A Caution About Faith

Hello everyone,

Before I discuss how to activate faith, I want to take this blog to say a few things about where we can use our faith and where we cannot. I believe some people who have heard the phrase “name it, claim it” or “blab it, grab it” have a misconception about how Faith works. As I may have said, God is not a genie in a lamp like from Aladdin that we get to command to give us wishes. God doesn’t work that way. Let me give you an example of how I tried that, and it didn’t work.

When I was married to my first wife, I was a financial disaster. I would buy things on credit that we didn’t need and couldn’t afford but I was so selfish, if I wanted it, I tried to get it. Back then we wrote checks for the grocery store, etc. One of the things I did (because I was addicted to food and a horrible money manager) was write a check for $35 and cash it. When I wrote the check, there was not enough money in the account to cover it but I hoped that I could deposit my paycheck before the check I wrote tried to clear the bank.

Why did I write the check you ask? I would love to tell you that it was for medicine or something else that we really needed but sadly that was not the case. It was because I didn’t want to eat at home. I wanted to go out to eat. So, we would pay $25 for the meal. Then the check would clear the back before I could deposit it so I would owe the bank $25 for the bounced check and then I would owe the restaurant $25 for the bounced check. So, I wound up paying $75 for a $25 meal that I didn’t need. I was spending money wrongly and selfishly.

During this time, I was a tither and I happened to be going to law school at night. One day on my way to school I got a brilliant idea. Because I was a tither and I had Faith that I could ask God for things and He would give them to me, I was going to buy a lottery ticket and win the lottery! After all, I could “name it, and claim it.” As I drove to school that night, I got more and more excited. I just knew my faith was going to make me rich. It was difficult to concentrate and the closer to the end of class we came, the more excited I got. Finally, class was over! I jumped in the car and raced home to check the results. I was already planning how I would spend the money and what we would do. When I got home, I didn’t get one number right. My Faith didn’t produce the winning number.

Why? Well that’s a different post but let’s just say that it wasn’t God’s will for me to get out of my financial problem that way. First, I wasn’t trusting God. Second, because I was being selfish and blowing money all the time, God could not trust me with that money. Also, based on what I was doing, even if I had won, I would have lost it all.

Now it was certainly God’s will to get me out of debt, but He had to work on me. Today, God has blessed us financially in a way I could not even understand back then but I am a little more grown up around money and He can trust me with it. He is showing me ways to do things now that are so much better than the lottery.

So, what is the takeaway? In my next post, I will discuss how to activate Faith but as we prepare to activate our Faith, we must understand that Faith must be based on God’s Word, it’s not just a wish list machine.

If you are reading this for the first time and are thinking, “How do I get in on the God thing?” Have you invited Jesus into your life? He is the God of today. He’s not just a life insurance policy for after you die. If not, just pray this simple prayer. “Jesus, I ask you to come into my life. I believe that you are the Son of God and that you died for ALL my sin and that God raised you from the dead. I make you my Lord and Savior.” If you prayed that prayer, you are now part of the family. If you prayed that prayer, would please let me know by commenting on this and telling me?

That’s another Opinion of the Minion