I’ve spent most of my adult life wanting to trust God with my money. But when the rubber hit the road, actually doing it in real time was both more than I’d bargained for and better than I could have imagined.
In January, just hours before I lost a huge source of income, Jesus had already told me the one thing I needed to hear: I am your provider.
I was kneeling inside a cathedral during my annual prayer retreat, asking God if there was something, anything, He wanted to tell me. And as I listened for His still, small voice, I heard three distinct and simple sentences:
“I am your provider.” “I take care of my daughters.” “Have you ever truly been ‘in want’?” (A reference to Psalm 23.)
At the time, I thought, yes, this is nice. These are always good things to be reminded of.
Little did I know I was about to be on the roller coaster of a lifetime. Four hours later, I got a text that I would abruptly be losing a major freelance client, and my mind started spiraling.
Just days earlier, I’d received an email inviting me to go on the trip of a lifetime — a dream trip to France and the UK to present my writing at a conference. I hadn’t given them my official yes yet, because I was waiting to see if I could make the financial math work. Now I’d lost a huge portion of that income, and I started to wonder if it would be foolish and irresponsible to say yes at all.
The ‘Yes’ Before the ‘How’
So I called my parents. I sat on my bed with my phone in my lap on speakerphone and laid out every anxious question I had. Then my mom pushed back.
“What if it’s not foolish… what if it’s faith? God has opened the door. You don’t know how it will work out, but what if you said yes in faith?”
That felt like a terrifying proposition. Despite the many times God had provided for me before, the anxiety still welled up at the thought of saying yes to a trip I couldn’t afford with no concrete plan for how to pay for it.
But I said yes anyway. In faith. Not faith in my own means, since I was deeply aware of their limits. But faith that if God had truly opened this door, I could hold Him liable to pay for it.
And pay for it, He did.
Over the next several months, I went through the five stages of faith: Optimism, Striving, Despair, Peace, and Expansion. Or something like that. My imagination for what was possible grew in ways I didn’t expect. I kept coming back to my high-school self’s favorite quote: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
I didn’t see the whole staircase. I could barely see the next step. But every time a new problem arose, I punted it over to God with a “this one’s on you” attitude. I was done panicking. I was done going into fight-or-flight every time a bill came in. He said He’d be my provider, so it was time I lived like I actually believed that.
And He provided. Every time. Sometimes without a second to spare. And the math never really worked out — it never made logical sense. But somehow, every bill kept getting paid, and every meal kept filling my fridge. It reminded me of every Bible story where substances like oil or manna or fish just multiply with no explanation. He gave me just enough manna for each day, and somehow stretched it beyond what made sense.
So here I am, a few weeks after getting home from the trip I couldn’t afford, with a whole lot of stories about why you should take your own step of faith too — and say yes before you have “the how” figured out. And if that sounds like a crazy thing to ask, then I’ll give you a breakdown of everything I learned in this process so you have a cheat sheet on how to trust God with your money (and a front row seat to watch God do more than you’d imagined He could when you said yes)!
Trusting God with Your Money Isn’t Doing Nothing
Faith doesn’t require striving. It doesn’t mean working to earn God’s provision. But the paradox that goes hand in hand with that is that it still requires effort — a collaboration, a co-laboring with God. When you say yes to something in faith, it’s time to start taking the actions you’d take if you actually believed that door was about to open, or that bill was about to get paid.
We don’t say yes and then lay back in a lounge chair eating grapes while God does our grunt work. We open savings accounts. We take extra side gigs. We do the work in front of us with excellence. We commit to consistent habits and choose not to spend money on lesser priorities.
Christian philosopher Dallas Willard writes in Life Without Lack, “Faith is simply reliance upon something in both attitude and action.” It’s the same trust that lets you flop into bed after a long day because you know it’ll hold you, or leave for work right on time because you assume your car will start. Faith is a trust we live, not just a thing we feel. Willard also writes, “Grace is opposed to earning, but it is not opposed to effort, because effort is action and earning is attitude.”
That line can feel blurry, which might be why God gives us so many micro-moments to practice. It’s how a toddler learns to walk — pulling themselves up on the coffee table, taking a few clumsy steps before gravity has its way. Why would our faith be any different? Even radical faith gets built one step at a time. Which is good news for the overthinkers among us — you’re allowed to just practice. Try. Fail. Pull yourself up again. Walk toward your Dad.
