P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

God’s Apprentice

If you watch TV, you may have seen an episode of “The Apprentice.” In this series a group of talented, intelligent young entrepreneurs compete to get hired by Donald Trump to run one of his businesses. The contestants divide into teams and engage in a different sort of business competition each week. Each week one contestant on the losing team is told, “You’re fired.” After many weeks, the last person standing gets the highly coveted job as Donald Trump’s apprentice.

One of the colorful characters on the first series was a young entrepreneur named Sam. Sam Salovey got himself fired early in the series. But in the end, he surprised everyone by offering Donald Trump 250,000 bucks in a Samsonite suitcase for the privilege of coming to work for him. Trump was impressed. He actually said that it was a brilliant move, although he eventually turned down the offer. You see, both Donald Trump and Sam Solovey understood the paradoxical principle that you have to give up wealth to get wealth. In other words, they understood the principle of priming the pump.

Remember that old hand-cranked pump that stood out in grandpa’s barnyard? Remember how you had to pump it to bring the water up? Do you remember how grandpa used to keep a jug of water sitting by that old pump? If the pump hadn’t been used in a while, you had to pour that water down the well before any more water would come up. Well, that’s what Sam Salovey was doing. He was priming the pump. He knew that he would get back every dollar of that $250,000 over the next few years, not just in salary, but in learning opportunities. That’s how much it was worth to him to be Trump’s apprentice. It wasn’t a dumb move at all.
Life is like that. Sometimes you have to give away something to get more of it.
How much is it worth to you to be God’s apprentice? Is it worth a tenth of your income? Don’t look at the cost; look at the benefits. I’m reading from Malachi 3:9-11:

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the Lord Almighty.

Now that passage is full of promise. Every faithful tither knows that nine tenths of your income with God’s blessing goes a lot further than all of it with His curse. I’ve seen it work time and again.

I have in my wallet a credit card. This credit card gives me the privilege of using someone else's money for my own purposes. Now, in exchange for the privilege, I am charged a certain percentage of the total. For the privilege of using their money, Mastercard charges anywhere from 9 to 25 percent.

The Master charges only ten.

However, He asks for the FIRST ten percent, not the LAST ten. We must always put God first. In practical terms, that means that we return the tithe to God before we pay any of our other bills. Proverbs 3:9 says “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the FIRST FRUITS of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing.” Let me illustrate with this story from the mission field that I found in Joan and Bill Brown’s book Together Each Day.

One day there was a knock on the door of the hut occupied by a missionary in Africa. When the missionary answered the door he found one of the native boys holding a large fish in his hands. The boy said, “Pastor, you taught us what tithing is, so here—I've brought you my tithe.”

“Well, son,” said the pastor, “If this is your tithe, where are the other nine fish?”

With beaming face the boy said, "Oh, they're still back in the river. I'm going back to catch them now.”

That young man understood what it mean to be God’s apprentice, to fish with God’s blessing. He put God first.

Tithing is the minimum God asks of His apprentices. If you're only returning the tithe, and not adding any offering on top of that, you’re still not being generous. You're just returning to God what belongs to Him; but you're not giving Him anything of yours. Be generous with God, because it pays.

Mel Rees was a well-known stewardship director in my denomination for many years. Before he died a few months ago, he shared a story that touched my heart. Mel sat one day in the home of a truck driver and listened as they told him how they were saving to build a new home. They had saved $6,000 when the little church to which they belonged decided to build a new facility. They believed strongly in the “kingdom first” principle taught by Jesus in Matthew 6:31-34:

Do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

The couple thought about that passage and prayed and decided to place their entire savings of $6,000 in the church building fund.

Evidently God was so pleased with their sacrifice that all of a sudden things began to happen. Wonderful things. Within two weeks of this decision, this man's company had such an increase in business they had to buy a new truck, and he began to put in lots of overtime. He never made so much money so fast in his life. One time he was stranded in a faraway city for two weeks because of bad weather and drew double time around the clock!

It took four years to dedicate the new church free from debt. On the VERY SAME DAY that the church was dedicated their lovely new home sat high on the hill, FREE FROM DEBT!

“There is no way,” the man told Mel, “that we could have built this house and paid for it under normal circumstances. It was a miracle of God.”

Two weeks after the house was built, the business dropped off, and the company sold the extra truck. That’s how God treats His apprentices.

So you may as well give everything to God, because it’s His anyway, and He takes good care of it. Everything you keep for yourself decays. A few years ago I brought a pen that wrote in beautiful green dye. I had lots of other pens, so I threw it in a drawer. About five years later I took it out and tried to write with it and it had dried up. Things don’t keep. I should have given the pen away years ago to bless someone else.

In the early 1920s a Methodist layman gave $100,000 to build a college in Liberia. By the 1940's the college had grown and was meeting the educational and spiritual needs of many young Africans.

On one special anniversary of the college's founding, the administration decided it was time to make a formal Thank You to its benefactor. It took months for the General Board of Missions to track down that Methodist layman. He had lost everything in the crash of 1929 and was living in a little house on the south side of Chicago. Twice he refused to see representatives from the Board of Missions, but he finally agreed to receive them. They insisted on flying him to Africa for a gala celebration of the college's anniversary.

As he looked over the campus filled with hundreds of students with smiles on their faces and tomorrow in their eyes, he whispered to the college president, “The only thing I have kept is what I gave away.”

That's one of life's little secrets. We only keep what we give away. There’s an old saying that you can't take it with you. That’s not really true: you really CAN take your money with you when you die, but—here's the catch—you only get to take with you that which you have given away. The money you keep for yourself you lose in the end. You can't take that with you. If you want to take it with you, you have to give it away while you are living, and invest in the bank of heaven.

Let’s put it this way. I’m going to borrow an illustration from Randy Alcorn’s book The Treasure Principle: [Discovering the Secret of Joyful Giving (Multnomah Publishers, 2001)]. Imagine you're alive at the end of the Civil War. You're living in the South, but you are a Northerner. You plan to move home as soon as the war is over. While in the South, you've accumulated lots of Confederate currency.

Now, suppose you know for a fact that the North is going to win the war and the end is imminent. What will you do with your Confederate money? Well, if you're smart, you’ll immediately exchange that Confederate currency for U.S. currency—the only money that will have value once the war is over. Keep only enough Confederate money to meet your short term needs. That’s the wise thing to do.

Now you can see where I’m going here, friend. As a Christian, you have inside knowledge of an eventual worldwide upheaval that is coming soon when Christ return in the clouds of heaven. This is the ultimate insider trading tip: Earth's currency will become worthless when Christ returns—or when you die, whichever comes first.

So, friend, turn your life and your pocketbook over to God. Become God’s apprentice, and put your money in the bank of heaven. You’ll never lose it there.