Before diving into Ed’s book on Repentance, the church went through the minor prophets. At our men’s devo two Wednesdays ago we talked about that infamous passage in Malachi 3:6-12, used to get people to give to their church:<\/p>\n
“I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.
\n“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’
\n“Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
\n“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
\n“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse\u2014the whole nation of you\u2014because you are robbing me. 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. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The question was asked, what could that mean to rob God? After all, everything we have is a gift from God, how could we<\/em> rob Him<\/em>? In thinking about it, this story came to mind.
\nWhen my wife and I were first married, we lived for year one in a tiny 800 square foot house in Dearborn MI. As we approached our first Halloween, we (mostly Maria) were looking forward to passing out candy for the first time We had both lived in apartment complexes prior to that which didn’t really have trick or treating, so this was going to be fun.
\nAs the kids came, we opened the door, presented the bowl of candy and told the kids to take what they wanted. Most kids were polite and took a couple, or maybe four or five. Then Those Kids came to the door. When I said take what you want, the opened their bag and plunged it into the bowl, trying to scoop out all the candy. The force knocked the bowl out of my hands and onto the porch and they ran away with most of our candy. I was ticked off and paced round the house spouting off about it for a bit, making threats I had absolutely no intention of carrying out.
\nWhat does this have to do with Malachi? Well, I got to thinking, it’s kind of like that with God. He’s laid out before all of us a certain sum. For some it’s modest, maybe $20,000 per year (or even less), for others it’s substantial, well into six figures. “I’ve made this available for you.” God says, “Take what you need or want.” Am I so greedy to snatch the bowl out of God’s hands? Will I spend all that God has provided? How much will I leave behind, to give to do the work of God? Will I rob God of an opportunity to work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before diving into Ed’s book on Repentance, the church went through the minor prophets. At our men’s devo two Wednesdays ago we talked about that infamous passage in Malachi 3:6-12,Read More Robbing God<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRobbing God - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/10\/robbing_god.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robbing God - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Before diving into Ed’s book on Repentance, the church went through the minor prophets. 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He recently put it on our family website. It's an amazing story, here it is ... 2007 brought a lot of change in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family and Friends"","block_context":{"text":"Family and Friends","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/family-and-friends"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":643,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2007\/03\/blogwalking_mar_1.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":394,"position":1},"title":"Blogwalking: March 24, 2007","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Trying to clean out my RSS reader and give you some things to read ... Keith Brenton puts some old school CoC rants in perspective in Call Me Contrary. Gary Petersen links to this Instapundit post on Al Gore's hypocrisy. 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Dead, hope lost, cut off from God\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/08\/a_letter_to_the.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":394,"position":3},"title":"A Letter to the Leaders","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"August 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Our church recently lost its campus minister. He felt that the ministry was not for him and resigned, moving to Florida to be a teacher. We are left to decide what to do. The board, the Deacons and the Evangelist met last Monday to discuss it. We are are a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":77,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/communion_lesso.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":394,"position":4},"title":"Communion lesson to the teachers","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"February 22, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Grace is viewed as a NT thing, but I've come to realize that it is not really even a Bible thing, but a God thing. It's a part of God's heart, character and his essence. I'm reading through my chronological Bible this year focusing on God's heart. I'm into Exodus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Articles, papers and lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Articles, papers and lessons","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/articles-papers-and-lessons"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/01\/the_truth_about.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":394,"position":5},"title":"The Truth About Western Christianity","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Please, go read this article at Christianity Today. (Thanks to Daniel at Alien Soil for the link.) It's a powerful expose on modern western Christianity. Ronald J. Sider does an excelent job pointing out the hypocracy of what is called Christianity in the US today. Quoting many polls and other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "God and Church"","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1879,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/1879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}