Pastors and planters, be mature in your thinking: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If he hasn’t given you something, his denial is a gift. He owns all, he knows what’s best, and he loves you.
3. Be Creative
Spurgeon in his book Lectures to My Students has a section where he marvels at the abilities of some to accomplish exceptional good with very humble means. Spurgeon humorously labels ministers who are broke as workers with “slender apparatus.” He writes, “Work away, then, poor brother, for you may succeed in doing great things in your ministry, and if so, your welcome of ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ will be all the more emphatic because you labored under serious difficulties.”
So, rather than bemoaning what you can’t do, enjoy what you can do.
To restate the question from the beginning: How do you do stuff when you don’t have money? Brothers, you simply do what you can do.
And guess what? The most powerful and important things you can do are all free! Prayer is free! Studying Scripture is free! Sharing the gospel is free! Gathering for fellowship is free! Admonishing the idle, encouraging the weary and faint-hearted, and helping the weak is free!
Sometimes, the blessing of God in denying us resources is him removing the very things our hearts are tempted to trust in. And is it not true that in our lack we often learn how much we still have?
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Be as creative as the book of God permits you, and then go and battle in his name! Like King David, we don’t go armed from the armory of the world—no, our stones from the brook are promises from the Word of God.
4. Be confident.
The Lord is our helper, and as Philippians tells us, “God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
Who is it that is with us? Hebrews offers a massive view of God, and if we’re to be comforted and confident it will require that our theology is equally robust.
Finally, we must never forget it is our Lord’s wisdom that assigns one talent to some, two talents to some, and five talents to others. We should also note that our Lord is not unreasonable. Charles Spurgeon is not more sympathetic to our situation than the Sovereign Lord who assigned it to us. If he has limited your resources, then he will not enlarge his expectations. No, he is looking for those of us to whom he has given little, to be faithful over little.
This article on how to start a church with no money originally appeared here.
