The Shaveh Valley and G-d's Economy

B’resheet 14: 17-20 (Genesis)

"After his return from slaughtering K'dorla'omer and the kings with him, the king of S'dom went out to meet him in the Shaveh Valley, also known as the King's Valley. Malki-Tzedek king of Shalem brought out bread and wine. He was cohen of El 'Elyon [God Most High], so he blessed him with these words: "Blessed be Avram by El 'Elyon, maker of heaven of earth. and blessed be El 'Elyon, who handed your enemies over to you." Avram gave him a tenth of everything."

While I was walking downtown in my city today I thought about sharing something I have been thinking about. Then I went to write this devo and this scripture came to mind. I have been thinking about my city and I looked up the GDP for our business district. (Gross Domestic Product) IF I understand correctly, the GDP for our city is the total revenue that all of the businesses together make on an annual basis. As I thought about what I have heard referred to as “G-d’s economy” (Os Hillman is the first person I heard use that phrase) I thought about how it could dramatically change things.

G-d’s economy is about the marketplace knowing how to use their financial blessings to change the world. In USAmerican thinking, it seems that everyone looks to the government to fix things. I believe G-d says that it is the financial blessings that He pours out on individuals are to “fix things” and not the government. The government is to rule and make laws or follow G-d’s laws, but not to be in charge of everything. So as I processed this information, I thought about how different things would be if we did it HIS way and not our current way. As I put all these thoughts together, I thought about how our local GDP is over 93 BILLION dollars each year. If our conglomerate of businesses all tithed back to the local city to make this a better place, then it would mean 9.3 BILLION each year poured back into the local economy.

I am not referring to what they currently do. Most businesses try to do “good things” to help our city, but what if they did G-d things instead of good things? What if they followed the same process of Avram and poured money back into helping the homeless and the “poor” and the widows and the orphans? Not just the offerings they currently give, but a true 10% tithe? What would this do to change our economy? One example is a project that has been started that will build a special area on the riverfront that is going to cost the developers 600 million when all is complete. What if they tithed 60 million to the city to use for “ministry” to the above groups of people I mentioned? That would go a long way to helping, but if everyone put their tithe in and gave the full 9.3 billion how much difference would that make? The answer is “a lot of difference.”

Would that be awesome to see 9.3 billion per year poured out to help people in need? I absolutely love the ABC Show called “Extreme Makeover, Home Edition.” They go around the country and they build new homes for people in dire need. I think they are doing G-d’s work – even if they do not know it. Sure they make a profit from doing it, but who cares if they are doing good things for people? I do not care where their motivation comes from, I believe they are doing G-d’s work and I weep every time I watch the show and see how it changes lives. So what if more people did what they do? How many more lives could we see transformed? And then imagine if in that process, people who do it in His Name did a 100 times more than that one network could do. Imagine how many transformed lives could we see?

Please just think about it. And if it makes sense to you, pray about it. Pray that more people could catch the vision of doing things according to G-d’s economy. I believe that if more and more did this then G-d would pour out more blessings than we can imagine. If you do not believe me, just read through King Shlomo’s life. (Solomon) I believe this is what he did. I believe he tried to out-give G-d and G-d just kept pouring more and more out for him to use. It is something to think about. Notice what the result was here of Avram’s actions – G-d was blessed by it. What better result could we ask for?

by, David Joseph Weiss