Tithing:)

First of all I know this is an iffy subject for people altogether.  Even us Christians!!  Should we tithe 10%?  Before or after taxes?  A big question for military is do we tithe off base pay only or everything they pay us?  We receive housing and food allowances.  I am constantly praying over this and wondering what we should do and how much and worrying if we can pay our bills if we do tithe.  So here are the facts from our lives so far.  When we lived in NC we tithed 10%.  FYI tithe means a tenth so that is where we get this number.  We were doing really well in NC so we did not even miss giving that 10% back to God.  I enjoyed it actually in knowing we were obeying what He wanted my family to do.  What I mean by obey is I have no clue what He is telling you to do.  Biblically He was telling my family to tithe our full 10% so I don't want to get in any arguments about what is right and wrong about what the Bible says.  For my family is it 10% of our gross income.  No we do not do after taxes.  We do not pay the government first and then God.  God is first. While in NC we were doing really well so we definitely felt the fruits of our tithing.  Here is another thing:)  God PROMISES to take care of us if we obey the tithe.  Man is so obsessed with money that we give everything to God yet hold back the moola.  In the Bible God even says to test Him on this!  Give Him the 10% and He will bless you even more!  We are a living testimony for that.  He really did bless over and above when we were tithing.  Okay moving on.  So we move to California.  WAY more expensive to live here and they are NOT paying us enough.  So where do we start pulling money from....our tithe:(  Guess what....things are not going well.  Our renter decides not to pay her rent which means we pay the mortgage.  We have had things go wrong with our cars.  Our dryer starts to go out.  Our TVs are acting wonky.  So we pray over all this....a lot.  Then we realize that all this starting happening once we quit tithing.  Ugh!  Duh!  Now again this is a conviction for our family so I do not want people thinking I am telling you what to do with yours.  I feel like God is showing us that yes we can obey when we are making it and making it well but what about when things are tight?  Why are we not trusting Him to take care of us?  He promises in the Bible He will not let us go hungry if we tithe!  He will take care of us!  We had this proven over and over again when I thought we could not tithe and we did anyways and then BAM! a check would show up in the mail from someone who had overcharged us or something like that.  IT NEVER FAILED!!!  So our big lesson for today in our family is we are going back to tithing first over everything else.  I am tired of not having the "insurance" that we need.  He will never fall back on His promises...He has not yet.  Anyways the point of this blog is not to share our finances but to give testimony on His promises for our family.  This is our issue we have struggled with in our trust in Him.  What is funny is I am more relieved now that we are back to tithing then anything.  He always provided and I know He always will!!!