Halifax UMC

02/09/2025

06/29/2023

We are so thankful for everyone who has prayed us through the process of discerning God's plan for our future as "Halifax Community Church, A Global Methodist Congregation"!

Here is the link to our new page: https://www.facebook.com/hccgmc

Please have patience with us as we continue to transfer current events/information over to the new page. We wanted to make sure to get the word out before Sunday!

All ministries are listed as a "Group" on the new Halifax Community Church page. Meaning, there will no longer be separate pages for our ministries & all pages associated with Halifax UMC will soon be deleted. So, check out the 'new' groups to stay informed!

If you join us for online worship, we will start streaming our services this Sunday, July 2, from our new page & YouTube channel.

Our new YouTube channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAu-j8TPPGaMZMOeq-CSL1Q

06/22/2023

We are continuing our summer theme of Lessons from the Land. Pastor Brendan will give us a message on Sunday about “MUD: Getting Unstuck”. The scripture text is Psalm 18:16-19. We hope you can join us for worship!

"He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters,..." Psalm 18:16

06/22/2023

WEEKLY DEVOTIONAL: You Reap What You Sow
The Power to Change, by Craig Groeschel

Habits shape your life. Where does God tell us that in the Bible?

Galatians 6.

But God doesn’t use the word habits. He uses the metaphor of seeds. Why? In biblical times, people lived in an agricultural society. Nothing was manufactured or cranked out in fast-food joints. Food had to be grown one ingredient at a time. Their lives and economy were based largely on farming.

People back then would understand the concept of planting seeds and harvesting crops, so here’s what God inspired Paul to write:

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. — Galatians 6:7–9

For us non-agrarians, let’s establish some definitions.
• To sow means to plant — to put seed in the ground.
• To reap means to gather the fruit — the result of the seed planted.
So the passage starts, “Do not be deceived.” The idea is: don’t be led astray. Don’t be fooled, or stupid.

It continues, “God cannot be mocked.” The Greek word translated “mocked” means to snub or thumb your nose at someone. You can do that to someone — but not God. Don’t be deceived, God can’t be mocked. You might fool a lot of people, but you’re not going to fool God.

The next words are, “A man reaps what he sows.” That’s what we need to understand and not be stupid about. What does that mean?
• You will harvest what you plant.
• You will get out what you put in.
• Your outcomes will be determined by your inputs.
• The results of your life will be based on the decisions you make, the habits you stake, and the habits you break.
Paul gives us a spiritual example about sowing to the flesh or the Spirit. The flesh refers to our sinful nature. Some sow (or plant seeds) to the flesh, meaning they do what’s wrong, ungodly, and sinful. The result? They reap (or harvest) destruction.

Bad decisions lead to bad consequences.

Others sow (or plant seeds) to the Spirit, meaning they allow themselves to be led and empowered by the Holy Spirit, so they do what honors God. The result? They reap (or harvest) eternal life. So if you live your life with and for God, that’s what you’re going to get out of it. Not just now but (especially) eternally. If you live your life for yourself, ignoring God, apart from him, that’s what you’re going to get out of it. Not just now but (especially) eternally.

But it’s not just true spiritually and eternally. This is the way all of life works. We reap what we sow.

There’s a law at work. Not a law like “You must do this!” More like how gravity is a law of nature. It’s how the world works. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to agree with it. Gravity will work for you, and on you, the same way it works with everyone. If you jump, you will go up. Then gravity will bring you down. We say people get “tripped up,” but that’s not true. People always trip down. Gravity is a natural law.

Bad decisions lead to bad consequences.

God tells us there is a law of sowing and reaping.

If you plant apple seeds, you get apple trees. If you plant orange seeds, don’t be deceived; don’t be stupid and expect apples. You can picture a farmer out in his fields: Wait. What’s this? I wanted apples. Why did I get oranges? It’s because you planted orange seeds! If you plant corn, you’re going to reap corn. Don’t plant corn if you want pineapples. That would be stupid. When you put a certain type of seed in the ground, you get a harvest that corresponds with the seed you planted.

Every. Single. Time. You reap what you sow.
True in agriculture. True in life.
If you plant good habits, you’ll get good outcomes. If you plant bad habits, don’t be deceived and expect good outcomes.

Wait. What’s this? I didn’t want this. Why is this happening?

