Gifts to the Poor – How To Start Working With God Financially Part 5

As we have seen, God wants to bless you financially.   To integrate your financial life with God’s economic system, God wants you to give Him some of your money.  God is then going to give you “harvests” on those “seeds”.

Today we will briefly discuss giving to the poor.  As with tithing, giving to the poor is not a legal requirement.  You will not be cursed or go to hell if you never give to the poor.  However, God wants us to be ever mindful of the poor as we consider our finances. 

I find Leviticus 23:22 (and other similar passages) very interesting as I consider giving to the poor.  Whenever your receive financial increase in your life, you should be ready to share with the less fortunate. 

God is going to attach you to specific ministries and works for your regular giving (for me its Grace Family Church, Schools for Haiti, Inc., Andrew Wommack Ministries and Bill Winston Ministries).  Some of those may help the poor (like Schools for Haiti).  But God also wants you to have spare monies around and available for the less fortunate. 

Personally, this is the smallest area of my giving after my tithe and general offerings to God’s Kingdom, and I actually think that is appropriate.  But again, we are just talking about establishing a framework for your finances.  You see someone collecting money for a needy family, or an orphanage, or something like that.  Give them a few bucks.  You see an opportunity that sounds good and you feel your heart moved with compassion, send a few bucks there way.  Quickly check with the Holy Spirit, what’s the right number?

Look at this amazing promise for when you are generous with the poor.  “Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.”  (Deuteronomy 15:10 NIV)

(Proverbs 19:17 NLT) – “If you help the poor, you are lending to the Lord-and He will repay you!”

As with tithing, gifts to the poor invite God’s blessings into your financial life.  Yes, I understand we don’t only give to get, we’ll talk about that later.  For now we are focusing on understanding God’s economic system.  As we use our money according to God’s ways, we will see His financial blessings show up.

(In case you missed any installments in this series or want more information otherwise, you can always see all of my messages, posts, podcasts, etc. at byronhowell.com.)

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