No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? -- Matthew 6:24-26

If we work forty hours per week and get a regular pay check, God still calls us to live by faith. If we have a traditional job, we should thank God for a job and steady income, and also trust God and pray for His daily provisions as the Lord's Prayer teaches. If we are laid off, fired, or our company closes, and we do not know where our next job will be or when our next pay check will come, perhaps we trust in God with greater desperation, but trust in God we must.

Living by faith can also have a different meaning. A house painter, paper hanger, artist, or musician may only pray for work and never advertize their services or product to the general public. Another person may pray for work and God's guidance on where and how he will advertize and how much he will spend to promote his product. Neither way is necessarily more spiritual than the other way. Only God can determine who is living more by faith than someone else. Each person may be living equally by faith alone, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead them. Faith involves trust. Faith includes believing the Scriptures and following God according to the best understanding we have regarding God and what He wants us to do personally. Usually, faith does not mean simply doing exactly what God has led someone we admire to do; but it can, if we are certain that God is calling us to follow in their footsteps. Learning from the example of someone's consistent Christian character is usually far wiser than trying to be a doctor only because some Christian we know is a highly successful surgeon. Only after an evaluation of God's providential work in our lives and much prayer for His guidance should we go into any kind of work or ministry.

Ordinarily, when we think of living by faith, we think of missionaries, evangelists, pastors, and revivalists who trust solely in God for their food, clothing, shelter, and other needs, rather than relying on a church or missionary society to give them a regular salary. When the Schaeffers founded L'Abri in 1955, God called them to a new way of living by faith for them. However, before God called them to take this step of faith, He providentially taught them some lessons about prayer and gave them the courage to rely on Him alone and those God moved in answer to prayer to provide for them.

The Schaeffers first went to Switzerland with a small steady salary under the sponsorship of an American mission board. But after seven years, God led them to begin living by faith alone after the model of Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission. Eventually, God would demonstrate through them and L'Abri that He could work through the faithful prayers of His people the same way in the Twentieth Century as He had in the past. We glimpse a part of God's training for a life of prayer when we see how early God began to prepare Edith and Francis Schaeffer for their life's work.

Edith Schaeffer was not accidentally born in China to parents who lived by faith as missionaries in Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission. God taught Edith before her earliest remembrance about how He could provide for a believer's needs in answer to prayer. God's providential preparation of Edith included the Holy Spirit placing the desire in her heart to accompany Dr. Hoste, who succeeded Hudson Taylor as the director of CIM, as he prayed for all the missionaries under his care by name. After admonishing her not to talk as they walked, he took little four-year-old Edith by the hand as he prayed out loud for the mission's needs and the definite needs of each missionary and their children. Edith heard Dr. Hoste pray for her specifically, and then she saw his prayers answered on her behalf. She heard others praising God for the answers to prayer that she had heard Dr. Hoste pray about earlier, and she praised Him too. Some of her earliest recollections include hearing her parents pray and seeing God answer them in special ways. Very early in life, God impressed Edith's heart and mind with truths about His faithfulness and His desire to hear and answer our prayers.

After Fran became a Christian, God began to teach him that He could be trusted in times of need by answering his prayers as a teenager. When God called him to the ministry, Fran discovered that he would have to prepare for the work without parental encouragement and support. Since his parents were not Christians, they wanted Fran in a respectable secular job. When Fran chose to go to college and study for the ministry, Fran's father fought his decision and forced Fran to chose between God and his family. Fran would have to trust in God alone for His provision of funds for tuition and other expenses. Only after Fran declared to his earthly father that he first had to obey his Heavenly Father did his dad announce that he would help his son financially in college. Because of Fran's willingness to trust in God alone for His college provisions and because his parents saw Fran and Edith's consistent Christian living over a long period of time, they finally came to trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

From the beginning of Fran's Christian life, God began preparing him to live by faith and prayer. God showed Fran that He could move an unbeliever, his own dad, as well as believers to accomplish His purposes. God taught Fran through his own experience that He would faithfully care for any young person who would need to choose between God and his family if forced to by his parents. This early lesson encouraged Fran whenever he told others about their need for absolute loyalty to Jesus, the Lord over all, no matter what the cost. Fran knew by experience that the love and power of his Heavenly Father would be with them through everything.

As we think about our past, we need to look for instances of God's providential care and provision--enough to build up our faith in Him and convince us that we live in a supernatural world where prayer makes a difference as God works in history. We may not be called to the same type of work or to living by faith in the ways of Hudson Taylor or Francis and Edith Schaeffer. If we try to live exactly as they did without God's clear call, we may be disobeying and tempting God. Jesus pointed out to Satan, when Satan tempted Him to jump off a pinnacle and expect God to catch Him, that we can tempt God by trying to live by faith in a way that God has not called us to follow. Hence, some supposed living by faith can actually be disobedience.

PRAYER

Dear Father, as I think about your work in my life, help me to recognize your definite leading through the years. Help me see and appreciate what you have been doing to prepare me for saving faith, for this present moment, and for what lies ahead. As I seek to put you first and love you more each day, help me understand how the Scriptures relate to my deepest concerns and to living by faith for you today. For Jesus' sake, Amen.