Five Things God Uses to Grow Your FaithParaugs

PRAYER:

God, please help me to be more intentional about practicing private disciplines that you will use to grow my faith. Help me to prioritize spending time with you.

READING:

Private Disciplines

Whenever you hear people talk about their faith journeys, they talk about learning how to pray. They talk about the first time they began to have a quiet time or personal devotional time. They learned to carve out time in my day for God, which is a discipline. The other thing they talk about, eventually, has to do with money and giving. For almost every Christian I’ve met, giving began as a kind of gut-wrenching, sheer discipline.

The interesting thing about what Jesus says about these private disciplines is that they have more to do with our faith than how they benefit anybody else. These private personal disciplines are a huge part of building faith.

Faith is like a muscle; as you exercise a muscle and wear it out, it grows and develops. There is a sense in which God will bring you to a place where he will almost exhaust your faith. He does this in order to build it, and these private spiritual disciplines are a part of that.

In Matthew 6:1, Jesus says, “‘Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.’” Practicing righteousness is his way of saying “private” disciplines. Let’s look at what Jesus had to say about two specific private disciplines.

“‘So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others… But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then, your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you’” (Matthew 6:2–6).

What if you really believed that your heavenly Father saw your private financial generosity and decided to honor and reward you because of it? I would argue that one of the reasons you’re not more generous is because you don’t believe that. And the issue is not money; the issue is your confidence or your faith in God. Prayer involves time, which is an incredibly valuable asset that you may not feel like you can give to God. When you give God a slice of time and a percentage of your money, it is an expression of, “I trust you with all of my time and with my wealth.” God uses that to build and grow your faith.

So, I want to challenge you to give God your first few minutes and your first few dollars. Time and money are faith issues. The tension you feel over giving God your first few minutes or your first few dollars is a faith tension. It’s like exercising a muscle; it’s a discipline, and you will benefit from it. The benefit is that your confidence in God will grow and deepen, and the sense of intimacy you experience with God will expand as he begins to conquer the things that compete most with your devotion to him. So just try it. Engage in these disciplines, and see if God won’t use them to grow your faith big.

REFLECTION:

Does the idea of trusting God with your first few minutes and your first few dollars feel overwhelming? Why or why not? What would it look like to start small?