Malachi 3:8-9

From before the time of my earliest memories in life, my family has been actively involved in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of course, one of the (very positive) consequences of this is that many of the teachings and commandments became normal to me relatively quickly. But even with the religious beliefs and way of life being rather normal, I still needed to gain a personal testimony of everything through experience before I knew it to be true. Often times these learning experiences were initiated by simply living according to the commandments without requiring a knowledge of why.

For some of the beliefs and commandments, my testimony process was relatively short term. Others took a much longer, extended time. An example of one such commandment that took many years for me to learn the "why" behind it was the Lord's law of tithing. From the day of my baptism until now, I have always been 100% obedient to this law and payed one-tenth of my income back to the Lord. But at least the first 10 years of doing so were without any obvious indications of the promised blessings, and without a personal knowledge of why this commandment was so important. Fortunately, I had learned that my obedience should not be dependent on knowing why, nor on an expectation of immediate and obvious blessings. So I continued to pay tithing month after month, year after year, but without a deep appreciation for it.

Eventually, around the age of 20, I concluded that the time to gain appreciation for this commandment could wait no longer. I had been paying tithing in full for over a decade and had never received a raise at work nor a "magic check" in the mail (which seemed to always be present in the testimonial stories shared in church lessons about tithing). Clearly, either the scripturally promised blessings were not true or my expectations about those blessings was incorrectly biased. Knowing the first to be wrong, I concluded the latter to be the case. There was something I had not yet learned regarding the true blessings of following the Lord's law of tithing.

Turning to, what I considered to be, the source of all answers to sincere questions, I opened the scriptures to the only set of verses I was familiar with that taught about tithing:

"Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation."       ~ Malachi 3:8-9

Even though I had heard and read this scripture many times already, this time I read it more closely and found one word to greatly intrigue me: curse. What did the scriptures mean by such a strong word? Of course, disobeying any commandment is bad, but the word "curse" was much stronger of a word than I would have expected for disobeying the law of tithing. Perhaps the meaning of this single word was the portion of the commandment that I did not yet understand.

Concluding to learn what the scriptures meant by "curse", I went to as many stories throughout the scriptures as I could that had reference to a person or people being cursed. In the Bible, Cain was cursed for killing his brother Abel and denying the Holy Ghost and the people of Israel were cursed for going after other gods. In The Book of Mormon Laman and Lemuel, and their descendents, were cursed for continually hardening their hearts against the Lord; the Amlicites were cursed for dissenting from the Church and mingling with the Lamanites; and the Jaredites were cursed for their iniquity. By going through these, and many other scriptural stories with reference to the word "curse", I began to notice a common thread: everyone who was cursed was either completely cut off, or at least greatly separated, from the Lord. And it soon came to me that this was the very scriptural meaning of "curse"! Indeed, being separated from the guidance, grace, and knowledge of God sounded like an absolute curse.

Immediately after having my scriptural understanding further enlightened, I went back to the same scripture in Malachi that I started with. Did it make sense that by not paying tithing, and therefore robbing God, we are strongly separated from the Lord? Yes! If I did not give one-tenth of my income back to the Lord, I would be saying through my actions that I trust my own financial judgement more than God. And by acting in accordance to such a saying, of course I would be greatly distanced from God's continual guidance.

Almost immediately afterwards, the contrapositive dawned upon my mind: by paying my tithing continually, my life has been watched over and guided by the Lord each and every day. I had heard the voice of God's Holy Spirit speaking to me personally many times, seen many miracles, had never been in debt, and was protected in potentially life-threatening situations. I came to see that this was the very purpose and blessing of living the law of tithing, at least to me. By obeying this commandment, I could sincerely and honestly wake up each morning with the absolute assurance that my life was guided and protected by God.

Since that time, which was literally years ago by now, I have come to learn that the Lord's law of tithing really is so valuable. It has helped, and continues to help, me remember my reliance on God. I do not need a check to arrive in the mail, nor any amount of financial blessings. Rather, the confidence that God watches over, and guides, my life is the priceless blessing that comes from tithing, and which
I learned through deeply studying and pondering the scriptures.