The New Testament refers to teachings not clearly stated in the Bible. Some of it is a matter of studying the historical context. Some of it is necessarily experiential because it is fundamentally contextual. How God wants to work is not constrained by the human context, but it would be meaningless to us without some of that context. For us to have useful guidance, it should be within our reach. Thus, a great many details are left out of the New Testament to avoid misleading later generations.
That in itself is a sort of principle of faith. We don’t live under Rome or any other classical empire of ancient times. We live under a highly secularized concept of government and human outlook that didn’t exist in the Bible. It changes at least some part of the faith experience for those who follow Christ. Thus, we need to stay on top of these differences, doing the work of tracking the differences in each generation.
One of the things that challenges my research is finding people who generally try to walk by faith. This is not a question of “whole-hog” perfection, but of a general orientation. Way too many believers are stuck inside their heads and not living in their hearts. Thus, when I try to collect experiential evidence about things, I end up with what amounts to a corrupted data pool, as it were. My sample is necessarily rather small.
It should be clear that a very few servants of the Lord are chosen to receive and manage substantial amounts of material wealth in our world. It requires a peculiar character. The spiritual gift itself is distinct from other gifts, so it’s not for everyone. Naturally, you would then come to believe that wealth itself is not for everyone, never mind our typical human wishes about that.
The Old Testament promotes the idea that God sees a sort of contextual average, that there is a kind of standard that does not reflect the human expectation of common welfare. In other words, God is not bound by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. He keeps His own standard for us that we are obliged to discern and apply to our situation. Yes, God has a plan for your life, and you will find yourself frustrated when your expectations don’t conform to His.
When you reflect upon the otherworldly focus of the gospel, and review the record in the Bible of how the saints lived, you would naturally conclude God’s plans for most of His servants are humbler than what we are taught to expect on the human level. Hanging out with Jesus would lead you to think in terms of God’s provision in the context, and learning to do without an awful lot. This kind of thinking has been around since the New Testament times, so it’s not foreign, but it is easily forgotten. When the needs are extravagant, so is God’s provision. But most of the time, the need of the moment is rather simple, requiring more of us in moral rather than material terms.
Thus, we would encourage believers to humble themselves and learn to stop the senseless striving. Further, it’s entirely normal that you should learn to react to windfalls with an automatic line of thinking that God is about to walk you through something that will require that provision. He is putting in place what you will need for tomorrow, not to make you feel comfortable in the flesh.
This has been my consistent experience. Every time I manage to collect bit of cash, I don’t get to hold it very long. Either my convictions or my circumstances direct me to put that money to work for the Lord, not keep it for myself. It requires slapping down my whining fleshly nature. It’s a discipline. If the money arrives, the only question is how God intends to use it, not to imagine all the comforts I can buy, or the sense of security in knowing I have a “nest egg” just in case.
Again, the evidence for this is not large, but it seems consistent among the few covenant believers I encounter. It is certainly my experience.
If economic and political trends continue in the directions they are heading, then many believers in The States are going to have to adjust real quickly to the truths reflected in this post. Ideally, they should have a head start by now. Because of our lifestyle of walking by faith, we will not have much to lose in comparison with most of the Christians we know, but we feel the cost of it now and have basically nothing in the way of future security. I certainly struggle with the implications of our decisions at times, but then I must throw myself back upon the faith that got us into this predicament in the first place. All I can point at in this realm is the fact that the Lord has always provided for our needs, and so I choose to trust that he will continue doing what he has always demonstrated himself capable of doing.