Well, God was right! When we obey him, He takes care of us.

Three months ago I challenged OneLife to a 90-day Generosity Challenge. The premise was simple: give God your first ten percent like the Bible tells us to do, and if He doesn’t take care of you like the Bible says He will, then OneLife will give you every penny back.

Some people look at me like I have four heads when I tell them we did this. But believe it or not, churches do this somewhat frequently and we definitely weren’t the first. The reason for a Generosity Challenge is to take away every excuse. If someone thinks they can’t afford it, then we’ll take that excuse away, too, by promising to give them their money back if they go broke! We can do this because we know God will provide like He promises.

More than 100 families committed to take the challenge, and when all was said and done around half of them took it seriously by sticking to their commitment. And as expected, every single person who honored God with their first ten percent saw God take care of them! Not one family asked for their tithes back because God didn’t pull through for them.

The stories have been incredible, and we’ll be sharing some of those in the coming weeks on Sundays and on the blog. If you look back on the past 90 days and see that you missed sticking to your commitment, start now! Put God to the test like he tells you to do and watch him take care of you! If you already did that and saw God do great things in your life by taking care of you – please let me know!

As we move into a new season as a church of opening a second location and helping more churches get started, it’s going to take all of us being obedient to doing what God says with our finances. Fortunately for us, He will then do what He promises and take care of our needs every step of the way!

Don’t miss the chance to experience that!

Don’t forget to automate your tithes to help you stay disciplined! Do it today at onelifeknox.com/give.

So now that you’ve budgeted for giving God your FIRST ten percent, and you automated it so that it is given whether you remember your checkbook or not and whether you are at church or not, what’s next?!

The easiest – yet hardest – step. That’s what! Trust.

Jesus talked about money and possessions more than heaven and hell combined. He told a rich, young, successful leader that he would have to sell everything he had to follow Jesus. Jesus praised an old widow for giving her last two pennies to the offering. He even purposelly sent his disciples out on mission without any money in their pockets. Why did he teach all of this and more?

Jesus wanted these people – and he wants you and me – to trust him more than our money. And he promised that if we did, he would take care of our needs. He said, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

If you have a problem giving to God what he asks of you financially, Jesus teaches that it boils down to an issue of trust. It’s as if you are saying, “God, you can’t really have all of me because I don’t trust you enough to take care of me.” Or for many of us, what we’re really saying is, “I’m not willing to sacrifice my wants for what you ask of me, Jesus. Thanks for sacrificing for me – but I’m just not willing to do the same for you.”

As we take this Generosity Challenge together, I am praying for you like crazy to take this big step of trust. Because I know what you will see is God take care of you like never before, and grow you like never before.

If you haven’t officially signed up for the Generosity Challenge, go here and do it now! From this point forward you’ll receive weekly encouragement, updates, and info about how your sacrifical giving is changing lives. The next 90 days are going to change our church and your life! I can’t wait to see it happen.

On Monday, the Generosity Challenge kicked-off with an honest discussion of why it’s so important to put God first in the area of finances. As God Himself said, we are robbing him when we don’t give back at least a tenth of what he gives to us first! (Malachi 3:8-10)

So today we take the most practical approach yet to the Generosity Challenge. One of the greatest hurdles to people being committed to giving God a tenth first is simple discipline. So in step two, we help you make that much simpler!

Step Two

It’s happened to all of us. It’s 2012, which means the only time you have cash is that lucky day you find a $20 bill in your coat pocket from last winter, and the only time you have a checkbook is when you need to level out the wobbly kitchen table. Then Sunday rolls around, it’s time to give God my tithes, and all I have is a debit card and some crinkled up receipts. And – if you’re like me – even if I did carry a checkbook or a wallet full of Benjamins, missing Sundays would make it hard to keep up. You know how it is: The kids get sick right after vacation, which also fell right after Aunt Bessie’s funeral, so we’ve now missed church three weeks in a row. And we’re three weeks behind on our giving.

So what’s the best solution? We call it “Automate the Important”. The best way to stay disciplined and guarantee God gets my first ten percent, is to treat it like I do my mortgage payment, gym membership, or utilities bills: make it automatic. If I’m willing to automate those other things, shouldn’t I automate what is most important?

