The Timing of Faith

When I felt God was asking me to write on faith, I had to process it for a while. I felt that faith was not one of my stronger subjects. However, when God asked Abraham to believe for a son when both he and Sarah were past the age of having children, Abraham was not what you would consider an expert on the subject of faith, either.

Abraham struggled. He even botched it up pretty bad when he decided God would fulfill the promise through Sarah’s maid, Hagar. It took 25 years from the time God gave the promise until the promise was fulfilled in Isaac.

Today, there is a teaching going around that I think is faulty, the idea that when you ask, if you have real faith, the answer will come right away. One man teaches that the old concept of asking God for things, and the answers He gives are “yes, no, or maybe” is outdated. So he teaches that there are ways around that, and we can use our faith to get answers immediately. That teaching has never felt right to me. I am unable to embrace it. I wonder how well it’s working.

When it comes to asking God for things, it would seem that the element of timing is so important, and I think we cannot ever take a short cut around that issue . . . it could be dangerous.

When we ask God for something, there is a perfect time to receive what we ask for, and that perfect time may not be now. I believe that if God always gave us what we asked for now, it may be very harmful for us. People could totally wreck their lives, if they had the power to ask and receive immediately.

Now, I’m going to jump into another subject that is closely related. Some young men and women have an enormous amount of ambition. They set out to whip the world, become millionaires, achieve power and influence, make a huge mark upon the world, all of those things and more . . . you get the picture.

Ambition can be dangerous. If you were to achieve the things in life you go after as a young person, you could become a dangerous person. Why? Because the character is not there to handle the success . . . the money, the power, and whatever else may go with it.

If this person is a child of God, I think that God withholds success and power, and especially money from them. Why? Because He loves them.

We must not forget the first commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind (Matthew 22:37).” Usually these young men who set out to be rich, forget the first commandment. Money becomes the focus. Money becomes the prize. Money becomes first.

If money is first in your life, and you are a child of God, you won’t get it!

Why? Because you are not loving God first; because God is not first in your life. Jesus said you cannot serve God and mammon, or money (Matthew 6:24). He said you will cleave to one or the other. If money is more important than God, then you will not get it. He will not let you get it.

I have heard people say, “I want to become rich, because I want to fund the kingdom. When I become rich, I will give half of my money to God’s work.” And this person, while he is striving to become rich, and struggling in the process, is not tithing. Aha! What a telltale sign! He will never become rich! Why? Because if one does not give to God when he is struggling, when it is a great sacrifice to give, then neither will he give when he is rich. His heart is not right. If it were right before God, he would be giving to God even when it was very difficult to do so.

I struggled a lot financially when I was a young man, although God always got me through one way or another. In the beginning I was a freelance writer/producer in the field of advertising and multimedia. One time when I was struggling financially, I began giving to God recklessly. I gave here and there to various ministries, whatever amount I felt God was saying. Sometimes I used my credit cards and I didn’t keep track of what I was giving.

A year later, a friend offered me a job out of the blue. It paid well. In fact it paid 40 percent more than I had ever made before in my life. I worked that job for two years, made really good money and got back on my feet again, before God sent me back into ministry again producing evangelistic events for young people.

When I did my income tax for that year, the year I gave recklessly, I found that I had given 20 percent of my income. God prospered me in a big way.

So why do things not come instantly? Why don’t they come immediately when we ask God for something? In many cases the thing we ask for would be harmful to us because we do not have the character to handle it. Perhaps, as James says, we don’t get what we ask for because we would use it to feed our lusts (James 4:3).

Joseph was a young man, who we might say was full of himself. He had this dream of his brothers bowing down to him. The dream was from God, but his character was vain and foolish. Right away he went out and told his brothers of the dream. It made them very angry. Really, when you think about it, such a dream would make most anyone angry.

Joseph’s brothers sold him and he ended up in Egypt. There in Potiphar’s house, he was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and ended up in prison. He stayed there for 13 years while God worked on his character. When Joseph got out, he ended up ruling Egypt and in his charge was basically the wealth of the whole land. All of that time in prison broke his pride and fleshly vanity so that he was qualified to handle the money and power.

The dream did finally come to pass, at the right time, in the timing of God. Joseph’s faith endured, and God came through at His appointed time.

Log in next week for the next installment

Photo taken by Lorraine