Give First and Generously – Worshiping Christ Through Cheerful Generosity

This powerful exploration of biblical stewardship challenges us to fundamentally rethink our relationship with money and material blessings. At its heart lies a simple yet profound principle: giving before receiving. We discover that this isn't merely a religious obligation, but a cosmic truth woven into the very fabric of creation itself. From Abraham's tithe to Melchizedek in Genesis 14, through the Mosaic law, Solomon's wisdom in Proverbs 3:9-10, and Malachi's direct challenge to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, Scripture consistently teaches that our first response to God's blessing should be gratitude expressed through giving. What makes this message so transformative is the recognition that we're not actually giving away 'our' money—we're acknowledging that everything belongs to God in the first place. He is the creator, sustainer, and redeemer. Every breath we take, every dollar we earn, every opportunity we receive flows from His gracious hand. When we tithe, we're not paying God back; we're declaring our trust that He, not our bank account, is our true source of security. This shift from scarcity thinking to abundance mindset liberates us from the crushing weight of trying to be our own god, our own provider, our own savior. The journey isn't easy—it requires inner work, faith development, and the courage to let go of control—but it opens the door to experiencing God's faithfulness in ways we never imagined possible.

Key Points:

• Tithing is a pre-law principle established by Abraham before Moses, demonstrating it's rooted in covenant relationship rather than legalistic obligation
• The principle of "giving before getting" is woven throughout creation itself and applies to all areas of life including relationships, fitness, and finances
• Teaching children early about giving, saving, and spending wisely establishes a healthy relationship with money as a tool rather than an idol
• Tithing removes the burden of trying to be God in our own lives by acknowledging Him as the ultimate provider and sustainer
• The love of money, not money itself, is the root of evil; proper stewardship glorifies God
• Giving should flow from a grateful heart recognizing God's blessings, not from leftovers or obligation
• Jesus affirmed tithing while emphasizing that the heart attitude matters more than mechanical compliance
• Common grace allows even secular successful people to understand and benefit from the principle of giving before receiving
• When we give faithfully, God provides ideas, connections, and opportunities beyond just financial return
• Tithing to a local church supports kingdom expansion and pastoral care for the congregation

Scripture Reference:

• Genesis 14 - Abraham's tithe to Melchizedek
• Genesis 28 - Jacob's vow at Bethel
• Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy - Mosaic law on tithing
• Proverbs 3:9-10 - Honor the Lord with the firstfruits of your wealth
• Malachi 3:8-10 - Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse; test God in this
• Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42 - Jesus rebukes Pharisees for tithing without justice, mercy, and faithfulness
• Matthew 28:18-20 - Jesus' authority over heaven and earth
• 2 Corinthians 9:6-7 - Whoever sows sparingly reaps sparingly; God loves a cheerful giver
• Acts 2, 4, 11 - Early church practices of generosity
• References to widow's offering and Zacchaeus

Support Brian Sauvé here: https://www.briansauve.com/even-dragons-shall-him-praise

Transcript

 Okay.

We are officially back.

We're officially back.

Yeah.

Listen to listen.

I mean, when you do this as often as I do, it's almost like everything is being recorded at this point when you're on the internet, literally every day, but we're back with one of my, I mean, easily, easily.

One of the best things that I've done throughout this year, you know,

 what you're going to fix in 2026.

That was the theme going into this year.

And I made it a point to really start tithing, really getting back to the word of God and understanding the importance and the way that your financial life and your finances and God are so, so tied together.

So I cannot tell you how appreciative I am of Aaron, my guy, Aaron, man, who, you know, we've reached out, we connected with each other on Instagram after doing a great podcast episode.

 That's, by the way, titled Christian Leadership.

You should go listen to it when you have an opportunity.

But he has a great app, and we are back for lesson two, where we're going to do a deep dive on the principle of giving before you get.

All right?

Giving before you get.

There was a term.

 that I heard last week at the making millions conference, where it's called useless friends, useless friends.

And that's you, you say you hear it, and you're like, Okay, I don't want to useless friends.

But in fact, you do, you do want a friend that doesn't need you for anything, right?

You do want a friend that is just there to be there whenever you are in trouble, but they they're not using you for everything, anything.

So this idea of giving before you actually get anything,

 It's an incredibly, incredibly important principle if you want to have the quality people in your life.

