You open an envelope and find a bill you didn’t remember.
The math isn’t mathing in your mental rundown of your finances.
“I don’t know where this is going to come from…”
quickly metastasizes into
“I don’t understand why it has to be like this.”
Sound familiar?
In the middle of financial stress, have you ever felt like faithfulness and financial freedom are at odds?
We’ve all got friends who post about everything but their faith. They overshare everything but the Gospel.
While their social media seems to tell a story of forgetting Jesus, it also shows a carousel of luxuries.
To make matters worse, there are outright wicked people who seem to be wealthy everywhere you look or scroll!
Are you taking your faith too seriously if these people are the ones crushing their financial goals?
You are in good company with your questions and frustrations.
In Psalm 73, God is merciful enough to give us a recalibration.
Asaph wrestles with the same frustrations you’re feeling,
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. (Psalm 73:3)
Asaph saw people with “no struggles” whose bodies are “healthy and strong” (73:4). He saw people committed to evil but unburdened by life.
They are free from common human burdens;
they are not plagued by human ills. (Psalm 73:5)
As Asaph observed the inversion of the moral economy and the market, his confidence in God was shaken.
Asaph is awakened to reality in worship of the One true God. He recognizes that losing reliance on God is the true catastrophe.
The nightmare of watching the wicked prosper is just that–a night. Morning comes.
The downfall of human strength, riches, and wisdom will catch the crooked by surprise.
Asaph is comforted to know that eternal justice works as Ernest Hemingway described bankruptcy in the, The Sun Also Rises:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The challenge of faith is to rely on God even when His justice seems far too gradual.
Don’t let your faith slip by evaluating the financial freedom of the faithless!
When the envelope comes, and the math still isn’t mathing, where do you turn?
Asaph shows us: Into worship.
Your recalibration doesn’t come from a better budget–though stewardship matters. It comes from beholding the God who holds you.
Faith doesn’t make the bill disappear. Faithfulness doesn’t come with a financial guarantee.
But faith reorients the question entirely.
The real poverty isn’t an empty account–it’s distance from God.
And the real wealth? Nearness to Him.
The ever-present and ever-faithful God must be our singular resource and our greatest rejoicing.
We cannot look to bank accounts, balance sheets, or bull markets for hope. Even our bodies will fail, but the Lord is faithful.
Asaph doesn’t end Psalm 73 with a financial plan. He ends with a confession–one worth making your own:
23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
27 Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.
Psalm 73:23–28