Because that’s what you planted. You fooled yourself into thinking you could plant one thing and reap another.

Sounds crazy that someone might do that, but it happens all the time. A guy sows seeds of lust. He checks out girls at the gym, girls at his office, girls online. But he expects to have a good marriage. Then, when his marriage struggles, he’s confused. Wait. What’s this? It’s what you planted.

A woman sows seeds of criticism and negativity but expects good friends. People avoid her. She’s lonely. She thinks, Wait. What’s this? I guess I have bad friends. No. It’s what you planted.

A recent college graduate sows seeds of showing up late for work and giving a halfhearted effort but expects a promotion. When someone else is given the promotion, the young adult thinks, Wait. What’s this? Man, my boss isn’t fair! No. It’s what you planted.

Some dude eats anything he wants. Praise the Lord and pass the Doritos! He doesn’t exercise. He drinks a six-pack on Friday to celebrate that it’s Friday. And a six-pack on Saturday cause, hey, it’s Saturday. And a six pack on Sunday because it’s the last day of the weekend. He ends up thirty-five pounds overweight in his forties and with cirrhosis in his fifties. Hey! What’s this? This isn’t fair! Is God punishing me for something I did when I was a kid? No. It’s not a punishment. It’s a harvest. You are reaping what you’ve sown.

When people mess up their marriages, friendships, or careers, they get upset and often blame God. Ummm, no. God didn’t do this to you. You did this to you.

If you plant good habits, you’ll get good outcomes.
If you plant bad habits, don’t expect good outcomes.
You reap what you sow.
If you don’t like what you’re reaping, change what you’re sowing. If you don’t like the harvest, change the seed.

Here’s a divine assignment: Take an honest, prayerful look at the disappointing parts of your life. Ask God to help you search your heart. Then pinpoint the habits that have led to each aspect of your life that isn’t what you want. Avoid having a victim mentality or blaming others. That will not help. Take responsibility by identifying the habits you’ve sown that have led to your harvest. Then decide on a type of seed you will consistently plant to get a better harvest.

If you don’t like what you’re reaping, change what you’re sowing. Because you reap what you sow.
And it’s actually even bigger than that.

Use this pattern for as many areas of life as you need to address:

God, I have sown _______________________________ and have reaped _______________________________ because of my habit of _______________________________.

To change this outcome, I need to start or stop my habit of ______________________________, so help me to plant the seeds of ______________________________ so I can reap ________________________.

Principle:
If you don’t like what you’re reaping, change what you’re sowing. If you don’t like the harvest, change the seed.

You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.
— Galatians 6:7–8 NLT

Check out the book, The Power To Change, here:
https://faithgateway.com/products/the-power-to-change-mastering-the-habits-that-matter-most?variant=40635776794760&utm_source=devosdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=devosdaily_20230622_thepowertochange&utm_term=20230622&utm_content=thepowertochange

06/17/2023

Join us this Father’s Day for worship and a message from Shane Sweger! Shane is a youth ministry intern here at Halifax Church. Come ready to worship Christ & celebrate the vital spiritual leadership of Godly fathers. The scripture text Shane is preaching from is Luke 8:38-39.

06/14/2023

WEEKLY DEVOTIONAL: What Next?
Don't Look Back, by Christine Caine

When the war in Ukraine started, it seemed like a continuation of all that had been happening for the past couple of years. After all, starting in 2020, in addition to moving through a global pandemic, we had experienced natural disasters on most every continent — hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, drought, and flooding.1 The ground warmed enough in the mid-Atlantic region for billions of cicadas to emerge — after seventeen years of being underground.2 It was reminiscent of a plague of biblical proportions. We saw protests and riots in major cities in more than sixty countries, drawing attention to racial injustice.3 It was easy to understand why some people wanted to throw their hands up in the air and ask, “What’s next?” — because it did feel like one thing after another just kept happening. When people questioned whether it was the end of the world, it was — even though we’re all still here — because it was the end of the world as we once knew it.

Like most everyone, I was tempted to look back. To want to go back. To 2019. Or any year of our lives before 2020. To go back to normal, whatever our normal was. To forget the new normal that we were all desperately trying to create. Yet, no matter how much I longed to go back to normal, there was no going back. That world as we knew it was finished, and God was beckoning me, along with everyone else, to move forward, to lay hold of His purpose and promises in the future.

