“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” —Malachi 3:10

This verse teaches us five things regarding our money.

One, the Israelites of Malachi’s day were backslidden because they were withholding from God what was His.

Two, the entire nation was under a curse because God’s people were robbing Him.

Three, God wants all that is due to Him. It is not enough for you to give Him a part, even a large part. That is not what He says. God says He wants it all, and He wants it week by week.

Four, the tithe should go to the storehouse. Now everybody knew then what that was; it was the synagogue or the temple. Today it means the church, your church. When a person begins to give to God, something is unlocked within him and he has a love for the Lord.

Five, God challenges us to discover for ourselves why this is true and that it is true. Think of this: God is angry with those who rob Him, yet He tenderly stoops to where we are to motivate us to give. That is why He tells us to test Him. God challenges us here.

While tithing is of huge importance, no one will be saved just by tithing. Tithing is not how you become a Christian. You are saved when you realize that God sent His Son into the world to die on a cross, to shed His blood, to do for you what you can’t do—keep the law perfectly. You will go to heaven even though you have never tithed, and you will stay saved even if you don’t become a tither, because tithing is not what guarantees salvation. The connection between spirituality and money is that when you don’t give God what is His, you don’t grow spiritually and you may also suffer financially. Your Christian life just won’t be the same.

Excerpted from Between the Times (Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2003).

In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. —Isaiah 30:15, KJV

There is a much deeper level of worship, one in which we are unable to express ourselves verbally or nonverbally—where we are utterly passive. The highest and most intense worship takes place when we can do nothing but be amazed, when we are rendered helpless and speechless with wonder and gratitude, when we just sit back and watch God work. This is what Isaiah is talking about in this verse.

How many people are utterly frustrated? They have tried everything, and the result has only been fatigue. A minister once said to me, “I had to ask for a sabbatical. I’m burned out.”

When we don’t wait on God and are always trying to do things ourselves, the result is endless turmoil. But if we really want assurance of salvation, God will knock everything out from under us until we trust Him alone.

To rest in God means we leave everything to Him. We leave it to Him to put us in the right place at the right time and with the right people. In so doing, we will not experience fatigue, because we get our approval from the blood of Christ, not from our works, and because we live by the authority of the Spirit of Christ.

The result is that we live and worship in a state of amazement, awe, and admiration: which is the second principle I want us to see from Isaiah 30:15. We have quietness over the most difficult situations and over our deepest fears. For God says, “Leave it to Me.” We lose the desire to get even with those who have hurt us, and we feel little need to prove ourselves.

Real worship is directed toward the One who doesn’t want anything from us for what He has done for us. There are no strings attached. God only wants us to trust Him. He wants us to experience the joy of doing nothing but resting in the fact that He loves us. God wants us just to look to Him and say, “Lord, I don’t know how much I love You. But I know how much You love me.” Rest in that, and let God love you. Then you will stand in awe.

Excerpted from Worshipping God (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004).

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. —Hebrews 12:2

The goal of trials is to look to Jesus. This happens when you are shut off from all here below so that only God knows.

As long as you envisage external vindication below, it is your hint that you are not ready yet. Are you like that young man who just wanted to be vindicated before his father, and when his father died, he had nothing else to live for? God is a jealous God, and He wants you to enjoy Him, alone.

Sometimes I say to my wife, “Let’s go out for a meal. Let’s go to a restaurant.”

“Fine,” she says.

Then I ask, “Whom shall we take with us?”

“Don’t you just want to be with me?” she asks.

That is what God is saying, and Jesus responded in getting His joy from the Father alone.

If this is your pattern, I will tell you what it will mean. It will mean that your best and closest friends may not understand. It was a trial for Jesus that He could not explain to the disciples all that He was up to. Yet His joy was internal, and when you begin to react to criticism and praise in much the same way, you are beginning to get free. When you begin to react to criticism and praise without taking either seriously, that signifies that you are passing the tests as Jesus did. The goal of trials is contentment with the glory that comes from God only.

A friend, Jon Bush, asked me once in connection with this, “Is it that ambition takes us so far and the glory of the Lord the rest of the way?” I agreed with him.

