A lot of breakthroughs Shirley and I made in the last few years we feel were really centered on our offering, our tithing and our willingness to give.

I would like to start by talking about money problems. I think all of us think we have money problems. I know I do but I realized, at one point, that we really don't have money problems. What we have are emotional problems that are centered around our money situation. I wanted to push through a couple of mental exercises that try to point this out.

An "I" beam is a steel beam in the use of construction. If I were to lay an "I" beam down this isle and offer anyone $10.00 to walk across the "I" beam, I think everyone would probably do it. If I were to hang that "I" beam about 10-12 feet in the air and offer $10.00 to walk across it, at that point, a lot of people would drop out. I could offer $100.00 or $1,000.00 and probably some of us would still do it, especially if you have done some construction work and felt confident, but if I were to stretch that "I" beam across the top of the World Trade Center and offered you $1,000.00 to walk across it, I don't think there is anyone in this room that would do that. Even if I were to offer people a billion dollars to walk across that "I" beam, I would be really surprised if anyone took it.

If I stood on one side of the World Trade Center and I took one of your children and held him or her over the side and said, "If you don't come over here, I am going to let them go," I know that every parent in this room would walk across that "I" beam. Why? Because we will do things for love that we would never do for money. I give this example because I want to bring up two points.

The first one is that we need to understand our value. It is not measured in money. Our value is measured in love. We love our children so much we would do whatever was necessary to protect them. You need to understand that if one of your children is worth more than one million dollars to you, then what is your value? What is your value in God's eyes? I wouldn't sell one of my children's hands for a billion dollars. So what am I worth? In my eyes, I am worth more than a billion dollars because even one child of mine is worth more than that.

The other point I wanted to bring across is the love God has for me is the love I have for my children. I look at how much I love my children, and I realize that God loves me even more than that, because God is much more pure and much more giving than I am. So I wanted to pose a question. How much do we love this church and how do we feel about this church?

If I put this church on top of one side of the World Trade Building and said I was going to blow it up if someone did not come across the "I" beam to stop me, I think a lot of us would have to stop and think again. I realized, a couple of years ago, that we need to say to ourselves in our hearts, "I really want to see this church prosper; I really want to see this church being prosperous and successful; I really want to see this church be able to do things and go out and serve the community and be able to make offerings to others." I realized that if I really feel that way, I have to put some kind of commitment behind that. It means that everyone, myself especially, has to make sacrifices so that it can happen.

There was an experiment done a few years ago, where they hid microphones on children because they wanted to find out how much actual give and take parents were having with their children. They found out that the average time that a parent spends with his child, fathers especially, is 37 seconds a day. We wonder why our families are a mess in this country. Children can never grow up healthy and never develop if that is all the time they are given by their father. The parents tell themselves they are fine. The parents tell themselves, "I went out and worked all day and I'm home now and I deserve to relax. I have to think about me." They don't' come home and think, "I still have responsibilities. I have children that really need me." Instead, they think, "I've given enough. I don't have to give any more."

We know from our True Parents and from the way we've been raised and from Father's speech, that enough is never enough. I know when I come home at the end of the day, I am thinking, "Now I'm a father and now I have to be with my children. I need to offer them guidance, inspiration, and example so they can grow properly."

I would like to correlate that again to the church and what Father said about enough is never enough. I know I never want to think, "Well, I've done some things with my children last week, so I don't have to do anything with them this week. I put them in scouts all summer, so this winter I don't have to do anything for them." Instead, we should think, "How can I go forward? How can I do more? What do they need now? Which way should they go?" With the church and myself in particular, we finish a project and we do something, and we think, "Thank God, that's over and we can relax now, we can take a break." I realized, this last tour, that every time we have done that, the church has become stagnant. At Washington Monument, we brought 300,000 people together to hear True Parents speak but then after that, nothing happened. That could have been the foundation for us to begin to start working with people and raising them up. I know I was super guilty at that time. I was saying, "Thank God this is over. Let me go hide for a while. I need to recuperate. I need to rest." But I know a parent never thinks that way.

