Sparrow Faith & Water-tight Pipes

[Excerpt from Craig Hill, Living on the Third River]

Have you ever thought about funding Kingdom work from God’s perspective? God has an infinite supply of resources. However we usually see that churches and ministries doing Kingdom work have a very limited and scarce supply of resources. Why? Does God not want to supply our needs? No, this is not the problem. In Matthew 6 Jesus describes how God provides the basic needs of sparrows and lilies without their sowing or reaping or toiling or spinning. In other words, their provision is not dependent upon their works. Thus Jesus teaches that basic provision for life is made by your Heavenly Father just because He loves you. This is what I have come to call “Sparrow Faith”.How do resources get from God’s supply into the hands of the end-user ministries? This happens primarily though people. Each Christian is like a pipeline though which God desires to flow financial resources into the Kingdom. However, many of the pipelines are extremely clogged and leaky. Most of what God puts down the pipe never makes it out the other end.

Now suppose you were the person who decides how much resource to release into each pipe? How much are you going to release into a clogged pipe? If Sparrow Faith is not established, fear will cause most of God’s resources to be collected in the pipeline. There’s no use for those resources just becoming stagnant, like the Dead Sea. So, probably you’d put just enough down there for each family to use but no more.

How much resource would you put down a leaky pipe? There is no point in sending huge quantities down this pipe, as it will be improperly used. If there is too much debt then much of the resources is siphoned out of the pipeline in the form of interest. If there is not a fixed budget for personal consumption, then most of the resources is consumed on making a bigger, better and more comfortable pipe. This must be very frustrating for the Lord.Instead the majority of resources will of course be sent down the most efficient pipe, so that it will be utilized to bring the most benefit to the greatest number of people.

Craig Hill, Living on the Third River, pp 27-28, 44-45