Dear Anonymous,

A certain portion of our income is usually deducted by the company we work for, who pays that money to the government for taxes and to the insurance company for benefit premiums, etc. The company is acting as our agent to make those payments for us from our money. Not everyone who earns a salary has the opportunity for those automatic deductions, and he must pay them himself after he has received his paycheck from the company.

If we were to pay only on our net income, perhaps we could have the company that we work for also make our car payments and house payments, etc. out of our income. Then we really wouldn’t have to pay much tithing! Our gross pay is our increase, no matter in what manner it is disbursed.

So it would seem to me that the proper course to pursue in paying tithing when we are reimbursed by periodic paychecks would be to identify the Gross Pay amount (that’s usually over on the left side of the check), move the decimal point one cipher to the left, and write a tithing check for that amount. It really doesn’t take any faith to pay tithing; especially it’s the first disbursement that we make. We have all the money that we receive. So there’s no problem in giving to the Lord his part first. Where faith comes in is in trying to live for the rest of the month on what we have left.

Gramps