Sorting through the tension of not looking back and trying to move forward — including trying to figure out how to move at all in a locked-down world — I began reminding myself that while the world had changed, God had not.He was the same as He’d always been, and I could depend on Him to guide me forward.4

During that same season of doing my best not to look back and instead to keep moving forward, I was reminded of a woman in the Bible who looked back when she wasn’t supposed to, and it didn’t go well for her. [Lot’s wife] was the woman running for her life with her family in Genesis 19. As they ran, destruction was raining down on their hometown of S***m, and despite being told by an angel not to look back, she turned and looked back. Scripture tells us,

But Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.5

What makes Lot’s wife especially significant is that Jesus said for us to remember her. In the middle of an eschatological discourse in the New Testament, Jesus dropped in three words: “Remember Lot’s wife.”6

If you’ve ever read Luke 17, it’s all too easy to miss these three words. I know because I did for years. I read them, of course, but that’s all. I flew past them. But Jesus never wastes a word, let alone three, so there must be some significance in this second-shortest verse in the Bible. (If you didn’t know that fun fact, now you do. Perhaps it will help you win your next Bible quiz.) These three words began to show me the importance of not looking back. Of always moving forward. Even in the midst of a pandemic or a war or something far more normal. They became words I couldn’t forget and words that showed me the way forward.

Remember Lot’s wife.

For thirty-plus years now, I’ve been going to women’s conferences, and I don’t remember ever hearing a message on Lot’s wife, nor do I remember teaching one. And yet, of the possible 170 women mentioned in Scripture,7 she is the only one that Jesus tells us to remember. Why her? Why not Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Rahab, Esther, Elizabeth, or even Mary, His own mother? Of all the women Jesus could have told us to remember, He mentioned only one: Lot’s wife. (For all the Bible scholars reading this, Jesus did tell us that the deed of the woman who poured oil over Him would be remembered forever,8 but He told us to remember only one woman — Lot’s wife.) This is astonishing to me. Why her? There had to be a reason.

Longingly She Lingered:
Lot’s wife gets one cameo in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. That’s it. That’s all Scripture records. Why would Jesus tell us to remember a woman who appears on the pages of Scripture only long enough to disappear? A woman who has the shortest bio ever. A woman whose proper name we don’t even know. What is it about her that we’re to remember?

As I began to study her life, I noted something very important. This woman was told one thing:

Don’t look back.

And the one thing she was told not to do is the one thing she did. Furthermore, I found that understanding how she looked back quite possibly held a clue as to why she looked back:

But Lot’s wife, from behind him, [foolishly, longingly] looked [back toward S***m in an act of disobedience], and she became a pillar of salt.9

She looked back longingly in an act of disobedience. I don’t want to be harsh about Lot’s wife. We all make mistakes, and we all disobey, and to think she looked back longingly causes me to feel for her. Here she was, living her life as usual, and suddenly she’s told to pack up and run for her life. All the while an angel is holding her hand and guiding her.

Even reading her story afresh while writing, compassion overtook me.

*

I can imagine Lot’s wife having deep-seated feelings. It’s no wonder she looked back longingly. Maybe how she looked back has as much to do with it as the mere fact that she looked back at all.

To look back longingly is to look back with a yearning desire.10 What was it she longed for exactly? What did she so deeply desire? Putting myself in her shoes, I can imagine any number of things. Maybe it was her home. Maybe it was the way her home made her feel safe and secure. Maybe it was the way she’d gotten everything arranged and decorated just so. Maybe it was the way her home welcomed her each time she ran errands and came back to it. Did she long for her belongings? Her friends? Her routine? Her extended family? If you have ever moved from one city to another, then perhaps you know firsthand how easy it is to long for what was, compared to the work involved in adjusting to all that’s new.

Maybe she had a position in the community, a place of prominence. After all, S***m wasn’t an impoverished city, and she was married to a wealthy man.11 Could it be that she looked back longingly at everything she had grown attached to and was being forced to abandon? She appeared to be torn between what she was leaving and where she was going. Have you ever been there? Isn’t this our challenge in everything God invites us to do? To move forward or stop and look back? And not just to the tangible things that can slip through our fingers but to places in time, to memories, and to the feelings those memories evoke. It can be any of that or all of that, can’t it?

