Living by faith is when you stop working for money and start working for God.
The most natural question anyone asks when we tell them that we live by faith, is "How do you do it?"
It's a natural enough question in a world where we have all been taught from infancy
that "Money makes the world go round."
We are told that everything Jesus said our heavenly Father can do is a lie.
What really keeps us alive is money.
Without it we would starve or freeze to death.
That is all we've ever heard, and then Jesus comes along and says that
if you stop working for money and start working for God, HE will feed you.
Naturally, that sounds impossible.
But the answer to how we do it is as simple as saying
"We do it by having faith in, and working for God."
That is the whole answer. It's not complicated.
A God who could speak the entire universe into existence
can certainly find a way to get food into our mouths, and clothes onto our bodies if he so chooses.
All WE have to do is get busy loving him and loving those around us
by laying down our lives for others.
But when we say that, people think we are trying to dodge the question.
"Yeah, sure, sure! 'God feeds you.' But I mean, how does he do it... really?"
They can get really insistent and angry.
In fact, for many, from the start, the question was being asked defiantly, and not sincerely.
Why are they so defiant?
Well, because they are convinced that, no matter what you say
they are going to be able to say, "See, God didn't do it. Money did it."
Or "You would never have had that without someone else working for money to get it and give it to you."
Because they have no faith in a real God
they honestly believe that money ultimately creates food
and money ultimately creates clothes, cars, houses, and the computer I'm using to make this video.
And they become stone deaf when I say that the Caesars of the world...
the system as a whole... have actually stolen the world and all its resources from its Creator.
The Caesars of the world... Babylon... created something called money
and told us all that we will not be allowed access to any of those resources
without first bowing down to the lie that Money created it
and that we have no right to it, without sharing their faith in Money.
A very obscure Bible verse has been taken out of context
and turned into what must be the second most famous verse in the Bible.
In some Protestant denominations, it may even be more famous than John 3:16.
Have you heard it? Here it is.
"If any will not work... 'for money'... neither should they eat."
Now, most of you probably know it so well, that you know I actually ADDED the words 'for money'.
The original does NOT say 'for money', but most people don't need that.
We have been so conditioned to think that life is all about money
that every time we hear the word "work" (as in "What kind of work do you do?")
we instinctively add the words "for money"
little realising that the context of this particular verse is actually about working for God.
"Whoever does not work for God, should not be allowed to eat in a Christian community
where people live, work, and eat together seven days a week."
That is the context.
Of course the other most common teaching... in Protestant church circles at least...
is that working for God is a very strong no-no.
They call it "trying to work your way to heaven" or "works salvation".
Teaching that good works have anything to do with faith in God, and thus with salvation
is damned as being about the most evil thing you could do.
So, with these two lies... that is, 1) That Everyone MUST work for money if they want to eat
and 2) That You must NOT try to please God by working your way to heaven...
With those two lies, they have deceived the whole world and turned the so-called Bride of Christ into a Prostitute.
I want to talk about Brides and Prostitutes...
or about Brides and Whores as the King James Version of the Bible calls them.
This contrast is one of the most consistent and repeated illustrations of the kingdom of heaven
in the New Testament.
But first, let me say a little more about the question people ask when we talk about living by faith
where they want me to tell them how God does it.
How does he feed me if I refuse to work for money?
The defiant challenge, as I said earlier
is that they KNOW they can point to money somewhere in the process
even if it's just that someone worked for money to build the road that I travelled on
or the car that I drove in, out to a secret spot where food and clothing dropped out of the sky.
Of course *I* know that they can, and will, do that too.
It's why I am extremely cautious in how I answer the question.
I may be able to say, "Well, today God did it this way, and yesterday he did it some other way."
But I know that, for both days they will still be able to locate money somewhere in the transaction
or somewhere behind the scenes, and in their eyes, that proves I need money as much as they do, if I am going to survive.
Now, at this stage, my friends and I still do use some money.
And the most common way that we get it is through donations.
So people are constantly saying, "What's the difference between you getting donations, and me working for a wage?"
Well, I'll tell you answer right now.
The difference between living by faith as we do, and working for money as you do
is the difference between being a wife and being a whore.
The difference is NOT whether the man they have sex with gives them money.
Did you hear that? I will say it again:
The difference between a wife and a whore is not whether the man they had sex with gives them money.
Think about that for a while. And ask yourself what the real difference is.
When you do that, you are forced to go through the same somewhat complex unraveling of misconceptions
that every spiritual prostitute goes through when they start living as brides of Christ
dependent only on him for their material needs.
You see, while we are teaching spiritual prostitutes how to become spiritual brides
the institutional church world today has been busy turning brides
(if they ever come across such rare individuals in today's materialistic world) into whores.
Have you ever heard an artist talk about prostituting themselves?
Many artists have quite a spiritual vision of what they do, which is close to the spirit behind living by faith.
What makes it art, they say, is that they do it for some higher motive than making money.
Yet, in the end, most artists end up prostituting themselves.
That's what they call it themselves.
They end up doing what they once loved doing, all for the filthy purpose of making money.
