Trust/Faith?

The past few days I’ve been thinking about trust in regards to the area of money and finances… In my mind I felt like our time here in Tulsa was going to be easier financially. Originally Ian was going to have a job and so we were going to have lots of extra cash to save for the trip to Chile and to live off of, etc… Well that fell through before we came and so while we have less expenses here, our income is less every month, we’ve increased our food budget as we are eating organically/all naturally as much as we can, there have been lots of birthdays, etc…

I feel like I’ve been battling and arguing and thinking about the area of ‘faith in finances’ for the last 2 years. When it was just me and I was in England doing my DTS and BLS it was a lot easier. But since I got married and had a family in ministry it has been a whole different ball game. It shouldn’t be but it has really been hard for me.

There have been a few things that I have realized over the last few years.
1. It is hard for me to find the balance between ‘budgeting’ and having faith.
2. It is an area that Satan knows he can attack me in so I have to be very careful when I think about it and when I deal with the finances, because if I think about it all the time then it becomes an angle for him.
3. More recently I have been thinking to myself that I’m sick of the battle, the struggle I have with trusting God. The hard part for me is that I actually DO trust God, but in this area I still have large amounts of worry.
4. It’s not my responsibility to make sure all the money we need is in our bank account at the right time…it’s just my job to be a good steward with the money that we have/are given.

Last Sunday the guest speaker at church said something that really hit where I needed to hear. He was saying that it wasn’t faith to be able to receive our check and pay all our bills and think ‘whew’ we made it. But it’s faith to believe that God is in control and will provide when there is a need and you don’t know where the money is going to come from.

So basically I haven’t had faith. My faith has been in my ability to put everything in place so we can pay our bills and such. But really the faith is when I trust him in the moments when it’s not in the bank account. And that ultimately it’s all out of my control.

My job is to wisely steward.
My job is to trust no matter what the numbers say
My job is to keep Ian from spending frivolously.
My job is to live generously

His job is to provide
His job is to make sure the numbers add up
His job is to keep our best interests in mind
His job is to use me as a vessel of blessing.