When I was five years old, my mother was invited by a former high school friend to attend evangelistic meetings. At the end of those meetings, she became a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. For me, since that time, tithing has been as spontaneous as breathing. I grew up tithing without question and without struggle. Even as a young child, I would faithfully place a dime in the offering envelope for each dollar I received. Since I came from a rather poor family, those dollars were few and as valuable as gold.
When I reached my 40s, a series of life-altering events led to relocating myself and my two sons to a new town in a new state. Nine months after the move, I was still unemployed. The word hard does not adequately describe those months. Through weeks and months of very dark days, I poured over employment ads and turned in resume after resume. When I couldn’t find anything in my field, I applied for jobs at fast-food restaurants and grocery stores. I was willing to flip burgers or bag groceries if it would put food on the table. But nothing. It seemed like a hand was covering my job applications, shielding them from being noticed or considered by employers.
After nine months, I finally landed a job as a clerk in the accounting offices of a local private school. Although that job lifted some of my burdens, the pay that I received at the time was just a little under $10 an hour, not nearly enough to support three people.
As the months went by, I struggled through each payday, making lists of the bills due and assigning each penny to where it was most needed. The rent alone took entirely one of the two paychecks I received each month.
By the end of that summer, the situation was as bleak as I thought it could get. The last week of August came, and with it, the realization that all my resources were used up. The only money I had in my possession was $100, and it was the tithe money. In my thoughts, a battle was raging over that money. If it were just myself, I knew that I could give up the rental house and live in my van and be financially okay, but I had two children to worry about. I also knew that if I placed that money in the offering plate on Sabbath, I was giving away all that I had. The entire next week until Friday payday, I would have nothing to use to buy food for the home, school lunches for the boys, or gas for the van—let alone pay any of the overdue bills.
As Sabbath drew near, I wrestled with God over that money. For the first time in my life, I reasoned that it made no sense to put my last dollars in the plate. I rationalized that I did not really owe it anyway. After all, I obviously was not profiting in this world from anything I was earning. In fact, I was falling backward every month. I also told myself that it would do no good to turn in my tithe with my negative attitude and doubt because the Bible says, “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7 NIV). If I was not giving it cheerfully, God wouldn’t bless it and probably didn’t want it. Oh, we humans!
Friday evening, I pulled out my Bible and searched for those familiar texts that we all know so well, the ones about being faithful. As I turned to Matthew 17:20 (NIV), a text I knew by heart, God opened my eyes to a treasure that I had never considered:
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (emphasis supplied).
He's Asking for a Mustard Seed
And I found God whispering to me, “It’s okay that you have doubt. It is even okay if you have 99.99% doubt. I am only asking for a mustard seed.”
How many times have you beaten yourself up because you didn’t have perfect faith? How often have well-meaning friends or church members insinuated that your prayers will only be answered if you do not doubt? That night, God told me otherwise. For the first time in my life, I realized that I did not need to have faith big enough to move the mountain. I only needed to have mustard-seed size faith. God could handle my doubt, and He would handle the moving of the mountain.
I wish I could say that I woke up the next morning excited to go to church and place my tithe in the offering plate.
I did not wake up that way.
The struggle still raged as Satan pressed upon me that I would be neglecting my boys and our needs if I gave away our last dollars. When we arrived at church, the boys went inside to Sabbath School, but I sat in the car, refusing to move. I had the tithe, and I had the envelope, but I just could not make myself seal it. It was like I had crawled out on a limb to its breaking point and had safely stopped, and now God was asking me to crawl out just a little bit further.
I did, finally, go into the church that day. As the program progressed and the time for the offering collection neared, I waged a heroic battle over that money. Up until the point when the deacons began passing the plates, I refused to seal the envelope. I sat near the front of the church with a congregation full of people who had no idea what was going on in my heart and mind, and I knew that the time had come to make a decision.
When the offering plate arrived at my pew, I quickly sealed the envelope. But as I dropped it in, I was talking to God. Here it is, God. I apologize that my attitude is bad, and I am so sorry that I have 99% doubt that I should be doing this. But here is my mustard seed.
Call to Action: Here is My Mustard Seed
Monday morning, I went to work as usual. Since I lived very close to my job, I drove home for my lunch break. When I arrived, I checked the mailbox.
Inside was a card from someone who had never sent me a card before. It was a birthday card, though my birthday was still fully two weeks away. As I opened the envelope, the front of the card stopped me dead in my tracks.
On the very front was a picture of a mustard plant. And these words were written just like this: “…if you have faith as small as a mustard seed…nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20 NIV).
I found myself trembling even before I opened it up, and I slid to the floor on my knees. Inside was a check for $200 (double the amount I had placed in the plate) along with these words:
“As you think about the story of the tiny mustard seed, remember, just a little faith is all we really need…”
To this day, I cannot tell you the range of emotions I experienced. It really wasn’t about the money. It was about the card. It was as if God Himself had reached down from heaven and placed a card in my hands, acknowledging the words that I had breathed to Him just two days earlier as I dropped that money into the plate. He spoke my words back to me.
I will always keep that card because God touched it. I am convinced. Somehow, someway, in the midst of all the chaos in this world, He still heard the doubtful prayer of my lips, and He did not overlook a mustard seed offering of faith. I cannot fathom it.
"'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 there will not be room enough to store it.'"
Malachi 3:10 (NIV)
Scripture noted as NIV above is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
