INhibit
hinder
restrain
prevent
obstruct
There are many factors that inhibit us from being able to partake fully of the benefits of God’s financial plan for us. What could be called “stinking thinking” is a major inhibitor. Solomon taught us that what we think determines what kind of people we will be (Proverbs 23:7); and Paul taught us that we need to break out of the mold of the world through the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). With these two ideas in mind, we need to go back to the chapter on insight and refresh our thoughts as to how God’s economic system really works. Too many of us have lived all our lives like the old farmer who went to the bank to cash a check. After the teller handed him his money, he stood in front of her window slowly thumbing through each bill and carefully counting out each coin. As the line of waiting customers behind him continued to grow, the teller became a bit anxious and asked, “Did I not give you the right change?” The farmer looked up and with a drawling country twang replied, “Yes, but just barely.” Somewhere along the line, most of us have bought into the idea that God has provided just barely enough for us — when all along He is the God who supplies all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19) and even goes exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or even think of, according to the power that worketh in us (Ephesians 3:20). Notice that both of these passages use the word “according,” which means “in direct proportion to.” If we really want to get the impact of these statements, we have to stop and visualize a tangible example. To do so, let’s stop in front of the shopping mall on a cold, wintry day just before Christmas. Braving the bitter artic winds, a bell ringer draws people’s attention to the Salvation Army kettle beside her. A gentleman, all bundled up in his warm wool topcoat, takes a step toward her and drops something into the collection bucket. The bell ringer smiles warmly and wishes him a merry Christmas, never realizing that the gentleman was a multimillionaire business tycoon and that he had just dropped a one-dollar bill into her charity kettle. Certainly, the gentleman had responded to the need and shown a charitable heart. Yes, his donation would help the ministry provide a bit of warmth to one of the homeless men who file into their facility every day; however, his gift was not in any way in proportion to his ability. If he had really cared to, this one donor could have built a whole new facility for the homeless shelter and funded its operation for the whole coming year. Instead, he put in enough to provide just one cup of coffee to a needy man. Christ, on the other hand, works in our lives according — in direct proportion — to the riches of His grace. In other words, His provision is infinite and unlimited!
Because we haven’t renewed our mental picture of God, we easily fall into the trap of the next inhibitor: INsecurity (anxiety, uncertainty, lack of protection, lack of confidence, state of being open to threat). This insecurity robs us of our trust in God and makes us want to trust in tangible things such as money. At that point, we must deliberately remind ourselves that riches certainly take themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven (Proverbs 23:5) and that unseen spiritual realities and promises of God are actually more reliable than the physically manifest elements such as our bank accounts (II Corinthians 4:18).
INsensitivity (not responding to or caring about problems, showing that you do not know or care about the feelings of other people, inability to respond to affective changes in your interpersonal environment) is the next inhibiting factor. The malady of insensitivity is so deceptive that it can be spread through the Body of Christ as easily as the common cold. With the Christian television stations overloaded with televangelists asking for our support and our mailboxes bursting at the seams with letters from deserving organizations soliciting our support, it is no surprise that we soon begin to view such requests as intrusions and become callous to the needs that these appeals represent. In such cases, it is imperative that we retrain our hearts to realize that there is no such thing as junk mail if it acquaints us with someone who shares our heart for the Lord’s work.