And they know that it spiritually damages them and their work.
Writers, like myself, have a similar term for stuff that is written for the filthy purpose of making money.
We call the stuff we write for the purpose of making a fast buck "pot-boilers".
It's what we supposedly do to put food on the table.
Hey, yeah! That's what people everywhere say about their jobs, isn't it?
"It's what I do to put food on the table... to feed my family."
We make it sound so noble when we bring our family into it.
The most common excuse parents give me when they hear what I'm saying about obeying God and living by faith is
"What about my kids? Should I just walk away from them? Should I let them starve?"
Obviously, if they really had faith that God could feed them, their kids would not even get a mention.
They would just share with their kids what God gave them.
God, who obviously knows that kids exist, is quite able to feed the kids too.
So hiding behind the wife and kids is just an excuse.
It's because you don't believe he can feed any of you.
Now, if I can switch back to the Bride analogy without too much confusion
God is asking YOU... many of you being husbands in an earthly sense...
to start acting toward him the way you expect your wife to act toward you.
What if your wife said, "I don't think it's fair to expect you to take care of me.
"And I really don't like working for you, so I'm going to get myself a job...
"as a pole dancer, or giving phone sex, or maybe as a porn star. That would be fun.
"And the money is better than what you could give me anyway.
"But hey, it's not like I would be unfaithful.
"I'll tell all my customers about you, and about how much I love you."
Suppose your wife said that to you. How would you feel?
Yet that is what you say to Jesus, as his supposed Bride
whenever you refuse to trust him to feed you
and whenever you pretend that you are working for him by working for money.
You are out there serving money 40 hours a week (and sometimes more)
and trying to say that it has something to do with serving God.
What it tells the world, of course, is that you love money just like them.
Often they discover that you love money even MORE than they do
because you come from a church that says the best Christians are the best Whores.
God "prospers" those who are willing to perform any kind of perversion it takes, in order to keep their bosses happy.
And they are actually proud of what they do, expecting everyone to respect them for it.
Let me tell you a story.
Before I started living by faith, I believed that most jobs were okay for Christians.
As long as I wasn't selling drugs or girly magazines, or working in a gambling casino, I was okay.
But in job after job, I found myself facing ethical dilemmas
where the boss wanted me to do things that compromised my faith.
Finally I got a job on a jackhammer working on a big government road project.
Certainly I could do that without some ethical dilemma coming up.
For a little while, I loved it.
I was getting fit with all the exercise, and I could work that jackhammer better than anyone else on the crew.
But a few of my fellow workers took me aside and said
"You see Charlie over there? He has asthma and can hardly breathe.
"He has no education. This is the only job he could find.
"But the bosses are going to fire him if you keep working like that.
"They won't need him, because you're doing the work of six men here."
Charlies sets the pace for the rest of us, and we all refuse to work harder than him, so he won't lose his job."
Gosh! What does a Christian do in a situation like that?
Even without talk of living by faith, I had to admit that the other guys were being more Christian... more loving than me.
On the other hand, I had no enthusiasm for spending the rest of my life trying to "look busy" while killing time.
So I quit.
I told this story because, in the end
the only real way to be a witness for Christ on a job where everyone is working for money
is just to leave it for someone else to take.
Where there is money on offer, no matter what you do, you are essentially taking a job from someone else.
Find something the world needs, but which no one else wants to do, and then do that.
Try it, and you will end up being a missionary... in one way or another.
This is what it means to work for God and not for money... to be the Bride of Christ, and not a Prostitute.
So which are you in relation to Jesus?
A Bride, listening to your Husband, and doing everything you can to please him?
Or a Prostitute, doing everything you can to please anyone who gives you money?
They both get food on the table as a result of what they do, and very often the Prostitute gets more.
But is she spiritually satisfied? I don't think so.
Jesus told several stories about brides.
In the 16th chapter of Luke there is an interesting one-line reference to committing adultery (verse 18)
right after Jesus talks about greed, and just before he tells a story about a rich man and a poor man
suggesting that the "adultery" he is talking about is our unwillingness to trust God for our material needs.
In the epistles, we read about the church being the Bride of Christ.
Even when Paul was telling husbands and wives how to behave toward each other, he said
"This is a great mystery, but I'm really speaking about Christ and the Church."
Jesus is coming back for a Bride, brothers and sisters, and not for a Whore.
I want to be very clear on this.
He is NOT coming back for a prostitute who just pretends to be his Bride either.
That ugly, disgusting whore that calls herself a church
is perverting the truth more and more ridiculously every day.
It is shocking and sickening the whole world with its lies.
Are you going to keep falling for the deception?
Or are you going to have the courage to come out of Babylon
and beg God to show you what it means to really trust your Husband for your needs
and what it means to spend your time pleasing him, loving him, honouring him, and obeying him in all that you do?
If you would like to get in contact with others who have come out of Babylon
and who are going into all the world in obedience to our Husband, Jesus
please write to the email address on the screen right now, telling me what country you live in
and sharing a little about your own spiritual journey.
I look forward to hearing from you. God bless you. Thank you for listening.