Christian Women Online

In my earlier posts on ‘Building Up My Faith’, I shared how ‘Calling on God First’ and ‘Remembering’ have been keys for me when faced with life’s challenges.

In this, the third part in the series, I want to share about the need to choose to‘Believe’.

Everyone believes something, so, in one sense, ‘believing’ itself isn’t as issue.  We all do it every day.  We ‘believe’ the chair will hold us.  We ‘believe’ our money will be honoured at the supermarket.  Some people ‘believe’ there is a God.  Some believe there is no God.

‘Believing’ happens every day all around us.

However, the challenge to ‘believe’ in order to build up our faith, lies at a deeper level.

We are required to believe that which we haven’t seen, touched, heard or smelled. “Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things HOPED FOR, the EVIDENCE of things NOT SEEN.” (Heb 11:1)

It’s one thing for a person to say that they have faith to believe God to provide for them each week when they have a secure job that earns them more than enough each week. It’s quite another thing for a person to say that they have faith to believe God to provide for them each week when there is no physical evidence that that is going to happen.

The former person is not really exercising what the Bible calls ‘faith’, because they have the evidence and the substance of a well paying job that makes them conclude they will receive their pay.  (Don’t take offence and read into that what I am NOT saying.  I am NOT saying that a person with a secure job never exercises biblical faith.  It’s just that in that area of their lives they don’t really get the opportunity to exercise it in the same way as a person in the second situation.)

The latter person, is making the same declaration, but in the face of a lack of evidence and substance in the natural, is more closely operating biblical faith in that area of his life.  It’s not something that comes easily, or automatically.  It’s a choice a person makes to believe God and not their circumstances.  It’s a choice a person makes to put their trust in God despite the lack of evidence that the desired outcome will ever happen.

Years ago, my husband became the minister of a particular church.  When he felt called to take on that pastorate, he felt challenged by God not to take any income from the church, but to trust God to provide for us.

For several years until that time, our income had been largely derived from my husband’s freelance work in the media.  When he became the minister, he was allowed to keep doing his freelance media work as long as it didn’t interfere with his work in the church.  Though we had no guarantee of continued income from his freelance work, our expectation was that this would be God’s main means of supplying us.  The nature of his work was such that we didn’t usually know more than a day or two in advance whether he had work.  Sometimes he would get a phone call asking if he was available immediately.  We could never look ahead and gain security from the knowledge that he had work booked months in advance.

So for us, there was a certain level of ‘living by faith’ with that arrangement.  Though it felt uncomfortable at times, God taught us important lessons on faith and trust in the process.

Even as we began that journey, we had a sense that God was going to test us quite deeply on our decision to trust Him for our finances.  It was therefore no surprise to find that during our first 18 months at the church, God tightened the pressure by allowing the freelance work to slowly dry up, and over the 12 months after that, we would have been better off financially if my husband had been on the dole.

It was a real hard time of being stretched.  We could have at any time, made the decision to take the income from the church.  However, God had instructed us NOT to do this and it seemed that He hadn’t changed His mind, despite our very trying circumstances.

On two occasions, a month apart, there were bills to be paid and no money with which to pay them.  On both these occasions I suggested to my husband that perhaps God was saying that it was time to take the income that the church had for us if we wanted it - and his answer was the same both times, “No.”   I would find myself struggling and perplexed in my mind, and yet underneath there was a peace.  My husband’s decisions were correct, but we could make no sense of what was going on and were being stretched very thin on our resolve to obey God.

After my husband’s response on the second occasion that I suggested we may be at liberty to take the income from the church, the Lord spoke very clearly to me.

“You can take the church’s income if you want, but if you do, you won’t receive the real blessing I have for you.”

That really took me aback.  The church’s income was available for us any time we wanted it.  It would solve our financial problems and eliminate the attending pressures.

On the other hand, if I chose obedience, it meant continuing to trust God for that which we couldn’t see.  What was the ‘real blessing’ God was talking about?  Was it something we would receive while alive on this earth, or was it something we would receive in eternity?  Was it a physical, tangible, measurable blessing, or was it a less readily defined spiritual blessing?

I remembered how God had given King David three options for punishment as a result of his disobedience.  In response, David said, “Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord for His mercies are great ….”

It didn’t take me long to consider my verdict!  Whatever the ‘real blessing’ was, I knew it would be far better to receive what we couldn’t see from God’s hand, than to take what we could see from the church.  My choice was made.  I told God right there that I would never again suggest to Chris that we should take the church’s income.

Within two weeks, everything changed …… but that’s another story.

My next post on the subject of Building Up My Faith I discuss the need for us to ‘Be Real’ about where we are at with our believing.