Now we are getting to the real stuff. Everything before was simply a lead into what we actually need to do. I send this to you on Thanksgiving day and pray you are all enjoying this day of feasting and rest. Have a happy day. Pastor WaynO

How Much Is Enough?
What amount of money is an appropriate expression of my relationship with God and with my desire to help other people? For most Christians, that question inevitably leads to another question: Is tithing enough? Strong opinions run in both directions on this subject. Research indicates that 27 percent of laity in the U.S. think the tithe is a minimum standard of giving. Other serious Christians feel that 10 percent is an arbitrary figure extracted from Old Testament legalisms.
Gilbert Davis, who for many years served as director of church relations for Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Texas, likes to tell this story. When he was a seminary student at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, he was stopped in the hallway one day by an elderly gentleman. Gilbert had never met the man, so he was surprised when the old gentleman asked, "Young man, are you studying to be a minister?"
Gilbert replied that he was, and the man asked if he might talk with him a few minutes. Not sure what he was getting into, Gilbert consented. It was not until some weeks later that he discovered who Arthur A. Everetts was. He owned what was at that time the largest jewelry store west of the Mississippi. Everetts led Gilbert into an empty classroom, where he asked him whether he preached tithing in the student church he served on weekends. Before Gilbert could reply, Everetts began giving him a lengthy and forceful set or arguments in favor of tithing, indicating that this was essential for any young pastor who ever hoped to amount to anything for Jesus Christ. At the end of his several-minute sermon, Everetts issued an altar call for Gilbert to make a decision to become a timer.
Finally getting a chance to speak, Gilbert drew himself up to his full theological stature at that youthful age, and said, "But, sir, we are Christians now. We are New Testament people; not Old Testament. We are not under the Law, we are under Grace."
To which Everetts replied. "Young man, if you can show me anywhere in the New Testament where it says that less is expected of a Christian under Grace than of a Jew under the Law. I will be glad to subscribe to your position."
This experience was a turning point in Gilbert's understanding of the spiritual qualities of money. His use of that story in many years of stewardship ministry among congregations in the Southwest has been a turning point for many others. The New Testament clearly says that we must avoid a legalistic approach to God's Old Testament laws. We tithe, not because it is the "religious" thing to do, or in order to show our "righteousness" to others. We tithe because we believe God's promise to bring us to wholeness and health as we learn to rely on and to obey God. The gospel is primarily good news, not good rules. So, we give our money because we want to give it—as an act of worship and as a way of seeing Christ's kingdom first—not because we feel that we must give it in order to fulfill a religious legalism. Yet, since we Christians base our beliefs on the authority of Scripture, we must remember that in the only New Testament verse where Jesus mentions the tithe, he tells the Pharisees, "These you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others"—referring to the practice of tithing earlier in that conversation (Matthew 23:23). If Jesus says the tithe is important in the worship of God, does it seem wise for me to decide it is not?
Tithing is clearly the form of stewardship taught in both the Old and the New Testaments. When Jesus discussed proper stewardship of money and resources with the most religious people of his culture (the Pharisees), this was the form he took for granted that they were using—the giving of one-tenth of their income before taxes to God's work. In ancient Hebrew society, the tithe was like an income tax payable to the "Department of Eternal Revenue." If faithful Jews wanted to make additional offerings to God beyond the tithe, then they might call themselves philanthropists, but to tithe was to perform their basic duty. They assumed that the first 10 percent belonged to God already. So, when Jesus spoke to his generation about giving, he was not talking about a variable amount; he took for granted their convictions about the tithe.
Yet, there is another sense in which the tithe is not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus answers the question of "How much is enough?" by saying that this is not the question! As Jesus does in all his teachings, what he says about giving goes far beyond any legalistic use of the Old Testament. Jesus teaches that our giving to God cannot be reduced to a 10 percent formula. Our most basic stewardship is to give our whole heart to God"s work (God's spiritual kingdom). Our gift of money is a symbol of that total self-giving, but money itself can never be classified as our ultimate stewardship; that is always a matter of the heart. The Pharisees tended to "materialize their spiritual relationship with God" into rituals and offerings. Jesus did the opposite: He "spiritualized the material" into an expression of loving relationship with God and unselfish giving to help the less fortunate. In so doing. Jesus was recovering the heart of the Old Testament tradition itself.
