I know I said I was going to focus on writing, but I AM writing and I just had to share this with you today. It’s funny because I wrote that blog yesterday, and I have had like a hundred ideas for blogs today! It’s funny how when you get out from obligation, creativity is released. It also feels like when you get your heart in a place of obedience, God just smiles all over you and its like standing under a fountain of life. Anyway, I have turned my focus toward my book, but this thought has been blessing me so much today that I just couldn’t keep it to myself. J
In the natural, in a world without God, 2+2 always equals four. I have to be honest with you, the bare facts of budgeting without knowing God can be so rigid and hopeless that all you will want to do is escape your budget. But with God, sometimes 2+2=5… it defies logic, it defies the numbers in your budget… but it inspires hope, it ignites faith, and when your eyes are set on the possibilities that are in Him, your budget is just the foundation… it’s not the ceiling.
I was working with a friend the other day with their budget, and there was just not any wiggle room at all. She was sitting there telling me all of the things that they would like to do with their money, and I was sitting there looking at the numbers and just feeling this cloud of frustration because in the natural I just don’t see a way. 2+2=4… it is what it is and without a raise… I just don’t see it.
I came home and I was praying for my friend and asking God for grace for their finances, and that is when the Lord just reminded me that He isn’t contained by their budget. When God breathes on your life and your finances, it brings that element of the miraculous, the unexplainable… and sometimes 2+2=5. You may not know where the money is coming from exactly, but when you know you are where you are supposed to be, doing what God has put in your heart to do, it doesn’t always matter if the numbers don’t back up your vision…. I know, I know, it flies in the face of strict budgeting, yet it is the element that breathes life into your finances and fills you with hope. You don’t know everything! You don’t see everything. You can write down what you DO know into your budget, but Hallelujah, somehow, God always has more for you than what you know. I have watched money “stretch” in absolutely miraculous ways in my family’s life. If we had been bound just to the numbers, we would have been despondent… but God, in His wonderful provision, abundance, and mercy is never bound by our numbers.
So yes, budget. Yes, have a plan, but always know that He has a bigger one. Your situation is never hopeless. And you never only have what you can see with your eyes… in fact, that is the essence of faith…
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1
Unfortunately, there isn’t a category in our budgets for the “unseen.” Believe me, I so wish I could know everything and be able to plan accordingly. But though my faith is in God, and my hope rests in Him, I still plan according to what is in my hand. Alot of people have gotten into presumption and a lot of trouble when they have tried to spend what they don’t have and call it “faith”. Presumption is not faith. What I am talking about is that element in our financial lives where we see God make a way in an impassable situation. We can’t see a way through according to the numbers, but it is our hope in the “unseen” that is the life that infuses our limited budget with unlimited possibility. But with God “all things are possible.” So make your budget, make a plan, but at the end of the day don’t set your heart on your plan… set your heart on God. Because He has more for you than you can see right now, and He is not just the God of enough.. He is the God of MORE than enough. So I just feel so strongly to remind you today, your budget may be tight, your circumstances may seem difficult, BUT WITH GOD…