I truly believe that to live in Christ is not only good for the future, but it is also good right now. In Christ, we experience the blessings of God, including the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22-23).

 When we live for Christ, we give ourselves the opportunity to live the best life possible. Living obediently doesn’t mean that we won’t have trouble, but it does mean that we have help in time of difficulty.

To really get your life in order, you have to get your finances in order. That was last week’s sermon. You can hear it at www.fbccov.org. You can also see two blogs that I posted about getting your finances in order http://waylonbailey.com/2011/09/seven-practices-to-get-your-finances-under-control/ and http://waylonbailey.com/2011/09/will-your-money-be-a-blessing-or-a-curse/. These blogs offer practical, spiritual advice for finances.

So, here’s my challenge for you to deal with serious issues for serious believers.

First, you need God’s blessings on your life. You can’t expect God’s blessing without your obedience.

God calls us to trust Him with our future and our finances (they are interrelated). God tells us to give a tithe (10 percent) of our income.

This is my challenge—tithe for the next 90 days. This 90 day challenge will accomplish two goals: it will give you time to establish a habit, and it will give you time to see that God will bless you as a result (Malachi 3:10). But, something even more important will happen. You will have the blessing of being obedient to God.

Second, if you tithe already, join me in adding to what you give now. If you are tithing, you now know that God is going to take care of you. We need to do much more than we are doing to help carry out our ministry around the world. The International Mission Board estimates that 3800 people groups exist without any strategy to reach those people with the Gospel. Those groups total over a half a billion people. Can we continue as we have before? Can we continue to think of ourselves when others have never heard?

Third, I want to ask you to look at your estate plan. Are you leaving a portion of your estate for Christian causes? Can we really lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21) if we leave the largest portion of our assets to other things? At a minimum, we should be leaving 10% to further the kingdom of God.

All I can say is that this really matters to God and that it should really matter to us. May God lead you as you seek to honor Him with your substance (Proverbs 3:9-10). I can promise you that your obedience and desire to serve God will produce blessings and joy that you have never experienced before.

Subscribe below to receive up to the minute notifications when I post something new. It’s free and easy as well. I hope that you will subscribe.