Then came the moment of offering, and everyone began dutifully stuffing checks and bills into envelopes. Usually, I felt good about tithing – that is what Christians are called to do. But that morning I was in a strange mood. I looked at my envelope and thought, “What the heck am I doing?” I shut the envelope and kept my tithe.

I did the same thing the next week, and the following week. Understand, this was not a crisis of faith. It was the opposite.

My faith was growing, growing faster than it ever had; I felt it was even outgrowing my church. I wanted to do more for the Lord, and ironically, that made me feel like giving less money to my church.

I was a minister’s kid for about half of my youth. My family lived off other people’s tithing. Also, I knew God calls Christians to give, and to give perhaps even more than the traditional 10%.

For most of my life I did. There was no thought involved. A certain percent of my money went to taxes and a certain percent went to my church, and that was that. The money wasn’t missed because I knew beforehand that it was already spoken for.

Then something, no it wasn’t something, it was a series of things, happened. Let me list a few:

1. I volunteered to take over my Church’s children’s ministry. The children and I decided that we would take a weekly collection and sponsor an orphan in Honduras. So, we did.

This was a big no-no. When the head pastor got wind of my plans, the whole thing just about blew up in my face. He was afraid that if people started giving a portion of their tithe ($35 a month) to the orphanage, they might give less to the general fund.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

2. My wife and I have always been big Prolife people in our hearts, our voices, and with our wallets. We use all of our avenues to call an end to the murder of innocence. We even use this blog’s facebook page, knowing it will costs us wave of “unlikes.” That’s okay. Babies are way more valuable than “likes.”

The only thing that we hadn’t offered, was most precious to us – our time. So, we decided to volunteer for 40 Days for Life. Basically, we stood outside Planned Parenthood and prayed that God would soften hearts, and rescue babies.

We don’t live in San Francisco or New York. We live in a conservative state, with a Church on every street corner. So, I just imagined that this vigil was going to be huge. I thought that Christians and churches would rally with us, and we’d have Planned Parenthood’s murder-mills closed in an afternoon.

Yet, when my wife and I, and our 4 young kids showed up, we were alone. And the shift before us, and the one after us, was empty.

We thought people just didn’t know, so we got the word out, but nearly everyone turned us down. They said things like, “This isn’t for me,” and “Churches shouldn’t get involved in politics.” I wanted to bang my head into a wall! Since when were babies’ lives “politics?” And what could be more important for a Church to do than to speak up for, as Jesus would call them, the “least of these?”

These are the Christians who take the time to call me hateful when I speak out against homosexuality, but won’t utter a word in support of ProLife causes because it’s too controversial.

3. Then I found out about Joel Osteen, head of the largest church in America.

He’s a smiley guy, who says nothing, as if it were something profound. And Joel is another one of those Christians who doesn’t like to talk about those “complicated” Biblical issues, like homosexuality and abortion, because those issues are divisive – and they sell less tickets.

He’s a preacher who has raked in 40 million dollars, not preaching the gospel, but smiling and telling people to be their best.

I thought about Joel’s ministry the entire week. It really bothered me, not just because Joel was a hypocrite, or giving Christians a bad name; it bothered me because I knew that I was just like Joel and my church was just like Lakewood Church.

It was easier for us to appear humble, because we didn’t have much money. But that didn’t stop us from dreaming of our own multimillion dollar center. And just like Osteen’s followers, I was giving blindly. I didn’t have a clue where my money was going.

And just like Osteen’s church, my church loved to support feel-good charities and offer feel-good messages.

A few Sundays later, I was sitting in Church examining the beautiful building, the soft pews, the high-tech sound system, you know, the comforts of Church. Suddenly, I wondered if I was tithing to build up God’s kingdom or paying dues to cozy social club.

What would Jesus do? How would He spend the money? How could the church justify a million dollar building when there are orphans living on the streets? 

How could we afford a $100,000 sound system, when there are starving people? How could we fund school drives to show the community we care about its children, but not have a dime to give to those fighting for babies being murdered down the street at Planned Parenthood?

Jesus preached in homes and fields. He did have followers who supported him financially, but that didn’t stop him from living modesty. When the topic of money came up, Jesus told people to give to the sick and the needy.

After much reflection, I found a new church, and new approach to tithing. Here is what I decided:

1. Giving money to a church to fund programs, is more like paying membership dues, similar to those fees we pay to gyms and clubs. That is okay. If I enjoy the services, I should pay. But that doesn’t let me off the hook from meeting the monetary needs of missionaries, widows and orphans, and those who are sick or down on their luck. I still give to the Church, but I also give generously to the truly needy.

2. I will never tithe “in good faith.” I need to know where the money is going, how much the ministers are making, and what percent goes to missions.

3. There is no need to be stingy towards ministers. If they work hard, they can be paid well. However, I will be on guard against ministers who are lazy, or take advantage of Christian generosity to line their own pockets.