My mentor, Dr. Lester Sumrall, had a little motto scribbled in the flyleaf of his Bible, “If I die rich, I die a traitor to the cause.” Because of the close relationship I had with him right up to his death, I had the physical privilege of witnessing that pledge become a reality as he emptied out every bank account and cashed in every stock and bond so he could distribute every available dollar. Just a couple days before the attack that eventually took his life, he reached into his wallet and pulled out his last bit of cash and handed it to a friend who was visiting from Nigeria and directed her to find a nice gift from America to take back to Africa with her. But even in a great man of God like this, it was still possible that insensitivity could find a place to hid. Throughout much of his life, Lester Sumrall was so focused on the spiritual needs of men that he lacked a compassion for their physical needs. I will never forget sitting in the room with him as he slid a check across his desk to a missionary who runs feeding centers in one of the impoverished nations of Asia. Along with the check came the words, “God hasn’t called me to feed the devil’s children, and I don’t believe in this sort of thing. When I go to the mission field, I don’t see naked babies. But I’m giving you this for your work because I don’t want the world to say that we don’t try to help people.” However, all that was to change late one evening in Jerusalem. Soon after retiring after a long day of touring and taping television programs followed by preaching and ministering to the tour members, he was suddenly awakened by the words, “It is not only ten minutes to midnight in Jerusalem; it is ten minutes to midnight prophetically!” For the next five hours, the Lord continued to talk with His servant concerning a new commission of establishing a global ministry to feed the hungry saints who lack their daily bread. At first he retorted that he was seventy-five years old and that God should get a younger man to take on this job. Eventually he understood that God had saved this job for him until this stage in life because he was now seasoned enough to take on a project of this immensity. From that moment until the day he drew his last breath, Lester Sumrall poured every bit of energy he had into seeing that this vision would be fulfilled. Upon his return to the US a few days later, I again sat in the apostle’s office and witnessed him slide a piece of paper across his desk. This time, it was a page from a yellow legal pad totally filled with the words the Lord had spoken to him that night in Jerusalem. The paper contained not just words, but also huge smears where warm tears had dissolved the ink — evidence of a heart in which a new level of pity and compassion had been birthed. When this new element became operative in his ministry, Lester Sumrall stepped to a new level in his life and ministry. Because of this new birth of pity, he was able to impact thousands on every continent of the world in the last few years of his life and bring influential change to whole nations and people groups. The words of the Apostle Jude so adequately sum up this case study, “Some have compassion, making a difference.” (verse 22)
Another major “in” factor that inhibits us from truly realizing God’s intended financial blessing is INsincerity (imitation, dishonest, counterfeit, not genuine, hypocritical, not showing true feelings). Solomon cautioned us, “He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough.” (Proverbs 28:19) If our lives are vain, empty of purpose, and lacking in sincere motivation, the end result will be fiscal poverty and moral bankruptcy. To see the full scope of how we can be impoverished, let’s take a few minutes to listen to some of the last individuals we would ever think of listing on the “poverty” roster:
Warren Buffett, “Of the billionaires I’ve known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”
W.H. Vanderbilt, “The care of two hundred million dollars is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.”
John Jacob Astor, “I am the most miserable man on earth.”
John D. Rockefeller, “I have made millions, but they have brought me no happiness.”
Andrew Carnegie, “Millionaires seldom smile.”
Henry Ford, “I was happier when doing a mechanic’s job.”
Will Rogers, “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
These quotes are not intended to make us feel that there is no fulfillment in financial prosperity; on the contrary, they are intended to make the point that true sincerity of purpose is necessary to produce fulfillment in the financial arena. Making money for money’s sake does not produce fulfillment. Fulfillment comes only in having a sincere purpose in life that requires financial prosperity as a secondary necessity — and in using honest and equitable methods to acquire those needed funds.
In relation to the last idea of using honest and equitable methods for obtaining needed resources, we should consider some of the approaches used by fundraisers who solicit our gifts to support their causes. If there is insincerity in the method, there will be no blessing upon the funds collected or upon the givers. Playing upon the emotions of the audience is a common scenario for getting people to give to humanitarian causes. However, the truth is that people become hardened to pity, meaning that it takes a worse catastrophe each time to keep the funding flowing. My friend at the humanitarian agency that raises sponsorships for children in poverty pointed out to me that he never published a photo of a sad-looking child in tattered clothing. First of all, he respects the dignity of the children more than to use them in that way; additionally, he wants to protect them from being exploited as sympathy cases. But more importantly, he wants to raise support for their future rather than their past or present. Yes, their past has been horrific and their present conditions may still be deplorable, but the smiles on their faces speak to the promise of a brighter future through the love of Christ — ministry that his organization will provide, and the prayers and support of the donors. God loves a cheerful giver (II Corinthians 9:7), and making people feel guilty in order to get their money violates God’s desire and nature. Another major fallacy in fundraising is motivating donors by greed by promising them that their gift is their gateway to God’s thirty-, sixty-, and hundred-fold return and blessings that they can’t