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A Sower Went Forth
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Greetings and Solutions! Good Morning! Howdy!
In case I missed anyone, Hi, there!! Glad you could join me on this most auspicious occasion.
So, what’s the occasion? It’s the best day of your life.
See, yesterday’s gone, and tomorrow isn’t here yet.
That means you’ve only got today. I could take this to extremes, but you get the picture.
Hehehehehe…………..
Shhhhh….. Don’t tell anybody. I’m having some vitamins this morning. You know what those are don’t you? Those round kinda things with holes in the middle? ‘Bout four inches in diameter?
Mmmmmm………Gooooooodddd !!!
These are the kind of vitamins my police officer friends really like!
Grab some, Joel. They’re good for what ails ya – or so my mother used to say. You too, Anthony.
They really go good with my fresh ground, dark roasted Columbian coffee.
I bought plenty, so help yourself. Pour yourself a cup, and let’s get this best day of your life under way.
Yesterday we started talking about the life of the sower, sowing and reaping, tithing and all that.
Ever wonder why the hackles go up on a lot of folks when preachers start talking tithing, taking up offering after offering after offering?
Growing up in church and seeing lots of preachers who do this kind of thing sort of turned me off.
Didn’t realize it at the time, but the reason it turned me off was because I could see beyond the collecting of the offerings to the motives of the preacher.
It affected me to the reverse so that when I began pastoring, I refused to pass the collection plate.
I just stuck a box or two at the rear of the church sanctuary or in the hallway that said “Tithes & Offerings.”
I rarely mentioned its existence, and only occasionally preached on tithing and giving. In those days, the concept of seed sowing and reaping a harvest was completely missing in my understanding.
There was something else. Being a kind of pioneer, growing up in a missionary lifestyle, having a Dad who taught me to be versatile in my skills and trades, all tended to make me independent.
You see, I never saw the tithes and offerings as my source for living.
Besides, I found out that with a “tent-making trade,” like the apostle Paul had, I had plenty of money otherwise to take care of the needs of my family.
You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
“Tent-making trade?” The apostle Paul utilized his skills in making tents when he wasn’t preaching, traveling, building Ekklesias, ministering to folks or writing his letters and epistles to Christians throughout the then-known world.
He made a good living from it.
One of the things I missed out on, or overlooked – maybe because I just didn’t want to see it – was the fact that Paul preached on giving, sowing seed, tithing, etc.
Now, before you Scripture hounds start to get technical on me, I know that Paul never used the word, “tithing,” in any of his
regular epistles. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t talking about it.
(He did, by the way, in Hebrews.) Anyway, we’ll come back to that later.
What I was getting at was the fact that I was pretty self-sufficient in my “tent-making.”
With lots of ways to “make tents,” I could work as a carpenter, a surveyor (I did that, too, for the Army, for an Air Force contractor, and for the State of Alaska), a broadcaster, an engineer, a banker (we can talk more about that, later) with Alaska National Bank and Union Bond & Trust Company, a research and development technician and engineer and scientist, an inventor, a university professor, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.
You get the picture. I could, and did, anything I set my mind to do.
And it worked. The Lord gave me the abilities.
Problem was, I became my own source of supply. I somehow forgot that I wasn’t really.
The source, that is! So, in the midst of preaching, pastoring, teaching, etc., talking about tithing, giving, seed sowing and all seemed pretty unimportant.
I just thought there were lots more important things to teach on.
Brother, was I ever wrong.
I was the reverse of the preachers who doted on tithing, and taking up offerings.
And yet, I was just like them. In my heart of hearts, the Lord wasn’t my source of supply.
Oh sure, I mouthed all the right things. When I preached on tithing or giving, I said the right things, but what I was preaching came out of duty, out of theory, not out of life.
Lots of preachers major on tithing and giving of offerings, but the motive behind their preaching and teaching is the same motive I had with all of my “tent-making.”
The tithes and offerings are their source! Not the Lord!!
So, when they have needs, the money isn’t flowing sufficiently to pay all the bills to meet the lifestyle to which they would like to become accustomed, they preach another sermon on tithing.
Then another on giving. Then another on missionaries and their needs.
And every time they do, they take up another offering.
Not only are they not preaching and teaching any life in the concept of tithing and giving of offerings, they aren’t teaching seed sowing and harvest.
Worse, they aren’t practicing what they preach!
You even find a few of them that do preach on seed sowing, but its only because they’ve heard someone like Kenneth Copeland or Jesse Duplantis or Keith Butler or Leroy Thompson or somebody else who really does understand what it means to sow seed and reap a harvest.
There are even a few televangelists who preach seed sowing and harvest time who use a valid principle for the wrong motives.
The Lord isn’t their source: the money they rake in from their preaching is.
Just because some folks abuse and misuse truth for their own ends doesn’t make the truth or the principles being taught invalid.
It just means that those folks are looking to the wrong places as their source of supply.
They’ve forgotten what Paul said,
“But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:19)
Paul had it down. His tent-making wasn’t his source of supply. Tithes and offerings weren’t his source of supply. God was!
And Paul preached abundance. He understood abundance. He wrote to the Ekklesia in Ephesus,
“Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto Him be glory……..”
