Give and It Shall Be Given Unto You

Give and It Shall Be Given Unto You

By Holly Davis

God taught me to tithe shortly before I graduated from college. I had just started attending Abundant Life Covenant Church and was still new in my walk with the Lord. My dad instructed me to go see Phil Walker, a deacon in our church who helped others learn to use a budget. I had never attempted this before, but Phil laid it out very clearly. The first thing he taught me was to put the tithe at the top of the budget. He read to me Malachi 3:10—

“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
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.”

He explained that it all belonged to the Lord, but He only asks us to give a tenth. I began practicing this, and the Lord proved over and over that He was my provider.

When Ben and I were married, we continued in this obedience of putting the tithe at the top of the budget. This was tested even more because of our low income and financial responsibilities. Seemingly there was always more month left at the end of the budget, but as we remained faithful He worked a miracle every month. To this day we have never been late on a bill.

As time went on God gave us the faith to give offerings on top of the tithe. 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.” The Scripture said to give tithes and offerings. We began to realize we could never out give God. As we sought the Lord’s direction, there were times our offerings were bigger than our tithe.

There was an occasion that God spoke to Ben and me separately to give our entire tax return. Because of an excessively large medical bill from the previous year that we were able to claim, we ended up with a larger than normal tax return the following year. The Lord had shown us how to get the larger tax return, but after we received it, He asked us to give it away. We had that money already spent in our minds in order to cut a chunk out of the medical bill. This required a deeper level of trust than we had ever known. We obeyed and shortly after that a couple from church pulled us aside and said the Lord had put it on their hearts to give us a large sum of money. They had no idea we had just given our tax return to the Lord, but the Lord knew. We were very humbled and blessed. By this act of generosity God birthed a vision in our hearts that we would one day be the ones able to help others in this way. Luke 6:38—

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

God has proven Himself over and over as we have obeyed and given Him our first fruits. He has shown us to tithe not only our money, but also our time and resources in order to further His kingdom. He is the abundant provider that faithfully meets all of our needs.



Holly and her husband Benjamin serve as pastors at Abundant Life.