Testing God

There wasn’t enough food in the house. For the second month, we were running short on key items. Because we shopped monthly, it meant that we would have to borrow from somewhere else to top off our supply. The budget was tight. “Borrowing” would make us short in another area. We were discouraged. “Why does this keep on happening?” my husband wondered. “We tithe. We’re not robbing God. So why don’t we have enough food to eat?” We hadn’t always been faithful. We had both gone through periods where we had not tithed. Strangely enough, it seemed that when we weren’t tithing, we had enough. So why was it that when we were faithful, we ran out of food?

I reached for my Bible and read Malachi 3:8–10. If we were going to claim the promise, we would have to make sure that we were meeting any stipulated conditions. The words “And try Me now in this” leaped off the page. “That’s it!” I said to my husband. “It’s a conditional promise—there are two things we’re supposed to do, but we’ve only been doing one. We’re to bring the tithes into God’s house and try Him. To try God is to test Him to prove that He is faithful.” We prayed and reminded God that we were being faithful and asked Him to be faithful to us. This happened in November. My husband worked in a supermarket as the warehouse supervisor but had recently been transferred to the shop floor. Usually, at the end of the year, warehouse personnel would receive gifts from various suppliers. Since he was no longer in the warehouse, we knew there would be no gifts that year. But that was before we tested God.

In December, the gift baskets started rolling in. When my husband brought home the first basket, I was surprised. That year he received more gift baskets than he had ever received. We had a surplus of food, which we shared with our family. God had proved Himself to be faithful.

Aminata Coote