Faith Runs on a Different Economy
As you take those micro steps, you start to notice that the “rules of life” our society runs on aren’t the rules of the Kingdom.
Society says every man is for himself, and we only have access to our own limited resources. The Kingdom says God provides for His kids, and we have access to His unlimited resources. Society says resources are scarce, and we often feel most secure when we stockpile them. The Kingdom says that God’s provision is abundant, and He provides for each day as it comes.
The society’s view keeps your eyes on yourself and what you don’t have. It breeds fear, anxiety, and panic. The Kingdom view keeps your eyes on Him first, and then on the people around you and how you might be generous with them the way He’s been generous with you. And somewhere in the middle of that reorientation, the logistical answers tend to fall into place.
That was true for me. After I moved through optimism and striving, I landed in what I’ll call the pit of despair, to borrow from my friend Anne of Green Gables. From that place, I was asking God things like:
How will I pay this next bill?
Where do I find a client to replace the income I lost?
Every door feels like it’s closing — which one do I knock on next?
And He was saying things like:
Wait. Be still.
Do not recenter your life around your bills.
I am the door.
My questions were about a time-sensitive crisis. His answers were about forming me with eternal truths. One shifts depending on my mood or the number in my bank account that day. The other is something I can return to no matter what the present crisis is — because what feels like a crisis to me doesn’t steal His peace. And it shouldn’t steal mine either.
Money feels so tied to our earthly, temporal experience. It makes us feel powerful, in control, secure. But it can’t actually give us any of those things — and the sooner we see through that, the easier it becomes to manage our finances in faith.
God’s Provision Doesn’t Look Like I Expected
I don’t know why a scarcity mindset runs so deep in me — nature, nurture, all of the above. But flexing these faith muscles has shown me exactly how deep it goes. My default is almost never to assume there’s more than enough of anything. My nervous system is quite convinced there are three fewer slices of pie than people at the table…at all times.
Which is why I got really good at pinching pennies. Not because I get joy from saving wisely, but because I get anxious about spending. And that impulse loves to show up right after God provides for a need: I’m grateful for about five minutes, and then I snap back into stretch-it-as-far-as-possible mode, as if He wouldn’t provide again next time.
That’s what happened when I decided I couldn’t afford to work from coffee shops anymore. I was saving for an expensive trip, wasn’t I? It would be foolish to spend $6 on a latte, even though that latte was often my ticket to hours of real productivity and joy. So I missed it. My coffee-shop-less weeks lacked the spark I loved. And God knew that, so He provided a series of gift cards — $59 total — to fund my coffee shop days. Which goes a long way at $6 a visit.
But because I’m the penny-pincher I am, I still white-knuckled working at home as long as I could before spending a single cent. Finally, I hit an unproductive day and knew I needed a change of scenery. I headed to my nearby coffee shop and, between a few discounts, only ended up spending $4 on my latte.
I was relieved the dent in my gift card stash was so small — and already strategizing how to stretch the remaining $55. But while I was busy being a semi-professional penny pincher, God was probably watching with an amused twinkle in His eye, because He was about to rock my socks off.
Moments after I checked on my drink, which was taking unusually long, a barista walked over apologizing for the wait — and handed me a gift card. Exactly $4 on it. I was stunned. I’d been so hesitant to spend the first $4 of the gift He’d already given me, never once considering that if He wanted to provide more, He simply could. I basically got a free drink that night, and it reminded me of the loaves and the fishes that never ran out when Jesus fed the five thousand.
Why was I so scared of running out of what God provided when His stories of provision usually center on the exact opposite? I’d been so focused on stretching my gift card money to provide for myself that I wasn’t fully receiving the gift He’d already handed me. It’s like a parent filling their teenager’s gas tank so they can go on a stress-free road trip, and the kid refusing to leave the driveway because they’re scared to use the gas.
When we fix our eyes on our fear of scarcity rather than on our God of abundance, we rob ourselves of fully experiencing what He’s already given.
That’s the thing about those of us with scarcity mindsets — we’ve moralized money. Saving is good, spending is bad. And while there are plenty of Proverbs about wise, responsible use of money, there are just as many warnings against placing our security in the money itself. My white-knuckled gift card savings weren’t just robbing me of the gift — they were turning the gift into the provider. Instead of trusting my actual Provider the next time I needed coffee money, I was trying to remove my own need for Him. My “saving” became a way to avoid depending on Him at all.
It reminds me of the parable of the talents — the master leaves his servants money and tells them to invest it. Two do, and the money grows. One buries his out of fear, and when the master returns, that’s the one who gets rebuked. Fearful saving is just as bad as frivolous spending. Neither are wise stewardship. Neither are faith-filled.
Faith Is a Collective Experience
Remember the scene at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life when the whole town shows up at George Bailey’s house with dollars and cents to cover his debt? It gets me every time. We celebrate that moment with George — but how many of us would actually accept that kind of generosity ourselves?
Our very individualist culture teaches us that financial provision is our own duty, our own responsibility. We’re celebrated for being independent, for becoming self-sufficient, and that same culture often links poverty or financial hardship to personal moral failure. But that value system gets turned upside down in the Kingdom. God’s Kingdom runs on generosity, and generosity in the Kingdom is never a one-way transaction. As we learn to trust His sufficiency instead of our own, we get to experience the same lavish generosity He shows us — and because we don’t have to hoard it or earn it, we’re freed to hand it straight back out to whoever’s in front of us with a need. That’s not charity. It’s collaborating with God on the actual magic of multiplying abundance, and it’s every bit as much a faith-building exercise for the giver as it is provision for the receiver.
The other side of that same coin: when we have needs, we get to call on others to participate in meeting them. Not as a burden, the way an every-man-for-himself culture might frame it, but as an invitation into childlike dependence on our Father — one that breeds intimacy, both with Him and with the people He sends. When someone shows up for you, their faith gets to stretch too. They get to watch their own generosity turn into something real, and you get to watch His provision take on a face and a name. Nobody walks away from that exchange unchanged. It’s not one side giving and one side receiving — it’s two people getting to watch God multiply something in real time, together. Naming your need takes vulnerability. Meeting someone else’s takes courage. Both are faith in motion. And money, in the middle of that, stops being about status or security and starts being the holy ground where miracles grow.
After all my striving to replace the client I’d lost, I finally put out a call for extra work. And God’s people showed up. I did the work with the skills I had, and in turn they paid me through a series of one-time projects that covered not just the trip, but the extra time and capacity I needed to prepare for it — time I wouldn’t have had if I were busy onboarding a whole new client. Naming my need let people partner with me, cheer me on, and participate in the story in ways that never would’ve happened if I’d just kept it to myself.
Dallas Willard writes, “Unbelief and belief are real forces in the world, and they are polarized so one takes away from the other … when faith begins to move, it moves on groups. When you are with other people, your faith is affected by the totality of the faith present… God uses others to transform our own faith.” Provision isn’t an individualist activity in God’s Kingdom, and neither is faith. Inviting others into your story through humility, and through vulnerably naming the need out loud, breeds more faith and more generosity, and that becomes its own cycle of self-giving love.
The Weight Isn’t Yours to Carry
By April, approaching Holy Week, I hadn’t done a real grocery trip since mid-February. Somehow, God just kept providing. My fridge was never overflowing, but God kept providing through the strangest, smallest channels. Party leftovers people practically begged me to take home. Church event food nobody else was going to eat. I always had a few more meals than I expected. Until, one afternoon, I didn’t.
I was standing at my counter scooping the last of some rice and refried beans out of a catering tray when I did the math and realized: this was it. One meal left.
Months earlier, that would have sent me spiraling. But by then I’d watched God provide over and over, so instead of panicking, I just prayed, right there at my kitchen sink: “Okay, God. I’ve got one meal left. It’s time. I need more provision. I don’t know how You’ll do it, but I believe You will.” Then I put my last leftovers back in the fridge and headed out the door to a church service.
Hours later, after church, someone walked up and handed me a $30 grocery gift card. I opened it and smiled so big it almost hurt. He was right on time. He’d had my back the entire time. He was so incredibly generous to me. Through whatever nonsensical meal multiplication God tends to do, that $30 got me through to mid-May. From February to May, God fed me — every single meal — without me ever paying for a big grocery trip out of my own pocket.