My hope is that, after this last tour of our True Parents, we can take the contacts of people we have met and begin to work with them. Instead of making the tour an event unto itself, make it the beginning of the foundation of having the church grow and being able to reach out to people and tell them about our True Parents, tell them about God's vision for this country and for the world. Now is an excellent time to pursue opportunities. We need to ask ourselves whether we are going to be in a "duty" frame of mind or a "heartistic" frame of mind. Are we doing things because we think we need to or are supposed to, or are we doing things because we have a deep burning need to see things happen; to see people resurrect themselves and truly begin to know God; to be able to truly change their lives and change the lives of others.

The key to successful tithing lies in that realm, lies in not thinking, "What is my responsibility? What do I need to do?", but developing the heart to really want to give and to really share what you have with others, so that it can help. It is when we get into the realm of heart that things really start to happen and things start to grow.

I would like to get into a personal testimony because I struggled with tithing for a long time. I knew I should be tithing and I knew I should be giving as much as I could, but we were always in a situation where we were broke. We never had anything. I asked myself, "How are we going to tithe? We can't even meet our bills. How are we going to give this much money when the electric bill is a month late and I have a notice in my hand that says the electricity will be cut off in two days? My rent is behind, my shoes are all torn up and I can't afford new shoes. How am I supposed to give that much money?"

A friend of mine gave me a book entitled, Trust God for Your Finances and that was a little over three years ago. That book sat on my shelf for almost a year. I wouldn't pick it up because I knew that it was going to talk about tithing and I didn't want to deal with what it had to say. I didn't want to hear what it had to say. I finally said, "Well, I ought to at least listen to your argument." At least let him present the other side of it and then if I don't want to tithe, I can still not tithe. I still have that choice. I finally did read it. The author talked about heartistic tithing. He went into examples of some Christians who give, thinking, "Oh, I am going to give because God is going to bless me and then I can have a nice car and I can have a nice house" and the selfishness behind it. He said t hat is not going to work. He talked about heartistic tithing, giving because you want to give. It is known as a creative condition for God to become involved in our financial situation and our financial dealings.

I realized that was really the key. He made the point that you can do more with 90% of your income with God's blessing, than 100% of your income will ever do without God's blessing. Without our tithing, without our heartistic offering, God does not have any kind of foundation or any kind of condition to help us, or work in our situation. Without God's involvement in our personal finances, in our situation, in our lives, we will never grow, we will never prosper. That was what I was finding, that after two or three years of saying "I can't give," I was in the same situation two or three years ago, which was not very exciting. I think that the worst part of it was not the financial situation, but the internal situation that I was in; the constant worrying, constant fear, and the constant knots in my stomach. I asked myself, "How am I going to do this, how am I doing to keep going?" That was the worst part of it, the internal more than the financial. I still have financial struggles, but I don't like to call them problems anymore because I don't worry about them. I am concerned about them and I act to solve them. I don't have the knots in my stomach any more. I can't tell you what a relief that is. It is something money cannot buy.

The Bible says we reap what we sow, and if the farmer wants to get a crop of corn, he has to go out that spring and plant corn seeds. You can imagine seeing a farmer at the end of August, sitting at the end of am empty field with a big harvester and you ask him what is he doing and he says, "I am waiting to harvest my corn." Well, there is no corn out there and when did you plant the corn?" He says, "Well I never did. I just had faith. I just believed the corn is going to grow. I know t hat God will just take are of me, so I am just waiting for my corn to come up." You will look at that guy and think, "I had better call 911, this guy has a problem!"

