The Crisis of Belief
(from Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby)One year the people on our finance committee said, “Pastor, you’ve taught us to walk by faith in every area of the life of the church except the budget.” I asked them to explain. They said, “Well, when we set the budget on the basis of what we believe we can do, it does not reflect that we expect God to do anything.”
“Hummm,” I said. “Then how do you feel we ought to set the budget?”
They said, “First, we ought to determine all that God wants to do through us. Second, we need to put down what that will cost. Then we need to divide the budget goal into 3 categories: (1) what we plan to do through our tithes, (2) what others have promised to do, & (3) what we must depend on God to do.”
As a church we prayed & decided God wanted us to use this approach to budgeting. We didn’t try to dream our own dreams for God. We had to be absolutely sure God was leading us to do the things we put in the budget. Then we listed what that would cost. By faith we adopted the grand total as our operating budget.
At this point we reached a crisis of belief. Did we really believe that the God who led us to do these things would provide the resources to bring them to pass? Anytime God leads you to do something that has God-sized dimensions, you will face a crisis of belief. When you face a crisis of belief, what you do next reveals what you really believe about God.
The budget of our church normally would have been $74,000. The budget we set was $164,000. We pledged to pray daily that God would meet our needs. Any money that came in that we did not anticipate we credited to God. At the end of the year, we had received $172,000. God taught our church a lesson in faith that radically changed us all.