So with that being said, we have a video to play today, and we'll get to that, and then we'll get into some material.

We'll get into some verses to give you guys, to just give you something to go on with your day.

 Yeah.

So, uh, my 11 year old daughter, Ellie Sue Gaia, she, uh, this is a video of when she was two.

Um, the, these, these principles are written in the cosmos and they're written in God's word.

Uh, so, and, and that's just how it works as, as one was getting into.

Um, so I'm just gonna play this video.

It's a, it's a sweet, it's a sweet little video of my daughter and I, uh,

 when she was about two years old so here we go can you hear it the sound is off on my end okay so here I'm gonna I'll fix that real quick can you hear it now

 All right, so first.

There it is.

I got it.

First we give.

Here we go.

Wisely.

Yay!

 yes oh man first of all yeah yeah how cute is that little button yeah and it's something i'm telling you that you're gonna have to pull out i just before we started recording this actually i just wrote down because i do my themes uh for the week i try to get my articles done as least as early as saturday morning so i could have goes to the weekend not thinking about it

 Next week, I'm going to be talking about retirement and that retirement really does not know any age at all.

You don't really stop working at all.

If you are taught the way you're teaching your daughter, put the money that you have in certain buckets so it's making you money.

It's compounding.

It's making it so you don't need to depend on anybody else but yourself because of the mentality that you had and the positive relationship that you have with money.

It doesn't take a millionaire to do that.

It just takes someone that gives a

 Now, again, not going to be swearing on here.

It gives a blank word about the development of their family and really changing the trajectory of what their family is going to go through.

So, man, you can play that again, man.

I honestly think you should play that again.

That was great.

That was great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, she's super cute.

Yeah.

 Yeah, our thought is, hey, if these are just normal, routinized habits, then money is the thing that it's supposed to be, which is a tool, not evil, right?

So everybody thinks, oh, money is the root of all evil.

No, it's not.

It's the worship of money, the love of money.

So if you love money more than you love yourself,

 daughter more than you love your friend, whether they're useless or not, right, more than you love God, then yeah, then it is the root of all evil, because now that's greed.

And and that's just going to fold you into a decrepit, corrupt, but that's not how God made the cosmos.

You were saying earlier, and I thought it was great, even in the secular space.

 You have to give in order to get something.

That's just how our cells work, right?

On a cellular level, that's how fitness works, right?

That's how finances work.

That's how relationships work.

Like you...

 Gone are the days and whether they, if they even existed, but it's seen as an evil are where I see my wife, I grab her by the hair, I bonk her on the head and I pull her into my cave, you know, like that ain't happening.

That's not how it works.

I've, I've got to court my wife.

I've got to, you know, love my wife.

And even in my marriage, I'm still doing that same thing.

I'm still giving to her just like Christ gave.

 gave himself for the church.

And so it's just that it's a sewn in principle that cannot be removed from the cosmos.

But the beauty is for those of us like myself that are hard headed and didn't know these things, weren't taught from that young age, like little Ellie,

 We had a really bad relationship with money.

Maybe we thought we needed money in order to reach some high height or we needed money in order to establish ourselves.

Or if we didn't have money, we were bad or not good or seen as impoverished from even like a spiritual and a personal standpoint.

And that's just not true.

God gives what he gives you.

And then what you do with it is what you do with it, right?

We learned that last week.

 But the beginning of that is remembering, okay, if I'm getting a blessing, where is that blessing coming from?

Well, ultimately it's coming from God.

And why is that?

So at the beginning of this lesson, our creator God made heaven and earth and everything in it through Christ Jesus.

Our sustainer God is how all things consist.

Without him, we do not exist.

Further, he has redeemed me and you

 by giving himself over to death, a death that he didn't deserve, sacrificing his heavenly state, becoming low as a human, and then sacrificing in this humble state by the torturous death on the cross.

 But now has risen from the dead, right?

Ascended into the heavens, is seated at the right hand of the father, has authority over all of heaven and all of earth, as it says in Matthew 28.

And we hit that again.

And so as Abraham demonstrated before the law,

 And Paul affirms it after the law and after Christ's death and resurrection, right?

We respond by giving the first and best portion of our blessings that God has given to us anyways, that we didn't deserve, right?

Back to God with joy, generous giving glorifies our triune God, the God of the cosmos, right?

