Trust

This is one of my favourite quotes ever, I may have posted it on here before but I will do it again.

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How could I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming to close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

-Soren Kierkegaard

He is such an honest guy, you can read his book provocations online for free, it is a collection of quotes, really powerful ones.

The main thing that I have been thinking about lately is trust. Especially in the area of finances, here are some of the most intense verses on finances that I sometimes feel like I am the only person who notices them. Perhaps I misunderstand them, but perhaps not and this is what is frightening.

Matthew 5:42
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Romans 13:8 Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; (My friend is taking greek and he said it is most word for word translated as "Owe no man anything" the context is almost unquestionably talking of owing finances)

Matthew 6:19
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

1 Timothy 6:9
People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.

Matthew 6:25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Especially that last verse is intense. Those are just a few, here are a couple of christian thoughts about finances

Hudson Taylor "To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear : `Owe no man anything,' To borrow money implied, to my mind, a contradiction of Scripture-a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and a determination to get for ourselves what He had not given. Could any amount of precedents make a wrong course justifiable ? If the Word taught me anything, it taught me to have no connection with debt. I could not think that God was poor, that He was short of resources, or unwilling to supply any want of whatever work was really His. It seemed to me that if there were lack of funds to carry on work, then to that degree, in that special development, or at that time, it could not be the work of God."

Also Rees Howells really inspired me the way that he lived by faith, he took that Matthew 5 verse seriously, he is the only christian that I have ever heard of that has ever done that. Anytime he saw somebody with a genuine need he sold or did whatever it took to meet that need and God always met his needs. Here is a quote about him

"There is no man that
hath left house, or brethren, or lands, for My sake
and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundred-
fold now in this time.” It was not easy to step out
on God—to part with his last pound. The devil
argued that he’d not be able to go wherever the
Lord wanted unless he had some money stored up.
Rees laughed at that, for if a person has money he
can go without asking God, like Jonah, who could
afford to pay his passage to run away from Him!
We must all realize we can never really be
bondservants until God controls our finances.
He began to see that he had a claim on God
for what he could not supply himself. Just as the
villagers had a claim on his money to meet their
needs, so he had a claim on God’s resources to
meet his. The promises of God had replaced
money in the bank and become equal to current
coin to him.

Really incredible story if you ever have the chance to read the book Rees Howells:Intercessor it's powerful. Anyways it may seem like I'm really focusing on money and I am only choosing certain verses out of the bible and certain missionaries who have the same opinions as I do (although I definitely don't live them out as well as they do ;)). But it's definitely worth considering if you are a christian and you are in debt or you are storing up treasures, come to terms with what the bible says and decide for yourself if it's sin or not. God has taught me a lot about finances this year and provided for me in some really neat ways when I trust him, when I don't things don't work out and I end up having to borrow money to pay bills. It's definately an adventure to trust him, and live in the faith that "Where God guides, he provides".