The Glorious Power of the Tithe 21: Tithing is a Talent Part 04 – God is Not A Conman

I have had to deal with more than one situation as a pastor where someone in one of the churches I am responsible for has been cheated of money. A conman has come into their lives and persuaded them to invest and the whole thing has been a total sham, a fraud. On the wider level, people such as Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi, Frank Abagnale, have become famous for their ability to con others.

I travel a lot overseas (I am in Albania today, penning this from my hotel room by the sea), and many countries have to deal with this all the time, both on an individual and national level, to the place where it makes people paranoid. The idea that everyone with money is trying to con them stops people investing in what are really genuinely good deals. Just the suspicion that someone might be cheating you will cause you to withdraw from giving.

Now satan takes advantage of this concern about being conned and presents God as a conman – or if the people are too “spiritual” to ever believe God is the conman, satan will try and convince them that the pastor is the conman. That somehow the pastor is cheating them to get their money.

This idea that the pastor is sleeping Monday to Saturday and you are giving 10% of your income to the church is hard to shift. It will clog up your ability to give freely until you establish in your heart that God is not a conman, and the church is not a conman and that tithing increases you and works in your benefit. In the parable of the talents, in Matthew 25.26, Jesus calls the man who does not invest “wicked”. That is a word that means you have things the wrong way around. To presume that God is a conman and tithing is a con is wicked – it is twisted, it is having things the wrong way around.

Tithing is one of the key foundations of a mature and stable Christian life and one of the biggest indications of one. Not doing it because you presume God or the church is stealing from you is wicked, and you should avoid being wicked by getting your heart right and becoming a committed, consistent tither today!