And demonstrates that our hope is in him, not in money, not in finance, not in a certain amount in savings or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

 I mean, I want to kind of break this down for a lot of people because this is hard for a lot of people to understand.

I went to, I might have mentioned it last week, but I'll bring it.

Yeah, I did mention it last week.

I went to a Catholic school and it wasn't until I turned 29 years, 10 years after my graduation from a Catholic school, did a pastor sit down with me and explain to me what tithing actually is.

 It blew my mind, Aaron.

Blew my mind because this was a pastor who was just like a regular person who, you know, worked at airports, did a ton of things to get his church, you know, the founder church, to open up the church and then become the pastor of the church where his family was there.

It was typical, like, you know, smaller church, but really got one-on-one with him.

And when I started to believe in him to the point where I really wanted to support, and I'm thinking that tithing is just, hey, you pay when you're there or you're just there.

I'm thinking it's a scam.

 And in many ways, because the nature of religion and what I was taught in the Catholic school is that everything is a religion.

And it's as friendship is this is that it was so far removed from the word of God that when you look at it from the secular world and you look at giving to a church, they've almost taken over the mindset of when someone is asking you to give to your church.

 Okay, that's a scam artist.

Now it's a scam because, you know, now this offer and that offer and it's been kind of made fun of.

But what he just read was not what it's doing.

You're taking 10% or again, the Bible says 10%.

You're taking that and you're automatically saying, God, this is you taking control of whatever I get from this point forward.

And that is taking the relief off of you to have to be responsible for it.

Do you guys catch that?

 You got to remove yourself from taking this responsibility in life.

Because if you do, the bills are going to stress you out.

Like you had mentioned, you're not going to be the husband or the spouse that you want to be.

You're not going to be because you're always working, always trying to be the one.

You're always trying to be God.

You are not God.

There's one God and you're not it.

That is the biggest thing.

That's a fact.

Exactly right.

 Exactly.

And then when you lose this mindset that you got to take care and especially as men, because we are kind of celebrated when we're the provider, so to speak.

And when you lose that relationship, everything just starts falling out of whack, out of whack over and over again.

And it's almost like it's like a faucet that wasn't turned off.

And it just flows and flows and flows and everything just starts spiraling because you could be making a certain amount.

And I just actually just had this conversation this week.

 Because I was exactly a young 18 year old kid who's going to be part of our business team.

And we were having that conversation with because, look, you're making a certain amount.

God forbid that wheel goes on the tire or something happens in your car.

Some idiot goes and hits you, rear ends you, whatever you had in the bank account.

 Now it's all gone.

You got to start from scratch.

You want to avoid that situation as much as possible by continuously tithing.

So your money and your mindset is tied to a level of faith that you realize, hey, this is how I'm going to give so I can get back in abundance.

And it's not going to be money.

It's not going to be getting back some people that you meet and working with folks that are really about the word of God and they're going to be improving you.

 Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's it's not like God is in an enigma to crack or a formula to figure out or an algorithm to solve.

Right.

God is the creator of you and everything.

He is the sustainer of you and everything.

And then and then he provides all of this.

So, yes.

Did you work 40 hours?

Sure.

Did you earn a certain amount of hourly income during those 40 hours?

 Sure, but without breath in your lungs, without an able body, without you in existence, guess what?

You don't do those 40 hours.

So ultimately, and God is in control of all the cosmos, Jesus Christ came and said, right, Matthew 28, 18 through 20, came and said, behold, I have been given all authority on heaven and on earth, everything on the earth.

 All the little bugs, right?

This little hammer, this little hammer hatchet thing that's behind me, right?

Like every single thing, right, is sustained in existence because of Jesus Christ.

Man, when you and when you shift that, then sure, then it's like, oh, well, then it's easy for me to give back.

 And are there churches that are corrupt and scamming?

Yeah, totally.

Of course there is, right?

Because that's the human sin aspect of this.

But the cosmos that God made, there are plenty of churches, right?

Good, solid Bible-believing churches where...

 Yeah, you're giving and it is expanding God's kingdom in that now that you have a congregation, we're paying for that pastor to be able to give us God's word.

We're paying for that pastor to be able to give us the sacraments, right?

Or give us...

 the bread and wine on a Sunday or exhort us or to come to our need when we're in the hospital, whatever.

