Last month Mark Zuckerberg announced he would give away 99% of his wealth, which was around 4.5 billion dollars give or take a few million. Shortly after that this post started popping up on Facebook that said He would give away 4.5 million to one hundred random people on Facebook. All you had to do to have a chance to win was copy and paste this text to your wall.

Millions of people did this. There’s a good chance some of you reading right now did this, and it ended up  being just a hoax.

Here’s what aggravated me about the whole situation. I saw way too many Christians copying and pasting in hopes of winning millions. They had no reason to believe it was real, they didn’t check the source, yet they were still willing to post in hopes that Mark Zuckerberg would bless them.

Here’s some advice, instead of putting your hopes in someone you don’t even know, try putting your hopes in Jesus. You’re trusting Him to get you to Heaven aren’t you? Why not trust what He says about your finances?

Three financial lessons that lead to God’s blessings.

1. Be a Good Steward – God blesses those who use what He’s given them wisely (Matthew 25:14-29). Everything we have is because of God. It’s all His. He just loans it to us for a short time. We can’t take it with us when we die. Enjoy what God’s given you, but always be generous.

2. You Reap what You Sow – Generosity will always reap a blessing. If you’re not feeling blessed, could it be because you haven’t been generous? What does a farmer do when he has a barren field? He doesn’t complain about it. He doesn’t even pray about it. He just goes out and starts planting seeds, because nothing is going to happen until a seed is planted. Here’s the great thing about planting seeds, you always get back more than you put in. Just like Proverbs 11:24 says, “Give freely and become more wealthy; be stingy and lose everything.”

3. Put God First – If you’re looking for a blessing, God tells us in Malachi how we can get one. It starts with putting God first in your finances. He says if you’ll do that, He’ll pour out a blessing on you so great you won’t have enough room to take it in. He even goes so far as to say, “Put me to the test!” Whatever you want God to bless, you have to put him first in. So if you want God to bless your finances, you have to put him first in your money.

Now, before I get mistaken for a prosperity preacher, let me clarify a few things.

I’m not saying that you should give financially in order to receive a bigger financial blessing. You should give because you want to be obedient to God and you want to see His kingdom grow. Financial blessings may come, and they may not. God may choose to bless you in different ways.

Regardless, if you want the blessings of God, I believe you’ll have a better chance of finding them when you choose to be generous with what God has given you.

Why not take God up on his offer? Put Him to the test, and see what happens.

How have you seen God bless you in response to your generosity? Why is it so hard for us to give God control of our finances? Let me know in the comments below.