How to invest the second tithe to yourself? Good question, here's what I tell people (to do with your second tithe), is: get $2000 in the bank. Pay the second tithe to yourself, to get $2000 in the bank; that way, if a tire goes flat, you'll have money to fix it.
Second thing you do (with your second tithe): pay off all your consumer debt: credit cards; Home equity lines; car loans - things like that. It does no good to invest, when you're paying a higher (18%) interest on your MasterCard.
So use your second tithe first to get $2000 in the bank (about a month's wages); then use your second tithe to pay off all consumer debt; except your house, because your house is going up in value, or at least it should!
Then go back to the $2000, and get 6months of expenses in the bank; then go back to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, whatever you call it here. And then after that, pay your house off.
Other giving? Well, you want to honour God, so first question is: Do you have a Tzedakah spirit? Secondly, it depends if you did it on your gross, or net, to begin with. I would say that your heart be your guide. You'll know.
Have you lost money during the GFC? Possibly, some of it, but not all of it, because some of its in gold.
Pay once a year? You can be, for them it was, because their harvest was once a year. It can be once a year. If you decided to give one Terumah offering a year, fine, of course.
Suspend payments during hard times? Good question, thank you for being brave enough to ask that. What he's saying is: if you're in a hard way, can you get a reprieve until things get back on your feet?
Yeah, sure. Listen, God is not petty, nor is he insecure; and God always sees your heart. Here's the truth of it: you want to unlock everything in the universe in your benefit.
Can I talk to you business owners for a second? I don't just run my personal finances this way; I run my business this way. You'll never do something better in your whole life. When that thing comes over your business, you won't be able to stop it.
Assuming: working hard; not being stupid. This is not a cure for stupid. This is not the cure for selfishness. This is not a cure for laziness. God is not duty-bound to finish anything that he didn't start, ok.
When making a loss? You don't give anything, until there's increase.
Giving a bit less? Well, very much so. The Terumah offering is so small, “to be faithful with little”; and Jesus addresses it a couple of times, in a way that you don't really understand unless you're very familiar with ancient Rabbinical teaching.
The main Rabbi, in Jesus day, was a guy named Halal (the other guy was named Shamai); and Halal had a famous teaching on Terumah that said this: Essentially, you could give anything between 1/40 and 1/60 as an acceptable Terumah; and I didn't go into all that, because 1/40th is just easier to remember...
But Halal said: if anyone gives Terumah at the 1/60th level, they have an ‘evil eye’. If anyone gives at the 1/50th level, they have a ‘middling eye.’ If someone gives Terumah at a 1/40th level, they have an ‘eye full of light’. And if someone doesn't give Terumah at all, they're ‘infidel’. This was a famous teaching of Halal's.
So when Jesus says: “If your eye is full of light, your whole body will be full of light; if your eye is full of darkness, then your whole body will be fill with darkness. And if the light that is in you is actually darkness, how great is the darkness.”
In the ancient near-east, to have an ‘eye full of light’ meant to be generous. To have an eye full of darkness meant to be greedy.
So essentially Jesus says: if you're generous, it’s going to apply favour to your whole life; if you're greedy it’s going to shut down your whole life; and if your generosity is actually greed masked, that's really bad!
Isn't it funny that Jesus always comes back to our heart, about small things? To be faithful in small things, starts to unlock bigger things.