The goal is reached when our ambition dissolves and all we want is for Him to say, “Good. Well done.”

Excerpted from Meekness and Majesty (Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 1992, 2000).

You have an anointing from the Holy One. —1 John 2:20

One of the most frightening comments I have heard since I entered the ministry was uttered by an Episcopalian priest in America: “If the Holy Spirit were taken completely from the church, 90 percent of the work of the church would go right on as if nothing had happened!”

What a travesty of what the church was meant to be! And can it be true also of our personal lives—that many of us are churning out “Christian” activity that has no touch of God upon it?

There is only one antidote to such a situation. It is breathtaking in its possibility, it is awesome in its power, and it is liberating in its effect. It is quite simply—the anointing.

The anointing is the power of the Holy Spirit.

Several years ago someone came into my vestry and asked me, “What do you mean by the anointing?” I remember replying something like this: “It’s a gift that functions easily when it’s working.”

It does not follow, of course, that all that functions easily is our anointing. Some things come easily that are not necessarily good—eating, talking too much, or watching more television than is good for us. Temptation comes easily, and we may find it “natural” to do things that are not productive.

The anointing, however, leads to what is good; it blesses and encourages others. And its function is carried out with ease and without strain or fatigue.

When the anointing is working, it is as natural and easy for our gift to function as eating or talking with friends. The gift is always there but doesn’t always function easily. The anointing of that gift makes it function with ease.

Whether you are a secretary, professional person, homemaker, truck driver, or minister, the possibility of the anointing is there all the time; you never know when God will manifest Himself in an unusual way.

Excerpted from The Anointing: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Charisma House, 2003).

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? … Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. —Isaiah 58:6, 8

First, fasting must be secret (Matt. 6:16-18). When we are fasting we must not let the slightest hint of it leak out. Only God needs to know.

The second thing is that fasting must be special. I question if it ought to be done regularly. I don’t see fasting as something to be done whether you really need to or not, for example, making a commitment to fast every Friday. I think if it is used that way it will lose its significance.

Third, as we have seen, fasting must have a purpose. We must know what we want to achieve. It’s not like taking vitamins in the general hope that they will do us good.

The fourth point is that fasting must be sensible. Some people cannot fast for medical reasons. For example, if you are a diabetic, then that ought to disqualify you. And we must never fast without drinking plenty of liquids. There are various degrees of fasting. You can cut out one meal or two meals, or fast for a whole day or a number of days. However, anyone seeking to fast for more than two or three days should first seek the advice from an experienced Christian minister or counselor.

A fifth thing is that fasting must be spontaneous: that is, voluntary and from the heart. In my opinion, there could be danger in corporate fasting, for some may be acting reluctantly and under pressure.

The next thing I need to say is that fasting must be sacrificial. Isaiah 58 describes people who fasted but who loved it.

Finally, we must be quite clear about our motives, and we must have no mixed motives.

Fasting by itself is no magic answer to our problems. It is only effective when it symbolizes a deep longing for spiritual reality, and it demands a life of holiness and obedience to God. “Then,” says God in Isaiah 58:8, “shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily” (KJV).

… and humbled myself with fasting. —Psalm 35:13

You might be thinking, I’m willing to fast, but when do I do it? I would therefore like to suggest five occasions on which fasting is justifiable.

I think the first of those would be when the burden we are under is so great that we do not really have a desire for food—for this may be a hint from God that we should fast. David experienced a time of great mourning when God smote the son born to him as a result of his adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:15-16).

The second occasion that justifies fasting is when we are about to embark on a very great task for God or have to make an important decision. At the beginning of His ministry, after His baptism, Jesus fasted (Matt. 4:2). Maybe you need to know God’s will and don’t know what to do. It is justifiable to fast because you need wisdom for something in the future.

A third reason is if we feel that God is hiding His face. Perhaps we are in a rut or have known better days spiritually. Perhaps God is not as real as we have known Him to be, and we are not sure whether we have grieved Him or whether He has just chosen to hide His face for reasons we can’t understand. Perhaps God is hiding His face from us in order to drive us to our knees to seek Him.