That's part of what's going on, right?

If you open up the hood and see what's going on.

But ultimately, it's deeper than the hood.

It's a heart thing.

What do you think about the blessing that you get?

Is the blessing that you get God's or do you think it's yours?

And once you think it's yours, it's like now you've made yourself God, which is what you were saying.

 And man, like, good luck.

Good luck when you when you realize that you don't control everything.

It's like, man, that's a rough that's a rough road to hoe.

You know, I do want to I do want to quickly just I'm going to just jump through and wave up all of the all of the scriptures just to help kind of round out like you're saying it in a very practical way.

I think I'm saying it in a pretty practical way.

 Um, but it is a tough one because if your heart isn't there, if your mind isn't there, like you're going to just be like, no, this is a scam.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to give away 10% of my money.

Right.

Um, so in Genesis pre mosaic, right.

Pre Moses origins of, of the tithe, Abraham's tithe to Melchizedek, right.

Genesis 14.

Yep.

Right.

Defeated the Kings.

Abraham gave a 10th of everything to Melchizedek.

Just boom, right off the top.

 Priest of the God most high, right?

This is the first recorded tithe in scripture before the Mosaic law, before Moses goes, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not murder, right?

All that.

Jacob's vow at Bethel, right?

Jacob vows to give God a 10th of all he received, demonstrating that tithing was a voluntary act of devotion and a covenant response among the patriarchs.

Then there's Leviticus, a number of the Mosaic law talks about it.

You can jump into that if you want to.

Deuteronomy,

 Doubles down on it, triples down on it, if you will.

Then Proverbs and Malachi.

So in Proverbs, Solomon saying, hey, look, if you're to be a good king, right?

Young prince.

If you're to be a good king, young Aswan, right?

Young Aaron.

This is what you do.

Proverbs 3, 9 through 10.

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits, not the last remaining straggling little bits of coin.

 With the first fruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing.

Right.

With the first.

So for me, that's why, like I gave, I gave Ellie the, here's your three pennies that you've earned this week.

And then she gets to get, okay, out of this first, I give, then I save, then I spend wisely.

And now my kids get a little bit more.

 Right.

And so they're able to do, okay, I'm going to tithe to the church like dad does, just like mom does.

And then I'm going to save a certain amount and then I'm going to keep this other amount so I can spend it wisely.

And I'm going to think about how I want to, how I want to do that.

Um, and then Malachi, uh, it's the most direct tithing passage.

It's probably the most overused and abused passage, uh, by pastors, priests, um, and men of the cloth.

Right.

Uh,

 But it accuses Israel of robbing him by withholding tithes and offering, right?

That's what Malachi is saying.

And that's what God is saying through Malachi, right?

He's like, you have robbed me.

And he issues a famous challenge.

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven.

 Right.

And this is something that struck me.

And then and if you want to then share.

But for me, I did struggle with this.

I thought this guy is trying to, you know, connive, coerce, manipulate me to give him money so he can get this bigger building in this bigger space.

 And then I just realized I had a heart issue, man.

God was like maybe this fortune teller being and this kind of slot machine where you pull the lever and then sometimes he gave you stuff and sometimes you didn't.

And I was like, well, if I can pull the lever right.

And I just ultimately realized, I was like, man, I've got this really bad heart.

 theology, this really bad understanding of where my blessings are coming from, why I even exist.

And I just need to get that right, regardless of whether this pastor is coercing and manipulating me to give him a bunch of money so he can do, you know, get a jet or do some weird things with it or whatever, you know, are the bad stories that you hear.

Exactly.

 It's like, I have a heart issue and I need to confess and repent of that heart issue.

And so I just need to be thankful every time God gives me anything.

And money is a great way to do that.

It's like, if you give me a dollar, thank you, Lord, for that dollar.

Okay, how can I break this dollar so I can get a dime?

Boom.

Okay, Lord, here is your dime.

Thank you so much for the dollar that you gifted me, right?

A thousand bucks.

 Okay.

Lord, thank you so much for the thousand dollars.

Here's a hundred dollars.

Right.

And then just, I'm like, I am, that just needs to be my automatic heart response.

But man, it was clunky and mechanical and difficult at first.

I'm not going to lie.

You know, it was really tough.

And I will tell you what my wife and I, when I made that video, we struggled.

