Honour the Lord with what you have

“Honour the Lord with thy substance and with the first-fruits of all thy increase.” (Proverbs 3:9)

God fills the clouds with rain, for the very purpose that they may empty themselves on the land, to make the land fertile; and so God trusts His children, as His stewards, with means not to keep all to themselves, not to enjoy merely themselves, but to communicate out of the abundance He is pleased to give them to their fellow men - those who are weak and feeble, and cannot work, or who through other circumstances are brought into straightened, difficult positions and circumstances. 

This attended to bring blessing not only to the soul, but even blessing of a temporal character. I speak as one who knows all this from an experience in my own case of much more than 60 years. I speak about this as having, through my acquaintance with more than tens of thousands of children of God, had brought before me again and again and again the fact that those who acted according to the principles here laid down, not merely brought blessings to their souls, but even as to their circumstances temporarily, obtained far more again than they had given away.

So that not only interest was given them, but compound interest, and in many cases twenty times, fifty times, even a hundred times more than they had given to the poor, or than they had given to the work of God. 

For God ever sees to it that He is not our debtor, but that we are His debtors. O if brethren and sisters in Christ habitually acted according to this verse, how different would be their position even as to this life, and how great the blessing which they would thus bring to their own souls!

“Honour the Lord with thy substance.” (Proverbs 3:9) When God is pleased to give to us temporal blessings, He gives them, not that on our own persons we may spend the abundance He is pleased to bestow on us, but that we may remember the weak and sickly, and help and assist them; that we may remember those who are out of employment, who would gladly work, but who have no work; and that we may care for the widow, and the aged widow in particular, and the aged man who can no longer work - that we may remember their necessities and care for them. 

And the result will be, as I have seen it times without number in my long Christian career, that not only will blessing come to the souls of those who act according to this work, but that even with regard to temporal things God will abundantly repay what we have thus given. 

“So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.” (Proverbs 3:9) We may have no barns, and no vineyard, to have this literally fulfilled; but God, in some way or other, will make it manifest how He is mindful of what we have given to the widow, to the poor sick person who cannot work, to the poor aged man who is past work.

G.M.