The fourth occasion is when we have experienced delay in the answers to our prayers. In the Old Testament in particular we have accounts of situations where God did not step in as it had been hoped He would, and as a result the people fasted.

The fifth occasion that justifies fasting is when we feel the need of unusual power that we don’t have, such as in the case of demon possession in Matthew 17, which was too big for the disciples to handle.

Fasting is a way of ensuring that we are completely dependent upon God and open to Him. It seeks spiritual emptiness and cleansing, and it enables us to hear God speaking.

Excerpted from Worshipping God (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004).

As natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and droughts increase, so does talk of the world coming to an end. What do these events really mean? Here’s a snapshot of what three respected prophetic leaders have to say.

Cindy DeVille
“We must understand that the problems we are seeing in America—such as wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods—are actually the fruit of a root problem. Changing a law or political party is like putting a Band-Aid on a deep-rooted cancer. God is calling Christians across our nation to their knees, to humbly unite and lead the church in massive repentance.”  

James Goll
“Will we be prepared? Whether it is adverse, strange weather patterns, global economic recession or America’s materialistic Titanic going under, these times of hardship can become great days of hope. Because the Bible says: ‘For behold, darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you, and His glory will appear upon you’” (Is. 60: 2).

Cindy Jacobs
“Because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan many are asking, ‘What is taking place?’ What do we know? God had warned us that shaking is coming. This doesn’t mean it was His desire for it to happen but that it was more of the biblical fulfillment that He doesn’t do anything without first warning through His servants the prophets (see Amos 3:7). Others are asking, ‘Was this a judgment from God?’ I tend to think God is grieved that so many have died. However, if we all pray and act in this crisis, I believe the Holy Spirit wants to breathe a wind of revival in Japan.” 

$500,500

The grant amount·that ONEOK, a Tulsa, Okla.-based energy company, awarded Oral Roberts University to build a “technology boardroom” to support the school’s College of Business Shark Tank program.

$8.3 Million

The amount given last year by Speed the Light, an Assemblies of God youth ministry, to help missionaries receive equipment useful in ministry.

Shaun Fanning credits his family’s survival of May’s killer tornado in Joplin, Mo., to the Holy Spirit.

Shopping at a Walmart when the storm struck, Fanning sensed he should stay put when employees urged people to move to the back of the store.

Although he broke his left arm while shielding his wife from debris and she sustained injuries, several people in the back where Fanning would have gone died when a wall collapsed.

“I just felt in my stomach it wasn’t right,” says Fanning, a co-leader of a cell group at Destiny Church. “It was God telling me not go back there.”

He believes the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1999 helped raise his spiritual sensitivity and hear God when it counted most. That morning his pastor also had preached about ways to recognize God’s voice.

Today Fanning, a human resources consultant, believes the Lord has a special work for him: “I don’t know what it is yet; I just know it’s going to be big.”

Michelle Aguilar weighed 242 pounds when she first tipped the scales on NBC’s The Biggest Loser: Families in 2008. Aguilar—who eventually won the reality show after she lost 110 pounds—had spent years using food to ease her pain.

And it showed.

The weight gain began after her mother called her to say she’d be leaving Aguilar’s father. “I was devastated to hear the family structure I had always known was going to be gone,” Aguilar says.

Hurt and angry, Aguilar had no contact with her mother for six years until shortly before Aguilar’s father suggested the two women enter the weight-loss competition together. 

It was on the reality show that Aguilar, now 30, finally reached her breaking point.

“I fell apart with cameras rolling,” Aguilar says. It wasn’t long before she realized just how little she had trusted God to heal her. She finally said: “I’ll stop. I’ll walk this line. … I won’t retreat in fear, but I’ll trust You.”

Faithfully, God began helping Aguilar embrace her mother with the same kind of unconditional love He has for each of us. “Who am I … to withhold love and forgiveness?” Aguilar says.  

She explains more of her journey to trusting God in her new book, Becoming Fearless. Today she travels the country, speaking and encouraging others to trust Him. 

Though some believers blame technology for helping to destroy the family unit, a recent Barna study shows that most families feel otherwise when it comes to the impact computers, cell phones, video game systems and other devices have on their relationships. Here’s how the pies divvy up: