Cold Hard Cash

I've been thinking about the Jeremiah post coming up, and I think I need to backtrack a little to properly explain that one. There are two massive concepts I have to give you some incite in, to help explain my views. The first is faith, the second is God's will. So I have to backtrack, not one, but two post to get there.
So let us start on faith with a firm testing ground.
Money.
The theoretical Christian ideal for thought about money is as follows. All the world is God's. Money is included. I am God's servant, thus He makes His resources available to me. I love everyone just as well as I love myself. It makes no difference how much money I "have", because all money is available to me, and if it benefits anyone it is good.
Sum total, a buck in the hand is the same as a buck in the bush. God will provide.
Before you dismiss this as too bizarre, take look into Hudson Taylor's story. This bloke moved to China in the 1800's to preach the gospel, and just crossed his figures when it came to money. And it worked like a charm.
BUT it gets more complicated then that. Christian are commanded things like:
'"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you," Thessalonians 4:11'.
In our society that means, almost inexorably, a nine-to-five job. Add a family, that we must provide for and we're looking far more like everyone else. With our societies huge wealth it gets even more blurry. How do you provide the right amount of education and positive upbringing? Need to keep a roof over their heads. Need to get a good computer and a fast internet connection. The holiday is an important life experience. Good schooling, transport.
Hudson had it easy. It was a straight forward equation. Work for God. Wait for his pay. There was no one else.
So what's with that? Let me give you a little illustration to clear things up.
Imagine a person walking through a jungle when he comes to a cliff. On the other side of the drop the jungle carries on like before.
God tells him to get over the ditch. There's two options open to him. The first is to go into the jungle, cut down some trees and begin to construct a bridge. If he does this, he has faith. And he works in his faith to get to the objective God's given him.
The other option is to just try to walk across on thin air and pray God will hold him up. This action is just as faithful and twice as brave. Also twice as likely to fail.
You see it's here that we begin to understand why God wants Christians to work hard, etc. It's so we live a normal life. A natural life. Because the best way to convey Christ is to show him in real life. I'm far more impressed by an individual who gets up in the morning and suffers through whatever task they are doing to try to reach an end they believe in then by someone who has life fall into their lap because they believe something.
The only time God tends to use just walking across is when He needs to take a shortcut.
What you need to understand is that both those techniques in the end require the same amount of faith. Someone with a true grip on the concept of God knows that the same God who defies gravity is the one that compels the laws of physics to maintain the structural integrity of the bridge.
In fact if something goes wrong and you fall it's God's creation of gravity that sends you plummeting toward the ground, and His invention of momentum that smashes your fragile body over the hard rock. In a convoluted way it's God that kills you.
Faith isn't in the action. How big, or crazy or supernatural it is. It's in the doing at all. What's on the other side anyway? Why should I risk for that?
If we really understood what was going on, we would know that it's the same level of faith that leads one man to pray and wait for the money to show up in the mail as it does for another to work a hard day.
Unfortunately it's easy for a man to have faith in the economy or society or structural engineering rather then God. That's the reality you will see in the churches, mostly.
Keep your eyes open for those who follow God to whatever end He is leading them, through whatever trials that will take them. They are the people who will show you what Christianity is.