He that doeth righteousness...

My Bible Lesson had me read 1 John 3:7 today.

"Little children, let no man deceive you:* he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous."

The cross reference section of my Bible sent me over to Ezekiel 18:5-9 to understand what "he that doeth righteousness" does. All of these verses are great so please take the time to read through them all. But this post is about verse 8 and it say, "He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase..." I did not know what usury meant so I decided to look in my "The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language" ( I bought this for $2.00 this week from the Goodwill - oh it's copyright date is 1989.)

Here is what it says about Usury= the practice of lending money at interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegal rate of interest. I thought that was awesome that the Bible would mention that. Clearly stating that it is wrong to take advantage of people by charging too much interest.

Then this afternoon my husband and I were talking about the money that we owe to Lowes on their credit card and how I was so irritated about the fact that their credit card along with Home Depot - charges like 18 - 24% interest or something like that. Can you believe it? Then I started to think of how in the Bible God says to pay a tithe of 10%. Then I thought how can these companies think that they deserve an amount more than what God asks for. You know everything we have is God's and he just lends it to us - this is how I have heard it explained anyways.