Recently I was talking to my sister about our difficult financial situation trying to work out if we had done something wrong and why when we had given in faith, so far we have not seen enough blessing returned to compensate it. She shared with me from Psalm 1:1-3 which says:
‘Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.’
She commented on the fact that this tree, although evergreen, produced fruit not continually, but in season. And the fact that there are times that it does not produce fruit does not mean that its roots are not in the stream.
Does our negative bank balance mean that we are not rooted in the Lord? No, after much meditation and prayerful consideration I can tell you that is not the reason. I don’t believe in a God who punishes us. We have been faithful to his word and have been open-handed to the poor (Deut 24:12; Proverbs 28:27).
And when I look at why we are in financial problems it is not down to unwise decisions, but direct attacks on our finances: out of our control. That tells me that the problem is not us, too.
God, in His Sovereignty, has so far decided that we are not quite ready to be fruitful in the area of our finances. But He is faithful and does provide what we need. We have had unaccounted-for money appear, we have had a week’s worth of food left in our kitchen and we were given costly medicines for free when we went to the doctors.
I refuse to believe that God is not faithful. Instead, I choose to believe that God is pruning us and preparing us to be able to withstand the fruit He is going to bring – in season!