As you take this Generosity Challenge seriously, I encourage each of you to Automate the Important. Once you’ve determined how much ten percent of your family’s income is and how often you will give (once a week, two times each month, or once a month), go to onelifeknox.com/give and set it up to be automated. My family made this our method of giving over two years ago, and we love knowing that God get’s our best and our first without having to remember our checkbook each week, and even if we are out of town or sick and don’t make it to church.

There’s only one step left after this one, so I’m trusting and praying that you have budgeted to give your ten percent and that you’ll now take the next step of Automating the Important! I’ll keep praying for you until you get the third and final step on Friday.

An overwhelming majority of our church committed to joining the Generosity Challenge this past Sunday – a 90 day “test” to see if God will really take care of us when tithing. The rules are simple: give God your FIRST ten percent over the next 90 days and if he doesn’t provide all your needs, OneLife will give every penny back to you. No questions asked.

We all committed together saying, “I’m all in!” and committing to take this chance in response to the idea that Jesus sacrificed for us and called us to do the same. Sacrifice is giving up something we love for something we love even more. We all love our money and stuff, but we love seeing lives changed through the Church even more! It is this kind of sacrifice that will allow us to start our second campus, other future campuses, and partner with church planting around the world.

If you signed up for the Generosity Challenge, you’ll be receiving a series of practical emails and encouragement over the next 90 days, along with healthy accountability so you can track your giving. If you did not sign up or were not at church yesterday to do so, go to www.onelifeknox.com/generosity to sign up today!

Step One

The first step toward completing the Generosity Challenge is to budget for it! Believe it or not, you don’t have to pray long for God to tell you how much you should give. It’s all throughout His Word! The first tenth of everything he gives to us is to be given back to him. If you’re like me – that sounds like a lot. And it is! Because he wants us to depend on HIM, not our stuff. So here are some practical steps to budget for giving God your 10%.

1. Determine needs versus wants. Nearly every American family has “fat” in their budget. These are things we really don’t need, even if we might think we do. For example: we don’t need cable TV, smart phones, internet at home, meals at restaurants, vacations, sports tickets, multiple cars, new clothes, Dollywood trips, hair and nails done up just right, and the list goes on and on. Are these things bad? NO! God wants us to enjoy life and his creation! But they become bad when our first tenth goes to pay for them instead of going back to God. In fact, God says it even harsher. “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings.” Malachi 3:8. By paying for other things with God’s 10%, he says we are robbing him.

2. Give to God FIRST. Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God” and THEN all the other things will be added to you. If you take the Generosity Challenge seriously, you will give FIRST instead of paying bills, buying things, or investing. Then you’ll do everything else with the 90% that’s left over and watch God take care of you like never before!

For so many people, this is a radical idea. That’s why we are giving you the opportunity to test God and see if he doesn’t take care of you. I know he will, and I can’t WAIT to hear your stories of how he does!

The blog has been silent for a couple weeks because things at the OneLife office have been crazy! But crazy in an incredible way. There are so many stories of changed lives that I could fill an entire novel with them. On top of that, we are gearing up for a summer that will impact our community and get us ready for the fall (yeah, we’re already thinking about the fall!).

One thing we are doing for the summer is getting into the 21st Century with online giving. If conversations at your house are at all like mine, some of the most used words are “Where’s the debit card?!” because we never have cash and “Have we paid that bill yet?” because only one or two aren’t paid automatically each month. So when it comes to our generosity to the church, why should we expect things to be much different?

So we are making a push to encourage anyone who calls OneLife their home to Automate the Important. If generosity is important to you – and I sure hope it is since Jesus said our heart and treasure will be in the same place – then I encourage you to automate it! Our tech team has done an amazing job developing a system that is easy to use and will allow you to set recurring gifts weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly. Just like you do it for bills and mortgage payments – do it for church!

I encourage you to take just a minute (because that’s all it will take!) and set up your generosity to be automated. You won’t have to remember cash or checks on Sunday mornings or feel guilty if you forget (and trust me, it’s even happened to us!). Harrison and I have automated our giving to be automatically given each month, and it is a great feeling to know that our generosity will continue to impact many lives without me having to remember each week.

See for yourself how easy this is at www.onelifeknox.com/give and set up your online giving account today so you can Automate the Important!