In Week 1 of Teshuvah, we repented and spent time in the prayer closet getting right with the Lord. In Week 2, we prayed for those who need it. In Week 3, we are going to transition to your financial house.

So many times as Christians, we let our finances get out of hand. We simply say “well, it’s in God’s hands”. Stewardship of your finances is in your hands.

During the third week, we examine how we have been blessed by the Lord since the previous year’s Feast of Tabernacles. We write down all of our assets and all of our debts on a sheet of paper to determine our net worth. We review how much money we made this past year, and we make goals for the upcoming year.

There is Biblical evidence found in the Torah for doing this. In Numbers 13, Moses sent 12 spies throughout the Promised Land to explore it and bring back a report. The interesting thing is that the 12 spies went out to explore the land at the time of the first ripe grapes. The grapes first ripen in Israel during the summer months and are harvested just before the Fall Feasts. Since the spies were gone for forty days, it is likely that some of their expedition occurred during the days of Teshuvah!

In the same way as the twelve spies, you are to go through the Promised Land of your life and find God’s Kingdom provision. We should be able to identify the blessing of God in our lives and give a good report as to what the Lord has done. While we look at our physical blessings from this past year, we should also look at our spiritual blessings. Did you grow in your walk with Christ? Do you have more Bible understanding this year than last year? Did you fulfill your Kingdom assignments passed down from your Pastor or other church leader? Did you overcome sins in your life? These are all important parts of God’s Kingdom provision in our lives.

We also ask God for the things we need during this third week. We ask for things such as a higher salary, more net worth, and greater spiritual growth. The whole goal of the Christian life is to advance the Kingdom of God. We are not asking for these things just for our own personal edification. We need to ask for more wealth from God to spread His gospel. We also want to make a budget so we can steward God’s blessing. A budget is basically a set standard of how much you are going to spend a month. It is a way to stay disciplined financially so we don’t spend more than what we take in. God won’t bless a mess, so we want to cut our spending on self so there is more to save and invest into the Kingdom.

It takes money to print books, advertise meetings, and duplicate CD’s. We also make goals in the third week to achieve these things because faith without works is dead (James 2:20). The Feast of Tabernacles is the Feast when the Israelites would give God thanks for the harvest He gave them during the past year. One of the purposes for making a physical and spiritual inventory of our lives is so that we can show up before God at the Feast of Tabernacles and give him thanks for the physical and spiritual harvest in our lives this past year!

When we have an inventory of our lives, we can PRAISE specific just as we should PRAY specific before Him!