If you share any of these feelings about church and tithing, and would like to give directly to those in need, here are some great needs – ones that my own family supports. Please, click on the links. Read the stories, and think about how you could meet one of these needs. Your money could not be better spent.

1. Here is a Christian family who chose not to abort when their son was diagnosed with a rare heart disorder. Now this family is facing a huge medical bill for his open heart surgery. If you have children of your own you can have compassion for their desperate situation. I couldn’t think of a greater need.

2. Honduras is considered the murder capital of the world and the streets are teeming with young orphans. Here is an orphanage in Honduras that is caring for those orphans. This story is amazing! A couple stepped out in faith and sold all they had in the world, and moved to Honduras to make this happen. Now they need other Christians to back their efforts.

3. Here is a Christian organization that fights to free children from sex slavery.

4. Here is a gal whose organization went undercover and busted some of the most notorious abortion clinics in the U.S. She is a hero on the frontlines fighting for babies’ lives, and she deserves our support.

What are your thoughts on tithing?

The post Why I Almost Stopped Tithing to the Church first appeared on True Aim.

This never used to bother me; it didn’t bother my parents; it didn’t even bother my preacher. If I missed a Sunday or two, he might inquire where I was, but when told him that I had a sports competition, he’d smile approvingly and ask how it went. So long as I wasn’t out shopping for a new Church or forgetting to tithe, it seemed there was no harm ignoring the Sabbath from time to time.

Things began to change when I started teaching Sunday school. Being the teacher forced me to make the Lord’s day the priority each week, whether I wanted to or not. It was then that I finally saw the spiritual necessity of the Sabbath.

It is so easy to get lost in life’s endless details. God knew this from the beginning, and that is why He set apart the final day of Creation, making it a holy day of rest and reflection. God didn’t need to rest or reflect, but we do.

Jesus says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). So, when you skip the Lord’s Day, you aren’t just blowing God off; you are starving yourself spiritually. When we allow our children to skip the Sabbath, we are starving them as well.

Children from good Christian families are disappearing for several months at a time during certain sport seasons. It isn’t healthy; our youth’s spiritual malnutrition is leading to spiritual death. Roughly a third of Americans under 30 are now atheist or agnostic.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Church will continue to lose this war, precisely because Christians value the company of cheering fans, to the fellowship of Communion. The only question is whether or not your children will be among those lost.

Keeping the Sabbath

Now, please don’t think that I am suggesting bringing your kids to Church is a spiritual cure-all. It isn’t even close. But I will say, that in the few years that I was a Christian Education Director, I could see a huge difference between the spiritual maturity of Sabbath-keeping kids versus Sabbath-breaking kids.

It seems that in our desire to not be “legalistic” like the Pharisees, we’ve allowed ourselves to pick and choose which of God’s laws we are willing to obey. And that is just what the Sabbath is, God’s law.

Now someone is going to say that the Sabbath is Old Testament Law and we no longer have to obey it. Really, then why did the early Church feel the need to honor the Sabbath? Why did God set apart the Sabbath at Creation, if he only intended ancient Hebrews to honor it? And are we to disregard the entire Ten Commandments, or just the Sabbath?

These were all questions I had to ask myself. Even though I knew the answers, it took my family several years to truly fall into the habit of honoring the Lord’s Day above all else. And to be honest, we still fail from time to time. However, honoring the Sabbath has been a life changing experience.

Tips for Keeping the Sabbath with Kids

If you would like to do a better job obeying the 4th Commandment, here are some tips and suggestions that really helped our family.

1. A Full Day: The Sabbath was meant to be a full day of rest and reflect. It wasn’t something you squeezed in before work, or after the football game. We decided to start our Sabbath at 12 A.M. Sunday morning and end it 11:59 P.M. Sunday night.

2. No Work: We have decided not to conduct any business on the Sabbath, (if we can help). This involves a lot of planning. Since we have a home business, it is really tempting to do catch up work on the Sabbath.

Eventually we managed to put all our business dealing, even urgent ones, aside until Monday. But then we did something even worse.

My wife and I began to subconsciously save regular housework, like laundry and mowing the lawn for Sunday. This allowed us to give more time to the business during the workweek, and then catch up on the housework on the Lord’s Day. This might have been even more disrespectful to God, because now instead of letting our important business ruin our Sabbath,  we were letting petty chores consume the day.

So, the new rule is that we do NO work, period, on the Sabbath, except cooking and cleaning up after ourselves (dishes, sweeping after meals, cooking). This has made it a true day of rest.

Now, if you work for a company that requires you to work on Sunday, this may not be as easy. I believe that professions that involve Emergency Care (Nurses, Doctors, Police, Soldiers) are probably fine working.

If you don’t work in those fields and your employer won’t give you the Sabbath off, then you might try finding another job that will. If no other jobs are available, then you have to provide for your family. I believe the Sabbath-breaking will then fall at your employers feet, not your own.

Also, I do believe that work for the Church and mission work is permissible on Sunday. Jesus himself implied that it was permissible to do good on the Sabbath. So, urgent charitable work is fine.

