The first fruits offering is something that I took a class on a long time ago at Harvest Church. It was one of those teachings that was hard to swallow because it required so much. The first fruits offering is sacrificial by origin and costs the giver a great deal. It always occurred during the beginning of harvest time. This offering occurred after the harvest had already come, after the farmers had sowed and worked the ground. The work had been done and the Lord blessed their land with a harvest. The first fruits offering was exactly as it sounds: an offering of the first crops of the harvest that was given to the church in order to sustain the work of the Lord.
I was recently listening to Ted Shuttlesworth Jr. and he said something that stuck out to me. Immediately, I thought of all of our young people. Pastor Ted Jr. was actually talking about setting aside your morning to spend time with God in prayer, the Word, and worship. He called it a first fruits offering of your time, since you would get up early to give God the first minutes of your day. This is especially important when many our younger folks don’t yet have jobs and money to actually tithe. You may ask yourself, “What can I actually give to God?” This is the perfect solution!
Pastor Ted Jr. went further and said that actually, if we considered tithing our time to God it would total to 2 hours 24 minutes per day that we should be giving to God as a 10% tithe daily. Whoa! That is a huge chunk of time!
The challenge I am embracing for myself here, and I am encouraging you with as well, is to get as close to this 2hr 24min daily tithe of time as possible. Some ways could be prayer, reading the word, listening to worship music, listening to a podcast, watching a sermon. The idea is not that you have to sit down for a solid 2hr 24mins and do nothing else during that time, although that would probably be amazing for your walk with God! The idea is to spread these activities throughout your day: worship instead of listening to secular music, listen to a podcast while you are getting ready for school, read the Word while on the bus.
As we pray and speak the Word out in our lives, we receive victory over sin and all other temptations. Praying, reading, receiving – that’s how it works!
What can you change about your daily habits so you can get closer to God?
Believing with you,
Yvonne
