Test Me In This: Stories of Tithers

We’ve all heard stories of someone who was down to their last twenty dollars until payday a week away and instead of buying groceries with the money, they put the twenty in the offering plate. And then, when they arrived home after church or work, they find one hundred dollars worth of groceries were left on their front porch. There are many variations to this story but they are fairly common in Christian circles.

After reading a couple of reviews of this book that shared that the book was a series of stories of people who engage in the practice of tithing, I was looking forward to reading and reviewing this book for myself anticipating more stories like those others.  But, after slugging through all of the background and religious name dropping of the first chapter, I was quickly bored.

The book uses the Scripture in Malachi 3:10 where the Lord says, “Test Me In This…” as the basis for the whole book. There is little other Scripture reference regarding tithing throughout the entire book (in Randy Alcorn’s story, he does mention another Scripture). Very often, it felt like the author was trying to promote communal living or bare-bones existences in order to give tithes. In today’s society, this would be more of a turnoff than an “aha” moment for most Christians.

It seemed to take a while to get into each story, Douglas Lablanc spends so much time giving each chapter so much background and Christian pedigree, I found myself wanting to skip ahead every time just to get to the point of the chapter. I only recognized a couple of the names of the people the stories were about and there weren’t really any amazing stories of God’s provisions.