I have been a Christian as long as I can remember but trusting God has never come easy for me. You see I am a bit of a "control freak" and even though I have always known and had a personal relationship with Jesus, it hasn't always been an easy one. I have constantly had the indecision of whether to follow the Lord and trust His ways or to go with the ways of the world that are so easy to follow. These two struggling sides of me came to a head 7 years ago when we felt called to leave everything and everyone we know to move to Tallahassee. They continued to war within me when my husband Kyle left the company that we moved over here with and start his own business. Furthermore, I struggled when we felt called to close my business and go from being with my two children all day everyday to working full time with my husband in a business I knew very little about.   Through all these unplanned and unexpected changes, I had no choice but to trust God. I must confess that it was far from easy and I waivered many times. I knew from scripture that God was with me and only wanted what was best for me, but in the middle of it all, I didn't always believe it. For a year straight I woke up every morning praying Jeremiah 27:11 ""For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." During this time of so many transitions and uncertainties I scoured scripture to learn how I could become more trusting and obedient and this is when I learned the importance of tithe. I didn't understand that tithing is trusting God. Although my parents tithed every Sunday I never knew why they did it and so we treated tithing as a suggestion by God. Kyle and I would tithe when we had extra money and we thought we were doing what God wanted. However, during my search to trust and understand God, I found the scripture in Malachi 3:9-11 "You are under a curse--the whole nation of you--because you are robbing me. 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." Wow, I don't want to rob God! Plus God was telling me to test Him...What? Can I do that? So, we did... We stopped "tipping" God intermittently and decided that day to give Him the first 10% of everything we had. This took a lot of trust because we were not sure if we could give 10% and still be able to live on what we made. That year our business grew 350% over the previous year. You could say he opened the floodgates! Through this I have learned that whatever the test-whether it is money, tithing, marriage or anything else life throws us- God is extremely faithful and can be trusted. 

(Stacy Hartmann is married to Kyle Hartmann and together they own Technical Recruiting Solutions, Inc. They have two precious girls Abbie Carroll, 5, and Kate, 3. The Hartmann's came to City Church after meeting Dean and Krissie at their children's school.)