(Ephesians 3:20)
You did see that tiny little catch phrase in his statement didn’t you?
“..according to the power that worketh in us..”
That’s the power that produces the exceeding abundance.
It’s called faith. It’s called trust. It’s called absolute dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ as your source of supply.
But there’s a whole lot more.
There is no magic formula for getting rich. That’s not what this is about. If you tithe, if you give, if you sow so you can get rich, then your source of supply isn’t the Lord, it’s the riches you hope to reap by obeying the Lord’s commands. It’s the motive behind what you do.
Let me share with you some of my deliverance from “tent making” as my source.
A columnist who writes for several Christian media outlets recently sent me a copy of an article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution by a local Baptist minister.
The article essentially took the position I have taken for the past 20 years or so concerning tithing, and treating it as a legalistic command of the Mosaic Law, and suggesting that tithing is not a New Testament principle.
The columnist asked me for my take on the article. Here is what I sent him.
Hi, Rick:
This piece probably represents the stance I have taken for the past twenty years or so. I resisted the compulsory aspect of tithing because of the legalistic aspect of it. My wife and I didn't keep track of our giving, and we relegated our tithes into the "giving" category. We have always been "givers," and have always responded to any indicator in our spirits that the Lord wanted us to give to someone, to some ministry, or whatever the Lord directed.
In the past couple years, however, Della and I have begun to realize that there is a side to tithing that we have completely missed. It is taking tithing away from the concept of doing it because the Law demands it, and doing it because it implements a realm of blessing -- both to the giver and the recipient. In the fall of 2003, my wife was traveling doing jewelry shows in the south. While staying at a hotel, she was watching a TV evangelist (whose name I will omit) who was talking about "planting seed." She called me and told me that she felt strongly prompted in her spirit to send this evangelist's ministry $1,000 as "seed." At the time, we were making fairly good money (easily over $100K annually), but had a lot of debts that had accumulated as a result of helping others beyond our financial capacity.
The irony of it was that I had just sent a couple of $100 checks to two different ministries for EXACTLY the same reason. I was being stirred in my spirit about going beyond the concept of tithing, and giving as a means of planting seed that would grow and multiply -- not only to meet our mounting needs, but to have more available to give as the Lord directed. I agreed with Della in sending the $1,000 to that particular ministry. The problem was that we didn't have $1,000 in our bank account that we could use that way. So we made a vow to the Lord. "Lord, if you will multiply the seed already planted to meet our outstanding needs, we will send this particular ministry $1,000. (Conceptually, I had little regard for the evangelist in question because I felt that he too frequently misused the funds that were made available to him, and that his motives were questionable. Nevertheless, this was the individual to whom my wife felt we should send the "seed.")
Less than three months later, we had many thousands of dollars in our bank account. We were the recipients of an unexpected inheritance. We first kept our vow to the Lord to give that $1,000 to the ministry in question. Then we paid off our home, paid off our debts, and purchased my wife's mother's home in order to relieve her of the debt burden she was carrying. For the first time in our married lives, my wife and I were totally debt free.
We have learned a valuable lesson from this -- and one that we are now sharing with folks who have sat under our ministry during the past twenty years or so. You can't outgive God! If you treat tithing as a legal drudge instead of an opportunity to bring blessing to the Body of Christ, and to those in need, you miss the unfathomable blessings of the Lord. Needless to say, we tithe. But we are more than tithing. And we are keeping track of what we do so that we can keep track of the blessings that follow.
Perhaps the most important scripture the Lord has brought to us in the midst of this change of understanding
comes from Deuteronomy 28:
"And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth.
"And these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The LORD shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways,
"The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.
"And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.
"And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them."
(And the blessings continue.)
Obviously, the commandments of the Lord involved more than simply tithing, but it was an integral part of His commands. I believe that most Christians today have missed out on the blessings that follow because they treat tithing as a thing of the Law rather than a precursor to blessings beyond their capacity to comprehend.
My wife and I have always been blessed by the Lord -- in more ways than we can possibly count -- but we've begun to realize that there are blessings from the Lord that far outstrip anything we can imagine. The Lord has given us a huge vision for ministry, and we are planting the seed necessary so that we can reap the harvest needed to fulfill that vision.
--Regner
Do we believe in tithing?
You bet! But not as a legalistic thing: we see it as a phenomenal opportunity to accomplish the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ for His people.
It is an opportunity to partake of the blessings of the Lord – to be a blessing to others, and to be blessed ourselves as a family.
You see, our giving, our tithing, our sowing of seed isn’t so we can get rich: we do it because this is a way to enrich the Kingdom of God. It’s a way to bless others.
It’s a way to bless the Lord. We just get blessed ourselves in the process – above all we can ask or think.
It’s become a lifestyle for us. Somebody asked me the other day what I did for a living.
I told them I was a sower.
This sower is going forth to sow…..and sow…..and sow…..and sow…and keep on sowing….
I’ve only scratched the surface so far. There’s a lot more, but it will wait.
Have another “vitamin.” Hehehehehe…… And another cup of coffee…..OK, Lore, Michael….tea!
The rest of you be blessed beyond your capacity to think or imagine!
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657
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