Monday, May 18, 2009

A new {IN}-sight on debt



I have been extremely challenged by Hudson Taylor's insert about debt in his autobiography:

"To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear: 'Owe no man anything.' To borrow money implied, to my mind, a contradiction of Scripture-a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and a determination to get for ourselves what He had not given.... If the Word taught me anything, it taught me to have no connection with debt. I could not think that God was poor, that He was short of resources, or unwilling to supply any want of whatever work was really His. It seemed to me that if there were any lack of funds to carry on work, then to that degree, in that special development, or at that time, it could not be the work of God."

I had never thought of debt in this light. If the resources were not there for me to get IT, then quite surely IT was not something God had for me to get (at that time). I think of the many churches and ministires that are in tremendous debt for their new buildings or new facilities. Could it be that God did not intend for them to have that?

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