I owned a business.

 And the business was doing okay, but it was, like, paying us barely enough to get by in Southern California.

And Southern California, high cost of living.

I think I've heard someone say it was, like, $10,000 for the garage.

It's just the garage doors.

Yeah.

No, it's wild.

Wild.

Like...

 if I could have only have known that Florida existed and the cost of living was so much less.

Anyways, yeah, it was just wild.

And we were barely scraping by four grand a month

 We were month to month, every month.

But I'll tell you what, we tithed every month and we were faithful in what God promised.

And man, before you knew it, fast forward, we were able to then sell that condo, buy a home in Northern California, sell that home, buy a home in

 in northern idaho um and each time you know be able to have vision for our home that was about community about hosting people about bringing people together uh to the lord unto the lord right and and man he continues to bless and it wasn't like i cracked the code i was just faithful to what god promises and just stayed diligent stayed disciplined

 The thing is, I'm glad you're being transparent enough and sharing that because everybody has their own journey.

And I want to make sure I'm on the record stating to you guys, none of this is easy.

It is not going to be an easy to give the 10%.

We get it.

I mean, life is life.

And if you're talking to me personally, my relationship with religion was one of judgment.

I mean, from the Catholic school, I went to a small liberal arts school where I remember there was a

 An 18-year-old kid just like me who was raised in the church, and he was saying some things about the pastors and how his uncle, who's a pastor, and stuff that I wouldn't repeat on here, but it was just like, man, I ain't supposed to know this.

Yeah.

 The first time I met him, he told me he was a pastor.

And this is like, I'm 18 years old, so I'm just in the college football playing.

So I meet him.

I'm like, you know, okay.

Later on, like my senior year, I'm going to get right with the Lord and all that.

But right now, let me just be young.

Next time I see him, Aaron, he's in the club with us, partying, sweating, drinking.

I'm like, man, I'm not supposed to see you in here.

This ain't supposed to be you.

So...

 I mean, from that, as I got to know him, I realized, you know, the people who grew up in the church, per se, they're just that they're people, too.

All right.

They're people, too.

And everybody has their journey.

So it wasn't until I graduated college where I started looking at people like Grant Cardone or Russell Simmons or.

 Gary Vaynerchuk and all Tony Robbins, all these successful millionaires, the people that I wanted my business to be about.

And I started to see the same things that the word says, not what the religion, I started to see the difference.

Like the folks that are like the, I mentioned Russell Simmons, the book I read is called Do You by Russell Simmons.

I believe it's 12 ways.

 Yeah, I think 10 or 12 ways to be rich.

One of them, one of the principles in the book is you have to give before you get.

All right.

When you say give, when he was talking about his clothing brand, I had to spend the money that I was making work in some other job to make sure the quality was right.

So I could give the money.

I had to pay people more than I actually had because I had the faith.

 I had the faith that something was going to work out.

And when you start to see these verses and you see the tithing and you can see, hey, you're right.

You may be making only what, 4K a month or whatever it is, and you could barely get by in Southern California.

But if you have the faith, hey, you and your wife are going to be blessed with an idea to say, maybe this area isn't for us.

We're going to sell this property, go somewhere else and then

 establish ourselves in a situation where we could bring people to the walk of faith that's way more of a rewarding situation than being house poor in southern california and then having to constantly try to keep up with the joneses when what are we really chasing that's not a way to live god does not want you living like that nobody would want to be living in a way where they're constantly having to show off a show that they're they're something that they're not or being the worst thing i swear that the biggest nightmare i have and i'll be very transparent is to be house poor

 It is a bad situation to where all you're doing is paying for rent or paying for mortgages or paying to get something else.

You never actually get to connect with the community.

And that's what the tithing will do.

But it has to start early because if you just like we talked about last week, if you get down into that rat race, if you start down that cycle, the undoing of this stuff is insanely difficult to do.

So it starts with just exactly what you taught your daughter.

Yeah.

 Money is not a bad thing.

I know they're going to throw out these verses.

A lot of these people are going to throw out these verses about money is the root of all evil.

No, the love for it, the wrong mindset around it, the aspect of it where you think it has to be some sort of a boundary.

It is not a boundary.

It's actually your gateway to live whatever life you want to live.

