The church was small, but that was okay, and from day one I felt loved and accepted there and I was there every Sunday I could be (when I wasn't already working). It was a church unlike any other I had been in...I had been raised in the Baptist church and this church was Pentecostal but what really made it different from the others was the laid back feel to the service (nothing was planned, i.e. sing 2.5 hymns and do a call to worship) and it was led by the Spirit. If one Sunday the pastor felt led to have us sing for most of the service, we did. Or, if he felt led to have testimonies (or sometimes they would just keep happening), we did. Not only that, the pastor taught from the Bible...no prepared sermons or series, he studied his Bible every day and throughout the week and sometimes not until Sunday morning did God impress upon him what he wanted him to speak about.
This is where I learned the most important lesson I've ever learned from God and I feel quite strongly about it...so much so that this verse is my FAVOURITE in all the Bible. It doesn't make other verses less important, but this one is so critical to our lives I believe. I learned about tithing and the verses in Malachi 3.
My pastor was willing to talk about a subject that I hadn't heard in my years in the Baptist church and I learned a basic principle that has blessed me many times over and still does. I had not been a tither because I thought I couldn't afford to...how wrong was I! I decided to try it and it was very hard at first but there have been SO many times that I've been blessed...not just because I've received but I've actually been more blessed by giving. There is an excellent book by Robert Morris called "The Blessed Life" and I've been re-reading it recently because even though I'm a consistent and faithful tither, I want to be even more free with what I have been given. It's a process and I'm still working on this aspect. :0)
Another thing that came from attending this new church was that I met Andy. I knew of him from another church I had attended but we had never actually been introduced (and nothing would have happened then because I would have been 14 and he would have been 23...my parents would NEVER have approved of that!
My pastor's wife is a bit of a matchmaker so she kept inviting me to their house (Andy was living with them at the time) and we became friends. In August we went on our first date (although at the time we were just calling it "going out for coffee". A coffee date that lasted 5 hours at Starbucks. LOL In November we were "officially" dating and on Christmas Eve Andy gave me a promise ring and in February we were engaged...we got married in September! It was a bit of a whirlwind but we both knew that we loved each other and were meant to be together...so why wait? It's hard to believe we've been married for 8 years...I'm not sure where the time has gone!
When I met Andy he was going through some of the same things I was (a few months earlier and he started going to the church not long before I did)...he hadn't been going to church very much, was disappointed with the way his life was going, etc. and our pastor told him to get back into his Bible, get back to church, basically get his life in order and God would start to change things. That's exactly what happened...once we both got back to church, studying our Bibles (and making changes in our lives that we needed to) we found each other and the rest, as they say, is history...
8. Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. 9. Ye [are] cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, [even] this whole nation. 10. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that [there shall] not [be room] enough [to receive it]. 11. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
