Tithing

Tithing is the practice of giving God the first portion of one’s resources, not an offering made only if money remains after other expenses. In the book, it is both a concrete financial discipline and a measure of trust: withholding what belongs to God is described as disobedience that limits a person’s experience of blessing, while giving first is presented as obedience that allows God’s provision to work through the rest. The author develops this rule through biblical interpretation and two accounts of household finances, one centered on the consequences she associates with delaying the tithe and another on the gradual relief she and Blair Keeley experienced after beginning to give ten percent first.

Meaning and Biblical Grounding

The book places Tithing within a broader principle of stewardship: people are to care for what God has placed under their authority, but what belongs to God should be returned to Him. The author connects this principle to the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. In her interpretation, the first couple’s taking of what belonged to God represents the choice to claim for themselves what should have been offered back. She applies that lesson to contemporary life by asking whether people give God the first fruits of their time, money, and energy, and by warning that ignoring the design of giving and rest has consequences.

Money is the most developed application of the rule. The author argues that God does not want household giving to consist of leftovers after bills are paid: the first portion is to be set aside before other spending. Tithing therefore changes the order of financial decisions. It asks the giver to act on trust before knowing whether the remaining money will comfortably cover every need, rather than waiting for certainty and treating giving as optional. The book links this discipline to a wider scriptural account of sowing and reaping, in which generous giving is associated with a generous harvest. That principle supplies the book’s rationale for giving, though the personal accounts also show that the promised outcome is not framed as instant riches.

Delayed Giving and Financial Strain

The author recalls a summer when the family was short of money. When Blair Keeley brought home his paycheck, she waited until the bills had been paid to see whether anything remained for the tithe. She says she knew this was wrong, because God called for first fruits rather than leftovers, but feared that putting money aside first would leave too little for groceries and household electricity. Her account presents the choice not as ignorance of the rule but as a conflict between what she believed God commanded and the financial outcome she feared.

Over the following weeks, Blair Keeley’s car needed a replacement fuel pump. Two weeks later, one of the author’s tires blew, requiring a new set. A month after that, she drove Blair Keeley’s car to the grocery store and found a note beneath the windshield wiper warning that its worn tires could blow out on the highway. She looked at the tread and saw that it had worn down entirely. In the moment, she prayed and questioned why God was allowing these problems. She recounts feeling that God challenged her to consider why she was not trusting Him. The book does not present these mechanical failures as proof that a particular bill or repair was directly caused by withholding a tithe; instead, the author interprets the sequence as exposing the contradiction in expecting God’s empowerment while living in what she understood as disobedience.

She describes the result of that withholding as an attempt to scrape by that also cut off her access to the power she believed God supplied. The repairs made the financial pressure concrete: after paying for a fuel pump and two sets of tires, she concluded that the money was God’s rather than her own to allocate without regard to His instruction. The account turns the car expenses into the crisis that made her reconsider the order of giving, rather than into a simple story of financial loss.

Giving First and the Household’s Change

In the author’s account, beginning to tithe the first portion altered how far the remainder went. She says that when she gave first, the remaining 90 percent stretched further than the full 100 percent had previously. She describes this as a miraculous operation of God’s power, connecting the change not simply to arithmetic but to trusting God to provide the strength, time, resources, and money needed to do what He had commanded.

A second account, told together with Blair Keeley, fills out the economic consequences. The couple had debts to repay and reasoned that they could pay them down faster by keeping the ten percent they would otherwise give. The author characterizes their explanation as an excuse that protected them from facing their unwillingness to change their lifestyle enough to make room for giving. They were barely scraping by, she says, rather than living extravagantly, but continuing to follow their own financial logic made their situation worse: they kept scraping by and dug their financial hole deeper each month.

They eventually stopped relying on that reasoning and began giving ten percent right off the top. The change did not produce immediate spending money or a sudden ability to splurge. Instead, the author says that each month they somehow had just enough to meet their expenses and did not sink further into debt. She also describes a change in their experience of financial responsibility: the stress and worry eased as they committed to giving and managing money according to what they understood as God’s direction. In this account, relief comes first as stability and reduced anxiety, not as a dramatic windfall.

Provision, Generosity, and the Rule’s Scope

The author recalls that, after this change, ordinary household needs seemed to be met as they arose. Cars continued working, appliances did not break down, and clothes did not need replacing. She recounts one specific example involving her daughter’s birthday: the family could not afford the black high-top tennis shoes her daughter wanted, and the author could not find a way to buy them. Then her sister texted a picture of a pair of black high-tops, from a better brand than the author would have considered buying, and asked whether the daughter would like them. The sister’s daughter had outgrown the shoes before getting much use from them. In the book’s telling, the timing makes this an instance of provision arriving through family rather than through extra household spending.

Tithing also belongs to the book’s wider ethic of generosity. The author cites the biblical promise that the one who sows generously will reap generously, and extends its logic beyond the tithe: readers should seek to bless others instead of looking out only for themselves. Her examples of a coveted parking spot or poor restaurant service show how easily people can affirm generosity as an idea while resisting small opportunities to practice it. The rule thus carries both a specific financial instruction—give ten percent first—and a broader moral demand to become a source of blessing.

The book presents this practice as an act of obedience and trust whose benefits may appear as provision, steadier finances, or relief from worry, rather than as immediate surplus. Its personal testimony is central to that claim: the author contrasts the growing financial hole she associates with withholding the tithe against the couple’s later ability to make ends meet after giving first. That testimony illustrates how Tithing functions in the book not merely as a charitable payment, but as a daily test of whether financial security is pursued through self-protection alone or entrusted to God’s order.