Paramhansa Yogananda said, “Making money honestly and industriously to serve Thy work is the next greatest art after the art of realizing Thee.” Tithing spiritualizes our consciousness toward money, helping us to experience God’s presence more completely in all aspects of our lives. It also allows God to use us as instruments for his work in this world.

This is a true story of an Ananda devotee regarding the value of tithing to him personally. It is a great illustration of starting to tithe at a level you feel comfortable with and receiving an inward assurance that it was the right thing to do:

“When I came to Ananda, I was an in-debt carpenter and tithing was the last thing I thought I could afford to do. For the next two and a half years, I consciously donated to this and that but didn’t tithe and barely kept afloat financially. One day a story that one of the ministers told about tithing intrigued me and prompted me to try it. Even though I was flat broke, I gave a tithe from my next paycheck. My checks did not bounce that pay period even though I thought they surely would. Well, no big windfalls happened, no huge amounts of money came to me, but after I began tithing, I always seemed to have enough. Things stopped financially going wrong and eventually I even turned back a pay raise because I simply had enough money and didn’t need it!” — EG