3. No Buying: We do all that we can not to buy anything on Sunday. We do not want to support businesses that have employees breaking the Sabbath. We do shop at those businesses, but not on Sundays.

4: Family Time: Keeping our family together is something that we feel is important on Sunday. We don’t usually allow our children to go to friends on the Sabbath.

5: Activities: On Sunday, we try to keep the focus on God in all of our activities. We have our kids read the Bible or Christian books. If they watch a movie, it has to be a Bible show. Sometimes we take the time to make cards for a orphan that we support, or encouraging cards for friends and family members. They are lots of possibilities, we just try to keep it Christ-centered.

6: No Sports: We do not play or watch (organised) sports on Sunday. I am not saying that you can’t; I’m just saying we don’t. Remember we try to keep our activities God-centered. Since our kids are young (our oldest is 7), this isn’t too hard. I realize as they get older the pressure to compromise will be intense, but the greater the sacrifice the greater the meaningfulness.

7: Special Day: Janine and I do what we can to make Sunday a special day. We usually cook a special breakfast and wear our best clothing the entire day (when it makes sense to). We don’t want our children dreading the Lord’s Day; we want them to look forward to it.

8: No Substitutes: The Sabbath is about making God our chief priority in life, so it kind of defeats the purpose when something comes up and we “reschedule” our Sabbath. God’s time shouldn’t get bumped to another time, or another day, because we have a soccer game to attend. God is the priority, period.

There are hundreds of tempting ways to get around the Sabbath. You can do work that you call “relaxing.” You can point to God when you score a touchdown, and pretend that you are breaking His commandment, for His sake. You can squeeze in a quick Bible reading at halftime, and pretend it is the same as communing in Church with other believers.

There are many ways to “cheat”  yourself out of your Sabbath, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Breaking the Sabbath will hurt you more than it hurts God.

And if you won’t keep the Sabbath for your spiritual well-being, do it for your children’s. They need to see your faith and commitment. The world will offer them a million God-substitutes. Show them, by your example, that nothing can replace God!

The post Keep the Sabbath for Your Kids’ Sake first appeared on True Aim.

Because our society is in the process of turning its back on God, keeping the sabbath is not easy. To the rest of America, the Lord’s Day is just another day. If you want to raise your children in the Lord, the Sabbath is a must; it is God’s weekly devotion. Don’t try to replace it with your own version. God’s knows your family’s needs better than you do.

So, what is the Sabbath and how can we keep it in today’s secular world? The Sabbath is one day in seven to rest and worship God. It is a whole day, not a Church service.

Keeping the whole Sabbath used to be a big struggle for me. I’d wake early and work, go to Church (where I often daydreamed about work) and then returned home and continued my work. I wasn’t keeping the Sabbath; I wasn’t giving that day over to the Lord. I was checking a spiritual block and then returning to my ‘pressing’ work.

If you want to keep the Sabbath I’d recommend sundown Saturday night to sundown Sunday night. That is a full day and I promise, God is worth it.

If we want our children to respect the Sabbath, then we have to set the example. I recommend that parents try not to work on Sunday, unless your work is in emergency care. Jesus says that, “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” So, when we talk about work, we are talking about working for our own benefit.

When I first attempted to take the Sabbath more seriously, I resolved NOT to work on my business on Sunday. Then I did something worse. I worked hard all week, sometimes 16 hour days, only on my business. So when Sunday came around all the house and yard work had piled up and I used “my day of rest and worship” to catch up on it.

Instead of doing petty chores during the workweek, I was saving them for the Sabbath, again putting my work ahead of God.

It is funny how hard we try to find a way around honoring the Sabbath when the Sabbath was created for our own benefit; honoring God is what we were made for and when we do it our lives work better.

There is no job, no soccer game, no football game that can fill that void. The minute you start compromising, cutting the day short, substituting days, claiming work is rest for you, redefining work, you begin to destroy the Sabbath for yourself; and you and your family suffer.

Activities to Do with Your Children on the Sabbath

1. Pray – Make 3 prayer lists. One of things to pray for yourself, one of things to pray for others, and one of people you want to give their lives to Jesus.

2. Fast – Choose 1 meal to skip and give the money to those who are in need. This is one of the hardest things for children to do, but the impact is greater.

3. Sing – It keeps the house joyful and pleases the Lord. Psalm 9:2, “I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High.” Some of my favorite songs are here and we also LOVE Songs for Saplings.

4. Read – Of course your Bible would be a good pick, but also anything that glorifies Him.

5. Watch – A Bible Movie after reading are great to help kids remember the lesson and we highly recommend watching a movie about Eric Liddle (aff. link), who wouldn’t run in the Olympics on the Sabbath.

More Ideas for Day 7 of the Creation Story for Kids

Creation: Rest – No Sew Quiet Book for Toddlers

Creation Paper Plate Project

The 7 Days of Creation in Legos {Day 7 – Rest}

The Creation Story for Kids Series

The post The Creation Story for Kids: Day 7 – God’s Rest first appeared on True Aim.