Christian Devotional – July 24, 2017

Where are the people? In Nehemiah 11:1-19, now that Nehemiah has rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem, the question becomes who is going to live there? You see nobody wants to live in an unprotected and undefended city, so nobody was living there. But now, this city has a wall. The city is defended. The city is the capital city and the holy city of God, and it needs people living in it. So how did they find the people to live there? Essentially, they took a tithe of people.

A lot of times when we hear the word tithe we automatically think money. 10% of our money should go to God. That’s true, but a tithe does not necessarily have to mean just money. In this case they tithed people. They took 10% of their people and moved them to Jerusalem. When we look at our life, yes, giving God from our money is important as it shows trust and dependence and obedience to God. However, it’s not just money that we need to tithe to God. Are we tithing our time? Are we tithing our resources? Everything we have, we have because God allowed us to have it. He owns it all and he is deserving of our obedience in tithing in all areas.