Obedience Is Far Better Than Sacrifice

It’s finally quit raining! I guess I should be careful how I say that though. Here in Kansas we gripe and complain how it’s always too dry or it’s too wet. For some reason it seems that we can’t find a happy medium anywhere. For example we were about eight inches of moisture short for what our average should have been for this time of the year up until about three weeks ago. The all of a sudden here come the rain and we are right back to our average rain year to date rain totals. The problem is that we got our moisture all in a three week period. That also meant that I didn’t get to work very during those three weeks.

However all is not lost though…

Since it quit raining I umpired 14 games last week! Some days I was scheduled at two different fields on the same day just so the schedulers could get there rainout dates made up. I decided that this week I’m just going to take a break from baseball and as long as the weather holds the 50 or so hours I’ll work at my regular job driving truck will be enough work for me this week. I really felt that I needed to give my body some time to heal up after working so much baseball last week. Umpiring that much baseball and bending over that much behind the plate puts quite a bit of strain on my not so young knees. Saturday and Sunday nights my knees and ankles were informing me that I’m not as young as I used to be and that they were not happy campers!

Lest I should sound that I’m griping I’m really not though. The good news is that we desperately needed for me to be working as much as I can to get caught back up on our bills and the Lord opened the door for us to give me the opportunity to work as much as I did. I also truly believe that the Lord gave me the strength and the healing to get through last week to get the extra money in. The reason that I say that is since we made a change in our spiritual lives a couple of months ago and put God first with our money and setting tithing above all else we’ve seen miraculous things happen with our finances. Without fail since we made the change God has opened the financial door to give us the money we need to get our bills paid.

Granted, not everything has been coming up daisies money wise since we started tithing as I still have to get out there and work to bring the money in what I am saying is that God has made sure the work is there to bring the money in and then God has also been moving with our creditors to have favor upon us. In addition we’ve been blessed with a miracle a couple of weeks ago that enabled us to keep our electricity on. This reminds me of something that I’ve heard over and over again but it hasn’t hit home until now. “If I would have known that tithing works this well I would have started doing it a long time ago!”

Even though we are reaping the rewards of our tithing the Lord keeps reminding me of what the prophet Samuel told King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22 "What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to him is much better than offering the fat of rams.” Knowing that I truly don’t believe we would be reaping the rewards that we are now if we were not both seeking to obey the Lord and give the Lord our sacrifice through our tithing.

I’ll close with this. If you really want to see the rewards that the Lord has for you come upon you first seek to obey the Lord and to do His will and then give him your sacrifice through your tithes and giving. If you do this I guarantee you that you will start to see miracle after miracle happen in your life. I tell you this for two reasons. First this is what God’s word tells us and secondly because I see it happening in our lives!

Be Blessed!!!

BIG SCOTT