17/01/2026
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OBEDIENCE AND TITHING.
A Sunday School teacher in one of the Pentecostal churches I pastored in North Central Texas was a widow woman with five children. She and all the kids would pick cotton for 40 cents a hundred. They lived in a little old
house out behind another house.
Yet she'd come by the parsonage on Saturdays and say, "Brother Hagin, we made a few dollars to buy a little food, and here's the tithe. I don't want to wait until tomorrow, because I'll spend it—I know I will—I need it so desperately."
I'd take it, and as she left the parsonage I'd close the door and weep. I knew that I had to take it; otherwise, I would be depriving her of blessing and benefit.
I've had her come by with a dime, saying, "We made a dollar. Here's the dime; here's the tithe."
Her oldest daughter spent seven years in the first grade and never learned to write her name. She never got out of the first grade. Finally the authorities asked her mother not to send her to school anymore—here was a 14 year old playing with 7 year olds. There were no special classes or state schools for re****ed children like her in those Depression days.
In church she acted like a 3 or 4 year old; she had about that mentality. If she happened not to be sitting with her Mother and wanted to get up where she was, she would actually get down and scoot along on her stomach under
the pews to get up front. Then she would stretch out on the pew like a little kid and go to sleep. One night during a revival, this girl went up to the altar (nobody asked her to go) and knelt along with the others. She got saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke with other tongues. Instantly there was a drastic
change!
Before, she wouldn't bathe. If she got neglected, her appearance would be pitiful.
But overnight—the very next night—she came in, sat down, and acted as intelligent as any 18-year-old young lady. Her hair was fixed, she was dressed up, and she looked nice.
We could hardly believe what we saw.
Receiving eternal life and the nature of God increased her mentality 90 percent! This was one of the greatest miracles I have ever seen.
It happened at the beginning of World War II.
The girl went away to visit some relatives, and while she was there, she acted so nice and looked so nice that a neighboring farm boy asked her for a date.
She had never had a date in her life. They began to like each other, and when he asked her to marry him, she took him up on it.
After her husband was drafted, she lived with her mother-in-law awhile,and her mother-in-law taught her to read and write.
I left that church to go into the evangelistic field. In the process of time I went back to help the pastor preach the funeral of one of the elderly people.
I asked the church secretary, "Whatever happened to that girl?"
She led me outside and said, "You knew that her husband was killed in that truck accident?"
I said, "Yes."
She said, "Well, because of their construction business, he was heavily insured, and she received several hundred thousand dollars of insurance money." She pointed off in the distance and said, "See that housing addition?"
I could see a number of new houses being added to this small town.
The secretary continued, "She is building that addition to the city. She is her own contractor; her own financier. She handles all her own money. Think of it!"
I stood there and wept again—this time a different kind of weeping. I was so glad, praise God, that I had obeyed God and had taken her mother's tithes. This girl had learned to pay tithes, too.
The secretary said, "I'm still secretary of the church. You can count on it,she is on the front pew every Sunday with her two little children. They are the best-dressed, best-mannered children in the church. Her envelope with
her tithes and offerings is always there. Every Sunday."
I thought back to where she had come from: Here was a young woman not 30 years old who's building an addition to the city, and when she was 14 years old she had been seven years in the first grade without learning to
write her name.
I thought, too, of that Scripture, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor .... " (Luke 4:18).
Hallelujah, God didn't just single her out and say, "We're going to make an exception out of her." No, the same Gospel belongs to everyone.
What was the difference? Eternal life.
The life of God. It was something that came into her that increased her mentality 90 percent. But not only that—she had been planting seed.
She'd been paying her tithes and giving beyond her tithes back when she'd had just a few dollars from her husband's allotment checks. Now she had many dollars, but she still was doing the same thing. Would she ever have gotten to that place if she hadn't been obedient in her finances?
Kenneth E Hagin ( Obedience In Finance)
- JESUS SAVES TV
