To Rob or to Tithe: Commandment or Suggestion?

If you’re like me and the majority of the professed Christians, you struggled or still do, with a commandment called Tithe and Offering, Tithe is a commandment, not a suggestion. Unfortunately, people misunderstand it. Of course, we all have our reasons to not tithe, mine were: I saw God’s money being misused, I didn’t see it as a commandment (I thought was part of the Old Testament Law) and I thought God didn’t need my money anyways (of course His workers had to eat). God is very clear in Malachi 3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, “In what way have we robbed You?” In tithes and offerings. We see that God don’t expect us to just return the Tithe, Tithe means the tenth part, but to offer above the Tithe. Whatever is above 10% is an offering. If we don’t give them back to God, we are stealing from Him. We can see references about tithe, both in the Old and New Testaments, like in Genesis 14:18-20 when Abraham gave tithe to Melchizedek. In the New Testament, we see Jesus speaking about it in Matthew 23:23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay TITHE of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Jesus is confirming that we ought to tithe, He didn’t revoke the Tithe Commandment, He fulfilled it. I have a story about tithing (you're probably thinking: "here we go again"), yeah, you're right, here we go again. After God saved me, I started tithing and never had a problem doing it, I started seeing tithe as a commandment. But, one day at my brother’s house, in Georgia, a Lady, her name is Margie, she was praying for me and my wife and told me something really strange: “God is telling you to never stop tithing”. Honestly, I thought: “What is she talking about? She doesn't know me. I’ll never do that”. Well, years latter, I came to a point (low one) that I decided to stop tithing, I had been faithful, I had been totally committed to obeying God, but I wasn’t “seeing” any result. My financial situation was mostly “not good”, but at this time, it was “really bad”. Then, the Holy Spirit reminded me about Margie’s prayer, how God told me that I shouldn’t stop tithing, then He opened my eyes to see that He always provided for us, we lived from trial to trial, but God was always faithful, He provided everything we needed (not everything we wanted). Today, there are many different teachings about tithe and offering, a lot o people say we don’t TITHE anymore, now is just OFFER. I disagree with that, TITHE is GOD’S MONEY and OFFER is OUR MONEY GIVEN TO GOD. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that we have to be Cheerful Givers, we should give out of love, not necessity. I encourage you to do what God tells us to do in malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse (local church), that there may be food in My house, and try 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 such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. How many times we read in the Bible God calling us to TRY HIM? I don't remember reading anywhere but in Malachi 3. Our problem is that we have wrong expectations about tithe, we see tithe as a "get rich fast" scheme, where we throw our money in God's hands and couple days latter we receive one hundred times more; we also misunderstand blessing, we relate blessing with money, God's blessing can include money, but is not money in itself. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Money can either bring good or evil. I'm not saying God won't give us everything we need and sometimes a lot more to help others, but we must learn to Give to God out of love and obedience. I know how hard it is to Tithe when we have little, but, Jesus is clear that if we are faithful in a very little, He will give us much (Luke 19:17).