by Saundra Suchora

Born and raised Roman Catholic, Michael, my husband, and I knew of Jesus as our Savior for more than 30 years, but we didn’t really know Him. We had Bibles; yet, we didn’t know how to use them. Life seemed pretty good, although we had no idea of the wonderful things God had in store for us.

In 2001, God blessed us with a very special boy. From the start, he was a little different. A few years later, we realized he was mildly autistic. When we took him to church, we received “polite” negative comments and glares from the parishioners when he was making too much noise. So, we’d take him outside. Finally, we were spending so much time in the hallway, we decided not to attend church at all.

One day, God sent a Baptist pastor to our home, and our eyes were opened about the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. We began to search and study everything we could, but something just wasn’t right with all of the denominations we were investigating.

One day, Amazing Facts came on our television, and suddenly the pieces started fitting together perfectly. We opened the Word of God searching for truth and discovered the verses on the TV screen were as unchangeable as God. We asked ourselves, “How could the Bible, so plainly stated, be so misunderstood by so many people?”

Ultimately, we ended up at Cocoa Seventh-day Adventist Church and were baptized August 8, 2009. Up until that time, we were just putting $5 to $20 in the collection plate. Having received the truth about tithing, we started to return God’s portion the week of our baptisms.

As self-employed lawn service owners, it wasn’t easy at first. There was already barely enough money to pay the bills before we decided to rest from work on the seventh day, let alone to return a faithful tithe! In addition, I was having some health issues, and we had dropped our health insurance earlier that year, because we just couldn’t afford it.

How could we return God’s 10 percent, plus an offering? We put God first, tithing on what we had earned for the week even before most of it was received, and we left my healing to the Great Physician.

Things were rough during the adjustment period, but as we learned more and more to trust God’s way of doing things, He rewarded that trust and obedience with blessings beyond measure. The winter was very long, harsh, and not easy on self-employed lawn care services. Without God’s blessing and guidance, we would have been in very big financial trouble.

We not only survived the cold season, but we never went without food, and all of our bills were paid on time. God took care of the health problem, too, without the assistance of doctors or medicine.

When we consider whether we could afford to return a tenth of our increase plus offerings, our resounding response is, “How can we afford not to?”

Our family’s testimony is that you can’t out-give God! Trust Him, and He will take care of all your needs and more, guaranteed! Just don’t miss out on the amazing blessings He has in store for you. Take a leap of faith. You will not be disappointed, because God’s way is always the best way!