Maybe Lot’s wife was trying to preserve the past, something that’s all too easy to do. When we work at preserving the past, lingering in nostalgia, we can keep ourselves from the truth of the present and the pain of reality.12

If we linger in the past, we run the risk of it becoming an idealized version of what really was.

While the world has changed, God has not.
Memories can easily be distorted, can’t they?13 Of all the things that could have happened to Lot’s wife when she looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt, a substance that has been used as a preservative for centuries and is still used to this day.14 The irony doesn’t escape me. What’s more, Lot’s wife became the very substance that Jesus said we are. Matthew recorded Jesus saying that we are the salt of the earth.15 Perhaps we need to ensure that we don’t get stuck in a place trying to preserve the past, where we are no longer moving forward, and where we are no longer salting the world around us.

Lot’s wife looked back longingly. I have found that if we linger too long where we’re not supposed to be, we’ll start longing for what we are supposed to no longer be lingering in. When we linger, we hesitate. The literal meaning of linger is “to be slow in parting. To remain in existence although waning in strength. It’s to procrastinate.” And it includes one more eerily accurate depiction: “To remain alive although gradually dying.”16 Lot’s wife might not have had any idea that looking back would cause her death, but it did, didn’t it?

Are you longing for something that once was? That is no more? That can never be again?

Are you lingering there in that place where you should no longer be lingering?

Are you lingering in a place and longing for what was, all the while tolerating what is, in hopes that if you linger long enough, you might get back what God told you to leave?

When Lot’s wife longed and lingered, she stopped and looked back toward S***m in an act of disobedience. Then she became calcified and stuck, frozen in time, paralyzed for eternity as a pillar of salt. I’m Greek, and because I was raised to salt food generously, I love salt. But I don’t want to get stuck and turn into a pillar of salt. I imagine you don’t either. But in a sense, I find that getting stuck like she did is so easy to do.

We can get stuck in:
our emotions
our thoughts
our attitudes
our opinions
our possessions
our plans
our desires
our habits
our comfort
our pain
our wounds
our relationships
our past
our present
our future hopes

There are myriad ways and places we can get stuck, and it is my prayer that as we journey together through the pages of this book, we will discover where we may have gotten stuck and uncover ways to get unstuck — so we can move forward into the purpose and promises of God for our future.

It’s not always easy to move on when God beckons us forward, especially when things are safe, comfortable, and just the way we like it. Equally, it is often difficult to move on when we have experienced deep trauma, pain, or suffering and we feel utterly hopeless and helpless. Moving on is something we know we should do, what we often want to do, and at times what we refuse to do, but it remains something God eagerly wants for us.

Wherever you may be on this continuum, I hope you will be able to identify places where you are prone to be stuck, or maybe are stuck, and that you will be infused with the strength of the Holy Spirit to take the next step to getting unstuck.

Check out the book, Don’t Look Back, here: https://faithgateway.com/products/dont-look-back-moving-forward-in-faith-when-your-world-is-not-the-same?variant=40894155489416&utm_source=devosdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=devosdaily_20230611_dontlookback&utm_term=20230611&utm_content=dontlookback

References:
1. Kaia Hubbard, “Here Are 10 of the Deadliest Natural Disasters in 2020,” U.S. News & World Report, December 22, 2020, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows /here-are-10-of-the-deadliest-natural-disasters-in-2020?slide=12.
2. Michelle Stoddart, “Cicada Invasion: After 17 Years Underground, Billions to Emerge This Spring,” ABC News, April 10, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cicada-invasion -17-years-underground-billions-emerge-spring/story?id =76921532.
3. Frank Jordans and Pan Pylas, “Detentions, Injuries at Anti- Racism Protests Across Europe in Solidarity with US,” Times of Israel, June 7, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/detentions -injuries-at-anti-racism-protests-across-europe-in-solidarity -with-us; Savannah Smith, Jiachuan Wu, and Joe Murphy, “Map: George Floyd Protests Around the World,” NBC News, June 9, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/map -george-f loyd-protests-countries-worldwide-n1228391.
4. Hebrews 13:8.
5. Genesis 19:26.
6. Luke 17:32.
7. Jeremy Thompson, ed., Lists of Biblical People, Places, Things, and Events (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2020).
8. Matthew 26:13.
9. Genesis 19:26 AMP.
10. Merriam-Webster, s.v. “longing (n.),” accessed January 19, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/longing.
11. Genesis 13:6.
12. Lauren Martin, “The Science Behind Nostalgia and Why We’re So Obsessed with the Past,” Elite Daily, July 17, 2014, https://www.elitedaily.com/life/science-behind-nostalgia -love-much/673184.
13. Martin, “Science Behind Nostalgia.”
14. Stephanie Butler, “Off the Spice Rack: The History of Salt,” History.com, updated August 22, 2018, https://www.history .com/news/off-the-spice-rack-the-story-of-salt.
15. Matthew 5:13.
16. Merriam-Webster, s.v. “linger (v.),” accessed January 19, 2023,
17. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linger.

