Faith for Finances
- Grantley Morris
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Believing God for Financial Miracles
How would you like to amass so much wealth that you could educate 122,683 children; buy 282,000 Bibles and one and a half million New Testaments; give away 112 million books, pamphlets and tracts; support hundreds of missionaries; and feed, clothe and house 10,000 children from the time they were orphaned until becoming independent? George Muller did. And he achieved this not by sweat and business acumen, not by garage sales and mailing lists, not by borrowing or asking for help, but solely by faith and prayer. He refused to let his needs be known to anyone but God. Fifty times in just one two-year period there were insufficient funds to see them through the day, yet what was needed always came in time.
Though Muller enjoyed God’s miraculous provision daily for more than sixty years, the life of faith never grew easy for him. Even in his later years when he gained international fame, he still had to pray in every penny, often having to economize and wait virtually to the death knock before it arrived. The Lord so believed in Muller and so cared for his continued spiritual development that he kept the tests coming for sixty years until finally granting him a financially easier life when Muller entered his late eighties.
Trans World Radio, with an annual budget of little more than $10,000, faced a half-million-dollar down payment, to be paid in $83,000 instalments every second month. On the deadline day for the second instalment they were $13,000 short. $5,000 arrived that morning, but nothing more. The director shuffled to the bank with the knotted stomach of a schoolboy sent to the principal’s office. Before he reached the bank a worker handed him an unexpected mail delivery containing another $5,000. Missed by just $3,000! A knife to the stomach would have been less painful. As he slumped in the seat of the bank president’s office, contemplating the hefty penalty for not meeting a payment, money was wired to the TWR account – $3,000.
On the day the next payment was due, after every piece of mail had been scoured they were $1,500 short. Not another cent arrived. Most of the donations were in German marks and they had checked the exchange rate the day before. They re-checked. The money was now worth $1,500 more.
And the miracles kept coming.
Lack of money never stymies God’s work, but materialism does. This disease of the mind comes in two deadly strains. One is loving luxury more than God – television reception is atrocious in the Irian Jayan jungles, so I refuse to go. I’ve caught the other strain if money gives me a greater feeling of security than having the Creator of the Universe as my Father – I know my cold-hearted, money-grubbing boss will pay me every week, but I’m not so sure about God, so I squelch his leading to leave my job.
As a law-abiding Jew, the rich young ruler was, by common Christian standards, remarkably liberal in his giving. His contemporaries may have regarded as obligatory the giving of up to thirty percent of one’s income. At the very minimum this man must have been offering expensive animal sacrifices in addition to his ten percent. Yet he was still so entangled in the deadly web of materialism that not even the lure of eternal life could entice him to break free. He could not obtain salvation for himself, let alone live a profitable life for others. He was poor indeed (Mark 10:17-31).
Satisfied: Peace, Contentment, Fulfilment Consumerism & the acquisitive society, or biblical living?