More than 150 years ago, a young schoolteacher went to the little Pearl River Methodist Church and was moved by the missionary sermon. When the offering basket reached her pew, she put in a $10 bill and a note that said, "I give $10 and myself, Mary I. McClellan." Ten dollars was a great deal of money 150 years ago, but over the years the gift of "herself' was far greater. Soon after this, she married a Methodist pastor, James W. Lambuth. and went with him to China in 1853. From there, she organized several strong institutions: a famous orphanage for homeless children, a famous school for girls, the Women's Methodist Foreign Missionary Society, and eventually Lambuth Bible School. With the gift of herself, she laid much of the foundation that carried Christianity through the last few turbulent decades in Red China.
You and I have only two things available to give God; ourselves and what we own. When the widow put two copper coins in the treasury, she was obviously giving both her money and her whole self. When some of the rich people passed by the treasury chest, what they gave was more like tipping the waiter at a good restaurant. That was Jesus's point, and that is still the major issue: Are we giving just our money? Or, is the money we give a symbol of our determination to give our whole selves? A young woman struggling with the question of how much she should give asked her pastor, "Will God love me less if I don't tithe" He answered. "Is that really the question? Isn't the real question. 'Will I love God less if I don't tithe?'" That pastor's observation was close to what Jesus said about giving. For Jesus, giving expresses our side of our spiritual relationship with God. Genuine giving does not come from God's demand but from our desire.
For some people, a tithe is an appropriate expression of unselfishly loving God and caring about other people. For others, a tithe may not accomplish that. Approximately one person out of every 350 people in the United States is a millionaire. For every forty giving units in a church, one of these units is capable of making a one-time gift equal to the church's annual budget. For those persons, does the tithe reflect an attitude of the heart that has overcome self-centeredness? Or, is that degree of wealth too great for a tithe to mean more than a camouflaged form of selfishness? It is said that the great earth-moving equipment manufacturer. LeTourneau, had an annual income so huge that he gave 90 percent of it to God's work. He said that, for him, this was the only Christian thing to do.
A couple of years before cell phones were in use, an airline pilot walking through the passenger waiting area decided to call home. The line was busy. While waiting for his wife to get off the phone, he began working on his flight plan paperwork at a nearby counter. After he realized that the passing travelers were staring at him, he noticed that he was standing at the flight insurance counter. Some people seem to treat their giving as a form of eternal flight insurance. This is not what Jesus taught. That kind of giving does not touch the heart of the matter.
The evidence indicates that another kind of incentive for giving—tax deductions—may play a greater role in our giving than we wish to admit. One example: The 1986 tax reforms adversely affected giving patterns in the United States. Before the tax overhaul, per capita giving increased by 8.7 percent between 1985 and 1986. The rate of increase dropped to 1.4 percent in 1987 and 3.2 percent in 1988. In the struggle between our basic selfishness and the desire to give ourselves to God's purposes, our best motives sometimes lose.
Inflation and rising incomes thrust us into another temptation. During 2005, the median household income in the United States was $46,326. In 1965, adjusted for inflation, that figure was $35,379.46 Unless we keep on raising the question, "How much is enough?" an amount that once involved the giving of our whole hearts can become, over the span of five or ten years, a minor percentage of our life's resources. Paul says that we should give as we have prospered (1 Corinthians 16:2). Due to inflation and increasing annual income, we can easily and unknowingly slip into a pattern of giving that violates that injunction.
A certain man became a millionaire through successful business dealings. One day several friends were discussing his progress. Said one. "Getting rich hasn't changed old George a bit."
"No," agreed the other, "He used to put a dollar in the collection plate, and he still does." That happens when a Christian falls into the rut of failing to reexamine his or her spiritual commitments. Growth toward God gets sidetracked by growth toward selfishness.
Whatever our personal temptation in this matter, Jesus's teachings still speak with power to the question, "How much is enough?" by responding, "That is not the question!" God wants us to give money, because it is one of the major ways we express our personality. But God wants more than money, God wants justice, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23-24). God wants love: "If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:3). God wants willing, ungrudging giving: "Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me" (Exodus 25:2). God wants humility, because humility defines a right attitude of heart—an attitude that contrasts with the self-righteous, self-sufficient mind of the Pharisee whose public prayer Jesus described in a parable. Humility illustrates our sense of dependence on God rather than on ourselves. Humility means that we see God as God, while pride and self-righteousness are ways of pretending that we are our own god.
Several years ago, Bishop Fulton Sheen was interviewing Jackie Gleason on a television program. Sheen asked him. "When you come to meet Jesus, what will you say?"
Gleason immediately replied, "All I could say would be thanks."
That statement reflects something of the humility of the heart that is found in genuine stewardship. It is money, but it is more than money.