06/09/2023

As we continue our message theme of Lessons from the Land, Rick Stence will give us a message on Sunday about “God’s Creation”. The scripture texts are Genesis 1:26–30 and Luke 12:6. We hope you can join us for worship!

Luke 12:6 “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?”

06/08/2023

WEEKLY DEVOTIONAL: The Wisdom of Firsts
The Little Red Book of Wisdom, by Mark DeMoss

The First Hour, the First Day, the First Dime

I feel it is far better to begin with God, to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another. ~ E. M. Bounds

My father was the most successful man I ever knew. Unrelated to how I viewed him, his genius in direct-response marketing of individual life and health insurance formed the National Liberty Corporation, with its five companies and subsidiaries. The little business that started at the kitchen table, by the time of his death twenty years later, was the largest mass marketer of individual life and health insurance in the world.

To what did my father attribute his success? Enough people must have asked him that he committed it to paper in a booklet he titled God’s Secret of Success. Since his death, that vest-pocket treatise, long out of print, has played large in lives around the world. If I were to give you its contents right here, you might say: “That’s it?” But if you were to practice the points, to weave them into your life, eventually you’d be amazed that they had ever seemed small.

The First Hour of the Day:
Art DeMoss believed the gate to success swung open first thing in the morning, in the day’s uncluttered hour, when he talked with God in prayer and listened to God as he read the Bible. Some people will give this tip a double take. The head of a booming corporation didn’t check in first on morning news? In those days that was the newspaper, but my father didn’t take it. Maybe TV while he got dressed? Nope. No TV set in the DeMoss home. What about the stock market, just a glance? No, again. Because as sure as he brushed his teeth and ate breakfast, Dad started his day with God.

“It should be our rule never to see the face of men before first seeing the face of God,” said Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth-century British preacher. Only a fool would fail to post a guard on the gate of the day. “The morning watch anchors the soul so that it will not very readily drift far away from God during the day,” he wrote. “He who rushes from his bed to his business without first spending time with God is as foolish as though he had not washed or dressed, and as unwise as one dashing to battle without arms or armor.”1

Dad died more than forty years ago, but to this day one of my clearest memories of him is his morning routine. By example he paved the path to my similar habit now, though I admit to less than a full hour each day.

If you’re thinking you could just as easily spend time alone with God in the noon hour, you’re right, you could — unless something else comes up. You could do it in the evening before bed, assuming you still have energy and focus. You could hope to steal a few moments throughout the day. We can all hope for a lot of things. But nothing sets the day like matching our best hour to our deepest and dearest Resource.

Spending our first moments with our Creator is more practical than legalistic. It’s the only time we can truly protect. When that time is hectic with children or work or similar busyness, we can set an alarm a little bit ahead. I’m convinced the person who does this has an advantage over those who don’t.

The First Day of the Week:
Besides the first hour of the day, my father gave God the first day of the week. Now that we blur Sunday with Saturday or any other workday, respect for the Sabbath seems, well, extreme, dated, obsolete. And it may be. If hours in the day are no more than measurable productivity units, then one of the world’s richest men is right. “Just in terms of allocation of time and resources, religion is not very efficient,” Bill Gates says. “There is a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”2

The lengths of the wording of the individual Ten Commandments intrigues me. Most are brief — four to ten words. “You shall not kill.” “You shall not lie,” and so on. Then comes the ninety-four-word instruction to keep the Sabbath day holy. Who can say that God devoted more words to the fourth commandment for emphasis, but who can deny that a day of rest hits reset on our minds, bodies, work, and personal relationships?

Nothing sets the day like matching our best hour to our deepest and dearest Resource.

Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy was a Sabbath keeper. If you’re a patron of the wildly popular restaurants he founded, you know that come Sunday you get your chicken somewhere else. Come Sunday, every one of the twenty-nine hundred Chick-fil-As in forty-eight states is shut tight, potentially costing the family-owned business more than $3 billion a year. If you’d asked Mr. Cathy why, he’d have turned to the subject of devotion. “Closing our business on the Lord’s Day is our way of honoring God and showing loyalty to Him,” he’d say. “My brother Ben and I closed our first restaurant on the first Sunday after we opened in 1946, and my children have committed to closing our restaurants on Sundays long after I’m gone.”

My Sundays are hardly one sustained act of prayer and meditation, but neither are they a checklist of paying bills, work, emails, or prep for Monday. Sundays tend to be slower and quieter — good days to work on this book, but I didn’t. I try not to travel on Sundays, but when I’m out of town on the first day of the week, regardless of how little sleep I got the night before, I want to be in church and otherwise do as little as possible. In my life, at least, Sunday rest correlates to weekday productivity.

Plenty of people have to work on Sundays. Nurses, pilots, hotel workers, cooks, waiters, public-safety workers, to name a few. Dad wrote, and I write, to those of us who can set the Sabbath aside but don’t. As for what constitutes work on a Sunday, I came across a pretty simple definition: Decide what’s work for you, and don’t do it.

“Hurry,” said philosopher Dallas Willard, “is the great enemy of spiritual life.”3 God Himself offers promises for those who honor “His Day”:

If you watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, if you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, if you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’ making money, running here and there—then you’ll be free to enjoy God! Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all. I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob. Yes! God says so! — Isaiah 58:13–14 The Message

The First Dime of Every Dollar:
Now for the success secret so personal and so often misapplied that some of my readers may consider it in poor taste to bring up: My father gave the first part of every dollar to God. The concept, also known as tithing, was not invented by modern televangelists. It is at least as old as the early Old Testament. Jesus endorsed it as an act of love, and certainly a gift of our resources is a regular and potent reminder of the Source of all we have.

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops, King Solomon advised. Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine. — Proverbs 3:9–10 NIV

For whatever reason, even most churchgoers overlook or outright avoid this wise principle. Evangelical giving these days averages 3.2 percent of their income — less than the percentage in 1933, during the Great Depression. Last year one in five churchgoers gave nothing at all. And then there’s John D. Rockefeller, the Standard Oil founder who died in 1937 having given away today’s equivalent of ten billion dollars. Of course, you say, Rockefeller was one of the richest men of all time. But his giving started when every penny counted:

I had to begin work as a small boy to support my mother. My first wages amounted to $1.50 per week. The first week after I went to work, I took the $1.50 home to my mother. She held it in her lap and explained to me that she would be happy if I would give a tenth of it to the Lord. I did, and from that week until this day, I have tithed every dollar God has entrusted to me. And I want to say that if I had not tithed the first dollar I made, I would not have tithed the first million dollars I made.4

There’s George Jenkins — “Mr. George” to Publix Supermarket employees — who lived from 1907 to 1996. The employee-owned, privately held corporation he founded currently sells $48 billion in its thirteen hundred stores. In his final interview, a reporter asked him what he thought he’d be worth if he hadn’t given so much away. Mr. George said, “Probably nothing.”5

No giver can outgive God.
We’re told to bring our tithes into the storehouse, followed by, ‘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

It’s true we don’t “give to get.” It’s also true that God says He will give when we do.

My father’s respect for giving sailed well beyond his days. In his will he directed the vast majority of his assets and holdings to a charitable foundation dedicated to telling others the good news of God’s love, a decision I never questioned or resented.

In his little booklet, God’s Secret of Success, Dad urges us to put God first in our habits and first in our homes. Success is a byproduct of first things getting top priority, he says over and over, a truth you can’t know until you try.

So try it. First for a morning, then every morning for a week, and every week for a year. Observe the Sabbath. Give the first of everything you receive and everything you are. See if you don’t also have the secret of success.

1. Charles H. Spurgeon, Psalm 119:147, The Treasury of David (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1884–86). 199
2. Bill Gates, TIME magazine, January 13, 1997.
3. Recounted in John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2015).
4. Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D . Rockefeller Sr . (New York: Vintage Books, 2004).
5. George Jenkins, “Lessons from Our Founder: Give Back,” Publix.

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