The Miracle of Tithing - 3
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Regular and Systematic Tithing
Indiscriminate giving is not tithing. The tithe must go regularly to directly support God's work and those engaged in it. Contributions to one's family members and community organizations for the needy are worthy causes, but they should be extra donations above and beyond the tithe—not part of the tithe itself. Put your trust in God and his inexhaustible supply and you will soon find abundance in your world, not only for your tithe but also for all other legitimate needs.
The practice of tithing has been a lifelong habit with many. They automatically set aside this 10 percent that belongs to God before they consider their monthly expenses. It becomes much easier if you think of your monthly income as only 90 percent. In this way you will not be tempted to spend God's portion.
A Tie to Spirit
Elizabeth Clare Prophet defined tithing as a tie to Spirit.
She said: "Because we are in the plane of Mater, we have to have a tie
to Spirit. Our tie is our tithe. And our tithe is the energy we take from
Mater, consecrate it to Spirit, to the church of our choice, to the altar
of our choice. That, then, becomes a leaven, a focal point, which multiplies
our substance."
Take God As Your Partner
Many so-called "captains of industry," not only Mr. Le Tourneau, have used this important secret of prosperity to bring success to their business enterprises. Taking God into your business as your partner is a formula that always brings not only abundance but also peace of mind to those who faithfully use it.
Henry Crowell of Quaker Oats, M. W. Baldwin, the railway equipment manufacturer, William Colgate, Napoleon Hill, Clement Stone and Norman Vincent Peale are only a few well-known names who have proven these laws of abundance. In fact, Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World, even advocates the blessings received from tithing 50 percent of one's income. This formula is only waiting for you to use it and prove the laws of success in your own life.
The Source of Our Supply Is God - From Mark Prophet's "Secrets of Prosperity"
"It is in the use of our gifts that God has given to us that we multiply
them, and it does not have to involve money. Money is merely a medium of exchange.
It can involve service. It can involve things you do for others. It can involve
other people out of your family as well as your immediate family. I think one
of the secrets of prosperity that I have noted that breaks the crystallization
in your world that keeps you from getting supply is the feeling of ownership
of people. A lot of people feel that their son or their wife or their mother
or their father or their brother or their sister—in other words, family—is
all-important.
"You don't own the people and they don't own you—all people are free. And this sense of family circle exclusively, ruling out everybody else in the world, is one of the reasons for crystallizing the consciousness and stopping prosperity from coming in. When you start to think of the world as your family, when you start feeling and thinking in terms of loving other people outside the family and doing something for someone outside the family—and not necessarily someone you love but someone who may be even impersonal to you—you begin to think in terms of God.
"We look altogether to God and we have found that this is the secret, another secret of supply: Don't depend on any human being. Depend on God!"
"Therefore, I think one of the greatest secrets of prosperity is the ability to detach oneself from the person and to be impersonal, because all these things are magnets that make you Godlike. And 'I AM come that they might have life and that more abundantly' is the secret of it all. This denotes that it is the source of the Presence that holds the source of your supply. It doesn't come from outer sources.
"We've quit looking to people for our supply. We look altogether to God and we have found that this is the secret, another secret of supply: Don't depend on any human being. Depend on God!
"Of course, whenever I give a talk like this, I'm always concerned that people understand that prosperity is more an activity of the Spirit than it is of the flesh.
"We must school our minds to realize that the one and only source of our supply is God...."
A lot of us like to think that prosperity is something that is of the flesh—that we do something, and we win something. And we use the laws and then we get released into our world a great deal of money.
"Money is what people always seem to want. But it's really not true. It's happiness and contentment and peace of mind and understanding and compassion and tolerance and every good quality of life that is worth more than anything else. And yet money cannot buy that. But you can't very well live in the modern world without money.""We must school our minds to realize that the one and only source of our supply is God and that all that comes to us in the way of salary,
investments, customers and any other income are the means by which God's
inexhaustible supply is funneling to us. Divine ideas are the source
of our wealth. And then we must act upon them to bring the wealth of the
universe to our use." [end of excerpt]
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