The Poverty Complex

I’m going through one of those “money anxiety” periods this morning, Lord, so I know I’ve taken my eyes off You and placed them squarely on worldly matters.

The sad thing is that I know better. Only the other day I was expressing my incredulity over a famous financier who committed suicide when his wealth diminished from fifty million to ten million. It seemed inconceivable that a man could feel desperate about money when he still possessed ten million dollars. Wealth, clearly, is a matter of attitude.

So once again I go through the process of replacing fear with faith in connection with Your provision.

First, I need to remind myself that You control all of earth’s material resources. Most of us do not really believe this. Yet from cover to cover the Bible declares it:

“The earth is the Lord’s and all the fullness thereof…” Psalm 24:1

“But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches” Philippians 4:19

If I truly believe that I am a child of the King, then my fear will disappear. Worrying would be the sure sign that I did not believe God’s ownership of earth’s resources. To think myself a pauper is to deny either the King’s riches or my being his beloved child.

Second, I can think about Mary Welch. Born in a log cabin on a rundown farm in west Texas, even after she became a Christian she found it difficult to shed her poverty complex. A turning point for her came when she was in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a speaking trip as the guest of a wealthy woman. As she was preparing to take a bath before dinner, she drew her customary three inches of water in the tub.

Her hostess happened to look into the tub. “You’re not intending to take a bath in that tiny amount of water?”

“Why not? That’s all I ever use.”

“This isn’t Texas, Mary,” her hostess chided her. “There’s no shortage of water here. Minnesota has ten thousand lakes.”

Mary realized that she had just gotten a sharp insight about herself.

She watched the water nearly fill the tub. Then she lathered herself with soap—marveling at all she was wasting. That night before she went to sleep she asked God to register His Perfect Adequacy on her subconscious and clear out all her deep-rooted beliefs in shortages.

Soon after, Mary realized that even her skinny, ninety-pound body looked like a shortage of woman. She took out a piece of soft soap and, in a full-length mirror, drew an outline of her ideal measurements. Then she packed most of her size-three dresses to send to an orphanage.

Her mother caught her at the packing and didn’t approve at all. “You’ve never had much. You worked too hard to get those clothes to give them away. Besides, suppose you don’t gain weight?”

But Mary realized that she could not pray for one thing and make provisions for another. Furthermore, she had discovered what she calls the “law of Golden Initiative”: the secret of receiving is to give—even out of poverty. In fact, the more sunk we are in vision of lack, the greater need we have to start giving.

So the dresses went off to the orphanage. “And within that year,” Mary reports, “I measured exactly what I had pictured and prepared for—size nine.”

The third thing I’m to do is to remind myself of that moment of decision I faced some weeks after Peter Marshall’s death in 1949.

The trustees of his church gave me a bleak financial report of how little insurance money there was. They advised me to take a full-time job to support Peter John and myself. 

You, Lord, encouraged me to write, with the promise that if I trusted You, all my needs would be met. I took Your challenge and how greatly have you blessed me! Thank you Lord. Praise You! Forgive me for my lack of faith.