Danielle King / Web Administrator/Next Generation Administrative Assistant

A few weeks ago, I forgot to give our tithe to the church. We give every other week to match our paycheck, and I got the weeks mixed up. Well no big deal, since I work at the church I could just turn in our check any day of the week. But that week went by, and then the next. I was a little embarrassed to tell my husband that I made the mistake – giving from leftovers is always a little harder than giving first thing. So it came to the point where we just had to do a ‘double tithe’ – and I froze while I was writing the check in the pew! That was a much bigger number than normal, was it right? What if it was more than I was supposed to write? What if that was going to set us back more than we thought? So I just wrote it for the normal amount, not for the missed week.

Guilt started creeping into my mind and heart. Every time I went to prayer that guilt yelled ‘you didn’t pay!’ and I would shush it back and tell God I would figure it out later… and later… and later. One night as I was going to bed, the situation was consuming my thoughts. Guilt reared again, this time accusing me of putting my husband in a bad place by letting him think we were good holy tithers… but I was setting us up to be the next Ananias and Sapphira, holding back money from God and the church (Acts 5)! I felt shameful and resolved to take care of it, tomorrow. (Do you see this procrastination pattern of mine?)

Through this whole situation, I never really spoke to God about it. I just listened to guilt and accusation from within myself. In fact, I tried hiding it from God – how silly is that? Well God is GOOD and finally decided He’d watched me wallow too long without having His say. The next morning I looked at my phone, still in bed, and pulled up the ‘verse of the day’ in my Bible app: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. 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)

WOAH.

The enemy will use guilt and shame to hold us down, and get us stuck and hiding from God. Although guilt is purposeful – it alerts us to when we’ve done wrong – it is not meant to stay and abuse us. Did you see that whole verse up there? I read it and saw God offering more blessing, not threatening punishment. He knows me and my crazy, new-mom, forgetful mind, my worrying and fearful heart, and most of all He knows everything I think I am hiding. And He offers freedom and blessing, not a curse. In fact, He offers freedom FROM the curse - the curse of living under stress and the shame of my mistakes. I don’t think God was concerned about that money being paid. He was concerned with me, his daughter, being self-tormented because it wasn’t paid, and the distance that wedged between us because of the whole situation.

It’s reminded me to not avoid God because of a mistake and let things creep in between me and Him. If you are in that place, being held down far away from God, remember two things: God already knows what you want to hide from Him. And He just wants you to return to Him and find freedom from what’s holding you down.