You just got to get with the right people to teach you the right things so you understand where you give your money is going to dictate your future.

 that's what has to happen and it has to happen it has to happen based on your journey you got to seek the lord okay the one of my favorite verses is that who seeks the lord seeks the word then you're going to actually start to see what the lord can do for you without if you're not seeking him you're letting somebody some pastor tell you what your lord is you're gonna get the reality of what's gonna happen and that's what has to happen

 Yeah.

And, you know, obviously we you talked about, you know, a lot of these secular guys, a lot of them are not Christian, but God's common grace.

I mean, like this is how the cosmos works.

Right.

And so it's no wonder that, you know, these some of these guys, not Christian, not believers still are able to.

 Get tremendously wealthy and be able to actually share, share knowledge, share wealth.

I'll give you one.

I'll give you a story on that one, because I went to see.

So Steve Harvey has a nephew.

His name is Nephew Tommy.

I'm not sure if I'm familiar with him, but Nephew Tommy.

Just look up Nephew Tommy online.

You're going to hear a bunch of prank phone calls.

You'll probably laugh as hard as you possibly ever laughed in your life.

 if you just listen to a few of them there's been days where that's all i've listened to is his prank phone calls they're absolutely hilarious so anyway he came out to west palm beach in a live in a live setting one i think it was like two or three years ago he came out about three or four years ago he came out to west palm beach and i'm like i gotta go see him i gotta go see him the guy's hilarious so he does this comedy show i mean there's profanity there's again it's a comedy show

 But towards the end of the show, he starts naming off scripture after scripture after scripture, talking about God, talking about his faith.

And he just looks at everybody in that serious tone.

He goes, hey, don't ever think I don't know him.

Don't ever think I don't know him.

Don't ever think I don't know the Lord and I don't go back to him.

I don't go to him and have that conversation.

 Yeah.

You know, I know I'm doing things that are not right, but I'm trying every single day to to just clean it up.

That was one of the most powerful parts.

And again, I've been through all the churches, all the religions.

When you have somebody that's making a good living, doing something that one would judge.

But then he gets to a point where he had this following and then he takes him on this journey with scripture and this.

And then, you know, understanding the work of God, it was like, wow.

 It was powerful because you could tell even in the room, it's like, man, I know I probably maybe not have done the best thing tonight, but there's always going to be God.

God's always going to be there in the morning or wherever to commit my life to him so I can get it right.

 Yeah.

Yeah.

And obviously the, the, you know, potential pitfall of that is, is if there isn't the morning.

Right.

And so it's like, And there isn't the morning.

Right.

Right.

And that's what was so powerful.

That's what was so powerful that night.

Like that night.

Cause I could, I could even remember how, how hard I laughed at the thing, but even that night I was like, man, how do you end the show like that though?

Was that strategic?

Was that, I'm like, God, was that.

Yeah.

 How did you, you know?

Well, it pleased the Lord to put it to you in that, you know, in that perspective.

And that's how it works sometimes.

That's how it works sometimes.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Yeah, and so I'll get back to, you know, if we're glorifying God, right, if that is our ultimate purpose, we are to glorify God and enjoy him.

Yeah.

 And we do that in our marriage and we do that with our children and we do that with our money and we do that with our home because he has authority over all of it.

He owns all of it.

He created all of it.

So yeah, that just, duh, that's how we do it.

Not an easy mindset to get if you've been fed that,

 Oh, you know, you do you boo boo.

Oh, you have enough power.

You have enough strength.

It's like, no, if you did, then you would be perfect and you would be in control of everything and you would get everything that you wanted.

And that's not the cosmos that we live in.

Right.

It's it's corrupted in in sin, in death.

Right.

The curse of sin and death.

But through Christ.

Right.

In Christ.

 man, you can say, oh, blessed be the Lord, I have nothing.

Blessed be the Lord, I have an abundance.

Blessed be the Lord, I've got just this little bit.

Then you could take that little bit, invest it, right?

And so we see this as the Old Testament closes.

So I finished with Malachi.

As the Old Testament closes, Nehemiah restoring the practice of bringing the tithes, right?

Then it's Chronicles, right?

Generous giving.

 And then we jump into the gospel where Jesus, God incarnate, God who came to earth, right?

 So in Matthew 23, 23 or Luke 11, 42, when he rebukes the Pharisees for not tithing, or I'm sorry, not for tithing because they tithed everything, right?

