HALFWAY FAITHFUL

1 Chronicles 5:18-6:81; Acts 26:1-32; Psalm 6:1-10; Proverbs 18:20-21

“Why does it seem incredible to any of you that God can raise the dead?”

“Words satisfy the soul as food satisfies the stomach; the right words on a person’s lips bring satisfaction.”

Jesus fed five thousand with the equivalent of a picnic basket. He healed lepers. He turned water to wine. He made the lame walk, and the blind see. He raised the dead to life, and conquered death Himself. He even gave Pete and the guys a great catch, once they were on the job. But not once in all of Scripture do I find Jesus providing a job for one of His followers, or making any promise of financial security, and I wonder why. Surely, the One who walked on water ought to be capable of creating a little economic stimulus that would assure His disciples were financially stable. The same Lord who controls the sea and storms certainly ought to be able to still the tsunamis of recession and depression. I don’t see Him doing it, though. It never rains pennies from heaven, and the prosperity gospel rings especially hollow in times like these. It is, in fact, considerably easier to trust Christ to heal cancer and raise the dead than it is to trust Him with my economic security. But here’s the bigger thought: if I can’t trust Him with my finances, am I really trusting Him at all? Do I, in fact, honestly, really believe He raised the dead, or that He can save me from my all-too-real sins? I don’t act like it when I don’t trust Him completely. So, I should not be surprised that I feel threatened by current financial conditions, too.

Let me be clear. This has nothing (OK, well, almost nothing) to do with tithes or offerings or any particular monetary decision or circumstance. My unwillingness/inability to trust the Spirit with my economic well-being is a lifelong, lifestyle anxiety Jesus diagnosed centuries ago. Call it, “What am I gonna eat? What am I gonna wear?” Call it a basic obsession, a habit of worry I would very much like to have eliminated from consideration when my heavenly scorecard is finally tallied. [Peter (standing at the Pearly Gates, sighing): “Well, he was halfway faithful.”] “Halfway faithful” is a contradiction in terms with which we should never be satisfied. Better, more truthful language would describe my situation as a halfway faith. Pretty pitiful. I’m beginning to wonder if this is not the tip of an iceberg that represents a much deeper and bigger spiritual problem than I’d like to think.

Trusting Christ is just a heckuva lot easier when we have no power. Then, the only choice is to believe Him, or not. When physical limitations prevent us from having any real hope in ourselves or even in the genius of human ingenuity, prayer is a quite natural response. It may be, in those times, the ultimate human optimism: there must be something greater than us out there, because we are out of answers but the problem isn’t solved yet. When we reach the bounds of this physical world, it becomes natural to wonder what is over the horizon and almost primal to feel there is untapped potential just outside our grasp.

For many, that whole line of thought vanishes when it comes to food, shelter and money. We have always exercised intimate control (for better or worse) over those things. We’ve become absolutely dependent on our own power and ability to make money and care for our families financially (or we’ve become dependent on the charity of others, or the welfare system). But the simple fact is, very, very few of us trust the Spirit absolutely when it comes to money. So, we worry. To be sure, an absolute economic reliance doesn’t seem to make any practical sense. As we’ve said, it’s never rained pennies from heaven. But it did rain manna and quail. Water did flow out of a rock. And did we mention the dead have been raised?

Maybe we trust Christ in matters of spirituality because we recognize that’s His home court. We trust Him (along with certain doctors, of course) with our physical bodies because we understand He’s the Creator, and that no one has a better idea of how to fix us when we are broken. But in matters of economics, perhaps we don’t trust the Spirit because we are the creators. Right or wrong, we’ve chosen to play by our own rules in the financial arena. We should not blame God for our fall when we never allowed Him into this Coliseum in the first place.

Many people are disillusioned right now, and they do not know what, or who, to believe. More than a few have sealed off their hearts completely, electing not to believe in much of anything anymore. As Christians, we need to understand and accept that the world has never ceded control over finances or economics to the Lord. We should not be surprised at the results, nor should we blame God. However, as long as the economy is going through major restructuring anyway, maybe it would make sense to restructure our own perspective and priorities as well. Give a little more thought to what it would look like to trust Christ completely and absolutely. Oh, I know. My own head is saying faith-based economics could never really work. People would try to take advantage of us. There’s a hundred reasons not to fully trust God with our financial well-being and to hold on to that very real human anxiety. But there’s also a pretty fair reason not to hold onto anxiety: because Christ so commanded!

“Do not worry” was not a suggestion or a helpful hint. No matter what or how many real, practical reasons there are for not trusting God with any and every aspect of our lives, the only reason to trust Him trumps them all. Complete trust is what it takes for us to have the relationship with our Savior that we were created for. Like a runner who refuses to give his all, we can never experience the race as intended as long as we are holding back. Maybe we won’t come in first, even at our best. But it looks to me like the runners ahead have already stumbled, and it just may be time to start a new race altogether anyway. At least then, we can say we really tried.