Money & Finances
I have given consistently for years and I am still behind on everything. I was told this is not how it works. What am I supposed to make of that?
“Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.”
Asaph led worship in the temple, and this psalm records him almost losing his faith over exactly this question. He watches people with no interest in God do comfortably well while his own careful obedience produces nothing he can point to. He does not resolve it quickly or piously. Scripture preserved his complaint in the hymnbook, which means the question you are asking is not a lapse.
“And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:”
The writer to the Hebrews has just listed a long roll of faithful people, and then says something startling: they died without receiving what had been promised. He does not soften it or explain it away. Faith in this letter is not a mechanism that converts obedience into outcomes within a lifetime. It is loyalty held over a longer horizon than the one you can currently see from.
A path forward
Say the disappointment to God directly, in the words you would actually use rather than the words you think are permitted. Asaph's psalm exists because the complaint was brought instead of buried.
Have someone review your finances with fresh eyes this month. Faithful giving and an unworkable budget can both be true at once, and only one of them is fixable.
Find one person at church who has walked a long, unglamorous road with God and ask them how they kept going. You need a witness more than you need an explanation right now.
Closing verse
“Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”
- Habakkuk 3:17-18
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