Even the littlest herbs and spices they were tithing perfectly, right?

But he's like, yeah, okay, cool.

You've tithed the...

 you've tied your cumin perfectly or whatever.

He's like, but you neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness while tithing.

So also don't let this become a dry bones act, a rote thing.

Like to me, it's like every time I get paid, you know, if I do something right again, I have to give of myself to get right.

Which is what you said.

I get paid.

It's like, that's a reminder to me to stop.

 Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you for providing me this job.

Thank you for providing me this body.

Thank you for providing health, right?

Thank you.

And so it's this thankfulness that we talked about last week, right?

I get to thank him for all these blessings and then thank you for this blessing.

And then boom, and then automatic, you know, here's calculate my 10%, boom, my 10%, it's going to my church, right?

That I, that I attend.

And so critically, he says, you should have practiced the ladder, right?

 without neglecting the former so he's not saying oh don't tithe just have you know justice faithfulness he's like yeah yeah tithe but guess what you need to focus on the the heart right your heart's in the wrong spot man your your dry bones uh your whitewashed tombs right and uh and then and so then he talks about it the same with the widow's offering

 And Zacchaeus gives half of everything and then pays quadruple back for the taxes that he took.

Early church, there's records of the tithe, Acts 2, Acts 4, Acts 11.

And then Paul has this beautiful covenantal continuity.

It's like, hey, guess what?

This hasn't shifted completely.

 just because we're a new church, this hasn't shifted from the old Testament.

Yeah.

We're, we're saved from the law because the law just showed that, Hey, we were sinful and we couldn't abide by it.

Right.

Jesus Christ is the only one that could do that.

He's like, but with, but in Christ, look, Hey, here's the, here's the Magna Carta, right.

Of, of Christian giving.

And he's like, you give in joy.

You give in faith.

 It marks your maturity as a Christian.

It's what we do alongside faith and speech and knowledge in our maturity.

We know we've got an abundance of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We don't deserve, right?

We don't deserve any of this.

We've been gifted it.

So, hey, all the more reason why I can give.

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, right?

So if you're giving sparingly,

 if you're sowing your fields sparingly, if you're like, ooh, scarcity mindset, I don't wanna give this guy this information because then he might make more money than me or whatever.

It's like, man, that's the wrong mindset.

We live in an abundance, not in a scarcity.

God created a cosmos of abundance.

And if you don't believe that, just go to the local park,

 Put your face onto the ground, move the grass to the side, and just look at all of God's creation and creatures that are in this small little space that your eyeballs can see.

And that's the world that we live in.

And then there's more and more, right?

Galatians, Philippians, Hebrews, James, Revelation.

And so we don't have to go through all of that.

But I did want to hit on those things because, man, it's all throughout from Genesis to Revelation.

 It's undeniable.

It's in his cosmos.

It's woven throughout the cosmos.

The secular people are on board with it, right?

They, they are able to even use God's common grace in this giving and receiving functionality.

And so let's, let's change your heart, you know, let's get it.

 yeah and uh listen i'm glad you you broke it down in that terms it is giving and so much of it's going to be working on the inside of you and again i will repeat myself as frequently as i can it's not going to be easy because it takes the inner work all right it is not about you taking your money and giving it to a physical person this is not what it is and nor is that on the investment side you're not going to take your money give it to a physical person it's

 You have to develop a walk of faith to where you're giving it and your confidence grows and you develop the confidence to where you know you're giving because you are that strong and that's securing your faith that whatever God wants for you to have happen will happen.

That's called letting go.

 Let it go, guys, especially for you men.

I mean, there's no women listening to this and it applies to you too.

But as men, we are given such a pat on our behind when we're the provider and we could pretend like we're the provider.

Actually, I'll close you guys out with this story.

It was back when I worked at LA Fitness and my job was to sell as many memberships as possible.

I'd walk around the entire shopping center trying to sell memberships, sell memberships.

And I remember there was this guy was like, well, I work out for free.

 And I go for free, free.

There's a place that says for free in my apartment complex.

And my my supervisor was walking into the gym as he was hearing the guy.

And he goes, hey, man, if it was free, you would never use it.

 And this is the same principle, guys.

If you are going to church regularly and you're telling me, again, you're here because you want to get yourself kind of on the right walk of faith.

