The Farmer Who Planted Through the Drought

In 2012, Marcus and Denise Holloway ran a small produce farm outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. When a brutal drought scorched the region, most neighboring farms held back their seed, waiting for better conditions. Marcus understood the instinct. Every bag of seed corn represented grocery money, mortgage payments, their daughter's braces.

But Marcus kept planting. Every Saturday morning, he and Denise loaded their tithe check into an envelope and dropped it at Cornerstone Community Church before heading to the fields. Friends called it foolish — giving away money while staring down a failed harvest. "You can't eat faith," one neighbor told him bluntly.

What Marcus knew, though, was that the seed and the tithe both worked on the same principle: you release what you have into the hands of the One who controls the outcome. By late August, unexpected rains rolled through their county. Not enough to save every crop, but enough. The Holloways harvested sixty percent of a normal yield — while farms that held back their planting reaped almost nothing.

"God never promised no drought," Marcus later told his church. "He promised that if you trust Him with what's in your hand, He'll open what's in His."

That is the breathtaking invitation of Malachi 3:10. The Almighty — the God who commands the rain and the seasons — looks at His children and says, "Test Me in this." No other place in scripture does God issue that challenge. Bring the whole tithe. Release the seed. And watch the floodgates open.