even contain. Even though it is true that God will bless the givers, activating the sense of giving-to-get stimulates greed and covetousness and is essentially tempting them to sin. (Exodus 20:17) Closely akin to this idea of giving to get is the concept of believing in faith that God will miraculously sustain them because of their “faith giving.” Such manipulation can lead individuals into dangerous, and even illegal, lapses in stewardship. A couple examples that I’ve encountered were checks with the phase, “Money cometh” or Romans 4:17 (the verse that speaks of calling things that be not as though they are) written on them. Unfortunately, there was no money in the accounts to back up the checks. Even worse is challenging people to give out of fear of missing God’s blessings through not being obedient to the appeal. Such an approach essentially makes people think that God is looking for loopholes to get out of blessing them and presents God in a very negative light — like the serpent did when he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. (Genesis 3:5) Another approach that is often used to motivate people to support causes is to appeal to their pride by giving them recognition for their support of making them feel significant for their donation. Such an approach elevates the human nature and violates the biblical commandment to live in humility, “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” (II Timothy 6:17) C.S. Lewis summed up the dilemma of insincerity and the impoverished life that it condemns us to, “We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offering of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
INequity (bias, injustice, favoritism, lack of fairness) is a real world actuality that we have to accept as a given fact of life. (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8) The richest two percent of adults on earth own more than half the household wealth in the entire world, and people living in North America, Europe, and high-income Asia-Pacific countries together hold ninety percent of global wealth. If you have net household assets exceeding sixty-one thousand dollars, then you are among the richest ten percent in the world. If you have assets exceeding half a million dollars, then welcome to the richest one percent — a club that numbers around thirty-seven million members. By the way, the bottom half of the world’s adult population — some two billion — must make do with barely one percent of all global wealth. These are startling facts that can make us question, “Why?”; however, we must understand them from a biblical view to protect ourselves from allowing our attitude to become an inhibitor to our financial fulfillment. But before I share with you the secret behind the inequities in life, I’d like to tell you a little story. When my boys were young, we always spent Saturday morning in my workshop doing repairs on things that had been broken during the week, improvements we wanted to make on our home, or just simply building things for the fun of it. In reality, I could have completed each of those Saturday-morning tasks in a lot less time and with exponentially less effort had I left the boys in front of the TV or at their Playstation; however, I wanted them in the workshop with me for a much bigger reason than the assistance they would offer me. I wanted them there because I wanted to impart something into their lives — not just carpentry and mechanical skills, but the personality of their father. By working together with me, they learned not just what I knew but also who I am. Exactly the same is true with God. He distributes wealth unevenly not because He loves some of His children more than others, but so that His children can distribute what they have to their brothers and sisters on His behalf — and thus learn His nature — just like my boys did in the workshop on those Saturday mornings.
A few paragraphs ago, I told the story of Dr. Lester Sumrall’s midnight encounter with God in the Jerusalem Hilton, but I’d like to revisit that hotel room and pick up a little more of the conversation between the Lord and His seventy-five-year-old servant. When the Lord awakened Dr. Sumrall, He told him that He had one major concern on His heart for these last days before His return. That concern was that millions of His children begin each day by praying the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and end each day with the question, “Why didn’t You answer my prayer?” He then went on to explain that the only answer He could give these starving children was that He had indeed answered the prayer, but others of His children — brothers and sisters to these starving children — had stolen the bread He intended for them. When we learn to become partakers of the very nature of God through helping those in need, we destroy inequity and bring blessing upon ourselves, “For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality.” (II Corinthians 8:13-14)
One further “in” factor to consider is INsult (speak to scornfully, treat with disrespect, abusive remark or action). If we offer anything less than our very best to God, we are literally in danger of insulting Him, “And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.” (Malachi 1:8) The repercussion to such disrespectful offerings is that we get paid back in kind, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7) If we want God’s best for ourselves, we must be willing to give our very best to Him and for His children. I will always remember a weekend ministry trip to preach at a church where one of the graduates of the Bible college served as the youth pastor. The church paid for my airline ticket, covered my hotel and restaurant bills, and gave me a generous honorarium for the two services that I ministered in. However, I also discovered that weekend that the young man from the Bible school was living on such a meager salary that he had to apply for food stamps in order to feed his family. Scripture teaches us that we should actually give double honor (or pay) to those who serve us in the Word and doctrine. (I Timothy 5:17) Yes, they had fulfilled that mandate in their generosity to me; however, in spending more on my weekend visit than they did on my student’s total monthly salary, they had actually violated the biblical directive and had insulted the Lord. If we want divine blessing on our finances, we must use our finances in a way that they honor the Lord and His children.