Our offerings are like our money seeds. They are the foundation, the beginning of what God needs, to bring us a money crop to help our income grow and expand and without our offering and expecting our financial situation to change is pretty much the same thing as that farmer who is waiting for the corn to grow that he never planted. When I read that, I started thinking about, how do I feel about the church, and I realized that my feelings were not that great. I wouldn't be inspired. I was thinking, "Well, I should give something." I realized I was dead wrong. I started thinking about our True Parents and what they have done or what God has done over 6,000 years to try and resurrect us and I realized that this is God's hope for the Divine Principle and True Parents to reach out to the city. I started learning to love the church in my heart and I started challenging myself to start giving more.

I made a determination that I would give at least 10% of my income and things started happening in a very exciting and a very powerful way. It was not all of a sudden. When I first started giving more, for the next three months my financial problems were worse than they had ever been. They actually got worse, but I didn't are any more at that point. It was a matter of heart. It was a matter of a decision that I had made that I was going to support this church no matter what. Then, things started breaking through, started clearing up. People started calling, ordering flowers, asking if I would start servicing their stores. The whole outlook started to change.

I made a determination at the beginning of this year, that I would give even more than 10%. Without saying how much, it was quite a challenge. We ran up a lot of expenses this summer. Both my cars broke down at the beginning of the summer. Shirley traveled to all the different cities for Mother's tour creating babysitting and travel expenses. The challenges are still there, but I am actually more excited about them than worrying about them. They are actually becoming fun now. I still believe that something is going to happen to me in a very big way as far as finances and that kind of thing, but I decided that even if it doesn't, it really doesn't matter. I am not going to back off because I have found that the more I give, the more my love for this church has grown and the deeper my desires become to see some really positive things happen. I see examples of this. We have a Christian lady that works for us. Her pastor, at one point, said, "We have a real financial situation here." He asked his congregation to put their entire pay check in their offering. A lot of them didn't and some of them did. He watched those families that did and he watched them grow and he watched them change. He said, "Even though some of your were not financially blessed, aren't things going better in your house? Husbands and wives are getting along better. You are getting closer. You are having less problems with your children now." It was true. The heartistic blessing that sometimes comes into the house is worth far more than any amount of money you could measure.

I don't know if any of you know Terry Blount. He had been here for a while. He moved down to New Orleans about six years ago. All he had was a truck and he was broke. He said he was trying to start a moving business there and it never went anywhere. He was always broke and then he said one day he talked to a Christian and this Christian said to him, "Once I started tithing, all my financial problems ended." Then Terry determined that he was going to give 15% of his gross income. Whatever he was paid for a moving job, even before he took out his expenses, he would give 15% and within a year, Terry was making over $5,000 a month. He said things just exploded.

Terry is a real go-getter. He is a real sales person, very outgoing, so he is good. But if you ask him, he will tell you that his tithing was fundamental to his success.

Then I think about Michael Brazil and his wife, Naoko. Naoko basically goes all over the world because she is a bilingual translator and she is paid a lot of money to go to different places to work for companies on a temporary basis for translation. Yet, they are living here in a small room in the Boulder center. They have very little to show for her income. With what she is making, she could have a better lifestyle than anyone in this room, but they continue to sacrifice and their son continues to grow up without seeing his Mom. They make this offering to the region so the region could grow, so that things can happen.

I also have to brag on my buddy, Roger Wise. I think Roger is one of the most successful persons in the congregation and I know Roger gives a lot. Do you think Roger gives because he is successful or is he successful because he gives? I have to tell you that I knew Roger when he was deeply in debt. He had his family living in a place I wouldn't even put my family into. I would see him go out and borrow three or four hundred dollars and buy food and give it to the Boulder Center. He has continued to grow and prosper. Even now, I know he has some financial challenges because he gave so much to the center. I know he will never say a word about it and you will never know it. He is going to have some blessed brothers over to his house next weekend and he will put a great spread of food, pay out of his own pocked and he will never say a word about it. He just continues to give. I know his business will continue to grow and prosper. If you look at the families that are prospering and growing, if you dig into their situation, you will see that they are the ones that are also giving.