When you give and you give something, you're going to go to the pastors and you're really going to learn their story.

I mean, I tie that...

 I tie that, I'll use myself as an example, I tie that Life.Church, Pastor Craig Groeschel, famous pastor, you can look him up.

I've never met him.

I've never got an opportunity to shake his hand, but I've only seen him speak live once because I traveled to Orlando for my birthday just because I knew he was going to be speaking there.

 Never met him personally, but the more that I give, the more research I do on the man and hear more stories and hear how he doesn't get in the car with women.

He's struggling with several things.

He's very transparent in his sermons.

He's struggling with his own kids and certain things have happened with his grandkids.

He becomes a person that you do your research on personally.

 Because I'm paying money to church every, I think it comes out every two weeks or whatever it is.

But I am more dialed into his work.

I could probably tell you more about him than, again, I'm a sports guy.

So I used to, you know, follow these athletes.

I could tell you more about Pastor Craig Rochelle than whatever new rapper or new athlete is coming up because where's my mind shifted?

 it shifted onto the things where I know I'm looking to be versus, you know, the things that may be just entertainment that you can't apply.

This is what we're doing.

This is what we're telling you.

You give because your walk of faith and your, your strength and your faith is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger for whatever it is you're trying to do, whether it's family, whether it's professional, whether it's more money, it doesn't matter.

You got to make sure you give it to the Lord every single day, because if you don't, the pressure is going to Mount and Mount and Mount and Mount and Mount and

 I've seen it happen.

I've seen people crumble under that.

The whole world is the Lord's.

It's not ours.

Act like it.

Act like it.

I had a great one of my best friends.

At some point, I was like, you got to put your money where your mouth is, man.

You got to put your money where your mouth is.

You got to put your money where your mouth is.

 Yeah.

And so on that really quick, I'll finish this out with an application.

But before I do the application, I just want to I think I forgot to do this last time.

I just wanted to give a shout out to.

So if you're listening to this, if you're watching this, if you're hearing this, just remember, if you if you want a meeting.

 To talk specific about your personal financial management, your money management stuff, there is a link to Aswan's calendar.

So you click that link and then you can grab a 30-minute

 a 30 minute session with Aswan and go from there.

So I just wanted to plug that.

I wanted to plug Aswan real quick.

Cause I forgot to do that the first time.

So, but yeah, it's, it's, it's where, wherever you're listening to this, whether it's on the app, it's on the website or it's on the podcast, right there, there will be a link for you to find.

 And then schedule some time with Aswan to go over your personal journey.

Because he talked about personal journeys at the very beginning.

We all have a different journey, right?

God's working with us and writing our story in a different way.

But all of us have...

 blessing right and we talked about that the first time all of us have blessing and so what where is your heart with that blessing do you think that that blessing is yours mine golem my precious um or is it the lord's and then you get to steward it and if you do you know so my application for you is make giving to your local church a priority that flows from faith and

 in christ's provision not from leftovers right and like malachi said or as god said through malachi test me in this like see if your barns don't you know come you might not have a barn but you probably got a house or a place that you live right and and so then the the second application is uh that that um habit that routine that that phrase first we give then we save

 then we spend wisely and our lessons will be a little bit different.

Cause like first lesson is like understanding that all of this is God's second is tithing.

Cause it's that important.

The third will be spend wisely.

So it's a little, a little bit out of order, but the mindset to the spend wisely is that next session afterwards, which is as one, we'll talk about that mindset of saving.

 First we give, then we save, then we spend wisely.

It's a great habit.

It's a great routine to follow our thankfulness for the blessings that God has given us.

 Absolutely.

I mean, and again, thanks for the plug.

If you are struggling with this and just so we're clear, it's not something I trust me.

I've had negative.

I had a car be possessed.

I've been in the 400 credit.

I know what it can feel like to really lose absolutely everything.

And that's why I'm so grateful and so excited to know that the end of the day, it's not mine.

I mean, none of it is mine.

It's all God's.

And the thing that God puts you through is just do a particular journey.

 to teach somebody else not to go through something that you've lived through yourself.

So looking forward to finishing out.

We're only on session two.

So man, I'm, I'm already, I can't wait.

I cannot wait to see how we continue to grow this thing though.

Beautiful.