I thank you for the example, and I thank you that you have given me the privilege of tithing. And God, I pray that this listener would take into heart what I am saying, and I pray that they would get into your word, into Malachi and Matthew, and start reading for themselves and start praying about it. God, and we thank you, we love you, and we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.