Several times I have been asked to take the offering. Quite frankly, it is unsettling to see a lot of one dollar bills. I know that a dollar is not that much. I know that if our Pastor is to drive across town to counsel someone, that dollar won't even pay for the gas. It probably won't even pay for a share of the utilities. We have a minimum wage in this country of $4.25 an hour. So, at the minimum wage, it takes less than 15 minutes to make one dollar. I usually give the boys 2 or 3 dollars a week for their Sunday School offering. There are 2 reasons for that. First of all, I want to see the Sunday School prosper and grow. I want to see the Sunday School be in a healthy financial situation. When Christmas comes or when one of the children has a birthday, I would like the Sunday School to be able to buy them a nice gift instead of a little pencil set or some bubble gum tooth paste.

I would like to se the church be able to give something nice, because when it gives them something nice, they are told that the church values them. Sunday School can't do t hat if we are not giving. If our children aren't giving into the Sunday School, it has nothing to do with something nice. The other reason that I do that is because quite frankly, I can take them to McDonalds and spend $10 or $12 on them very easily, or go to a video store and rent a video game for $2 or $3. If I'm spending $10 on them at McDonalds, and giving them a quarter or fifty cents for a Sunday offering, what am I teaching them? I don't like that lesson. I want them to know that it is important that they give substantially, so that God's World can grow.

Father tells us many times to give. One time he told us to give $700 for North Korea. You know, he asks for large donations for Happy Farms. Father is not afraid to just tell us. He does that because he knows that if we just give that, then we are going to grow spiritually. I found out that when he does that, even if I haven't been able to give what he has asked, it has been a blessing and an opportunity. I've said to myself, "I'm going to think about how I can start improving my situation so when Father does ask for these things, I can provide them." Father said one time that although we may not have the means to give if you have the real desire to give to someone, then you build a blessing in the spiritual world. Spiritually, you gain almost the same foundation as if you had given it.

I experienced that in regard to Zaire with the Blessing. At one point everyone was assigned a city. We were assigned a city in Zaire that we were expected to go to, and then, a little later, Father said that we could go to the Soviet Union if we would like. So that is what we did. But, I always like to send donations to Zaire. They had a situation there with the Blessing. They said that they had over 500 members who had been qualified for the Blessing for over ten years, but they could not send them because it would cost $4,000 per member to go to Korea, and the average income in Zaire is only $300 a year. Basically, they said that it was absolutely hopeless. That really bothered me. I prayed about it. I looked at this country, which has a Gross National Product of 5 trillion dollars, and I thought that money is such a small amount to sent them, yet I can't arrange the resources from this country. I'd like to be able to just send a 747 over there and fill it up with Blessing candidates, and send it to Korea. I prayed, and I hurt over it, and then, when the Blessing came, they gave a satellite Blessing in Zaire. When that happened, I cried. I felt like it was a personal prayer that had been answered. It was a personal victory, too, even though I didn't have that much to do with it. I knew that I wanted that to happen. It just meant so much to know that it happened.

We really need to look into our hearts and ask ourselves if we want that to happen, and then really challenge ourselves to make it happen. I know that as long as this church is in a semi-poverty condition, that is going to be the situation with families, because God can never truly bless the Blessed families as long as they allow the church to be impoverished. If the church is impoverished, the families will be impoverished. There is a flip-side to that. There is no doubt in my mind that if this church begins to prosper and grow, then God is going to pour out blessings, the Bible says "overflowing blessings," more blessings than we can even handle. "Overflowing" means that all of your expenses are met, and you still have money left over that you don't even know what to do with. You don't even have a place to put it. That's God's Promise to us. The ending of the reading of Malachi 3:8 said, "Your land will become a delight." That means that the church would actually shine. We would shine as members. We would become delightful people to know. That's exciting. I would just be thrilled to see this church filled up.

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