I truly believe that to live in Christ is not only good for the future, but
it is also good right now. In Christ, we experience the blessings of God, including the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22-23).

When we live for Christ, we give ourselves the opportunity to live
the best life possible. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have trouble, but it does
mean that we have help in time of difficulty.

To really get your life in order, you have to get your finances in order.

That was last week’s sermon. You can hear it at www.fbccov.org. You can also
see two blogs that I posted about getting your finances in order at www.waylonbailey.com. These blogs offer practical, spiritual advice for finances.

So, here’s my challenge.
First, you need God’s blessings on your life. You can’t expect God’s
blessing without your obedience.

God calls us to trust Him with our future and our finances (they are
interrelated). God tells us to give a tithe (10 percent) of our income.
This is my challenge—tithe for the next 90 days. This 90 day
challenge will accomplish two goals: it will give you time to establish a habit
and it will give you time to see that God will bless you as a result (Malachi
3:10).

Second, if you tithe already, join Martha and me in adding to what
you give now. If you are tithing, you now know that God is going to take care
of you. We need to do much more than we are doing to help carry out our
ministry around the world.

Third, I want to ask you to look at your estate plan. Are you leaving
a portion of your estate for Christian causes? Can we really lay up treasure
in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21) if we leave the largest portion of our assets to
other things? At a minimum, we should be leaving 10% to further the kingdom of God.
All I can say is that this really matters to God and that it should really
matter to us. May God lead you as you seek to honor Him with your substance
(Proverbs 3:9-10)