And He wasn’t just covering groceries. The same spring I was learning to trust Him for dinner, I was also watching Him piece together the money for the trip itself — one freelance project at a time, right up until the very last minute.
I’d been on the edge of my seat for weeks, praising God for each freelance project that came in, working hard to finish them with excellence, hoping they’d somehow add up to what I needed for the trip. I still remember the moment I did the math and realized it was covered. Done. The money was in my account. What a relief.
Have you ever seen a toddler offer to pay for dinner at a restaurant? Of course not. The scene is almost comical to picture. Dinner is going on the parent’s card, obviously. Remember when Jesus said we’d have to become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God? Remember when Paul writes that we’ve been given the right to be children of God, and if children, then heirs? In that scenario, we’re the toddler. So why do you keep reaching for your own card? Your Dad’s got it.
That doesn’t mean Dad hands the toddler his card for a shopping spree — the toddler doesn’t yet have the wisdom to use his resources well. But as the child grows, Dad gives more opportunities to learn. And most of us, even if we believe deep down that God will provide, still carry all the emotional weight ourselves while we wait. So the waiting feels heavy. Stressful. Anxiety-inducing. It can make us crash out or freak out as fear gets the better of us. And then when Dad picks up the bill like He always said He would, we’re left wondering why we put ourselves through the emotional roller coaster in the first place.
The answer is: we don’t have to. He tells us we can be still, wait on Him, put our hope in Him. But our nervous systems get triggered by uncertainty, and we take on more weight than we were ever meant to carry instead of actually casting our anxiety on Him.
It’s not entitled to live like God’s promise to provide is actually true.
It’s not over-spiritualizing to say, “I don’t know how this will work out, but that’s God’s job to figure out, not mine.”
It’s not over-idealistic to say, “If the King of Kings is my Dad, I don’t have to worry, even when things feel nerve-wracking.”
That’s faith. That’s what He told us to do.
In the high-pressure space between when God says He’ll provide and when the provision actually shows up, it takes practice for our nervous systems to settle. It takes experiencing His provision over and over, letting our bodies learn He’s not going to ghost us. It takes rewriting the defense mechanisms we built to protect ourselves from ever being that vulnerable, that dependent, that exposed to someone letting us down.
In those unknowns, our bodies try to protect us by lying to us. They catastrophize. They tell us to pull out every defense we’ve got so we can’t be hurt, can’t be disappointed. And we have to tell them the truth: they’re trying so hard to protect us, and we’re grateful, but we don’t need protecting this time. Because this time it’s Jesus. And He never fails to come through on His promises.
What would it look like, the next time your brain starts freaking out that maybe God won’t provide this time, to start talking back?
The Step Before the Staircase
I think back to that cathedral now — kneeling there in January, hearing three sentences I didn’t know I’d need four hours later. I didn’t understand yet how literally I’d be tested on believing that. But isn’t God generous to give me exactly what I needed for the season ahead? I think it’s a reminder and a challenge to us all to ask ourselves: When He tells you what is true, will you actually build your life on it, even when the ground starts to shake?
I said yes to a trip I couldn’t afford, and on the other side of it, I’m not writing this to tell you the math worked out because I was especially faithful or especially spiritual. I’m writing to tell you it worked out because He is who He said He was, and He always has been. And to remind you that He still will be the next time He calls you to take a step of faith, especially with your finances.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I used to think of faith as an abstract ideal. Now I think it’s something that materializes — a step taken before the staircase shows itself, a savings account opened before you know it’ll be enough, a need spoken out loud before you know who’ll answer it. Faith is when your belief catalyzes you into action before you see that belief become reality. It’s cashing in on a future reality before it comes, because you’re just that confident that what God promised will be true.
So if you’ve read this far and you’re sitting with your own version of a trip you can’t afford, a bill you can’t explain, a yes you’re scared to give: you don’t have to see the whole staircase. You just have to take the step you can see. He’s already provided for what’s coming. The only question left is whether you’ll live like it’s true before you have the proof.
What yes are you withholding until you know how it’ll work out?
Maybe it’s not foolish.
Maybe it’s faith.
