Jo Saxton

Author Archive

I often marvel at Christian leaders who give all their money away and see God’s provision in miraculous ways.  I admire their great faith and mature walk with God, and when I’m struggling with money, I often think that the answer is to give away everything and live by faith.

But does living by faith really mean giving away all your money?

For me there are two elements to living by faith.  The first is one that I quite like – being generous.  We can do this in lots of ways – time, hospitality, finances.  It’s simply giving away things that we’ve already received.  And I can genuinely say I’ve learnt that being generous can be really fun!

On the flip side, I don’t really like the idea of receiving from others.  A while ago I was in the supermarket and I got to the check out, my items had gone through the till, only to find that I’d left my purse back in my office.  I left the shop, without my groceries, embarrassed and shaken.  A colleague had been in the supermarket the same time as me and when she got back to the office she immediately said, “Why didn’t you just come and find me? I would’ve paid for it!”  I felt really uncomfortable – but surely this was a legitimate way for God to provide?

Recently a friend challenged me about why as Christians we want to learn to ‘live by faith’ and why we sometimes aspire to give so much away  so that we can’t live within our means. Asking that question caused me to have a really good think about why I’m trying to learn to put my faith in God, particularly with my finances.  And as I’ve thought about it, I realised that living by faith is all about living in community.

In the Bible God doesn’t call all of us to give all our money away.  But He does call us to put our trust in Him.  When I look at the church in Acts, they shared everything – this defined them as community.  Subsequently the rich had a cost to them, in giving away all that they had, and letting go of control over their possessions.  The poor had a cost in humbly receiving from others and trusting that provision doesn’t carry expectations or conditions.  As a community they shared everything together because they recognised that it all came from God and was to His glory.  We have to be prepared to bless others with what we have, but also to receive and share in others’ blessing when we don’t have very much.

• How are you sharing your finances with the people you live life with?
• Where do you need to trust God for His provision, both through giving and receiving?
• And how are you celebrating with others all the goodness that He gives to us?

The biblical meaning of hope is ‘confident expectation’. But as we live in the tension of expectation and reality, so often we are disappointed and frustrated by the reality of our experiences.  What is hope?  Where do we find it?  And how do we navigate ourselves towards it when our default is to criticise and lower our expectations?

As I’ve been thinking about hope, I’ve been particularly drawn to thinking about the church.  In the Bible it says that the church will be ‘prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.’ (Rev 21:2)  The image we are given of the church is one that is restored, beautiful and worthy in the eyes of Jesus.  But so often the church is a big sticking-point for people.  It’s easy for us to point the finger, feel despondent and misunderstand one another.  I’ve had many conversations where people are so disappointed with the church.  And sadly, there’s truth in a lot of what they say.

But as we’re called to love the church (John 13:34) we are called to have confident expectation of all that it will one day become.

I like the dictionary definition of hope as being ‘to believe, desire or trust…’

We need to believe that the church is beautiful.  As I’ve spent the last year working for my church something I’ve really enjoyed has been hearing all the different things God’s doing.  Sharing testimony and celebrating where God’s moving, particularly in ministries other than your own, grows faith in the church and all that God can do through it.

We need to desire that the church will be restored.  It’s so much easier to have a moan about the church and the brokenness which we see within it, but making the decision to pray for its restoration takes commitment and lots of energy.  It’s hard to commit to seeking change for the church, but we must firstly desire the change and breakthrough that God can bring.

And we need to trust that the church is and will become the bride of Christ.  It’s the people who are the church. When we say ‘the church has really hurt me’, what we mean is, ‘people have really hurt me’.  But in Jesus’ eyes those people are blameless and righteous, because on the cross He made them the body which is His beautiful bride.

I am part of the body, and I’m just as dysfunctional and disappointing as the rest of them!  But my sin is just as forgiven and I’m just as beloved as the rest of them, as well.  As I learn how to love the church I’m learning what it means to ‘hope all things’.  I believe that one way God loves me is that He hopes all things for me and if He can do this for me, then I can find it within me to hope all things for the church – to confidently expect that it will be a beautiful, vibrant and open-armed body; truly loving, because we have a loving Father who can certainly make it happen.

When my Mum died in February 2004 I began a journey of dealing with weakness.  Handling grief during that time has often felt long and painful.  And sometimes I think all I’ve learnt about grief is that it’s long and it’s painful!  People talk about there being a particular process to grief and I’ve seen myself through some of those stages (denial, anger etc…), but more and more it has felt confusing and complicated.  When friends of mine have experienced grief I’ve not had the words or direction in how to support them.  Grief, it seems, has no standards or pointers on the road to recovery.

I got married last July to Jon, who has been a huge support in dealing with my Mum’s death (mainly by not saying very much!).  Jon lost his Dad when he was only 2 and I see a great amount of God’s redemption in our relationship, in our support of one another, and through our heart to be family to others. 

But there is still so much brokenness and weakness for God to work in.  As me and Jon have become a new family, we’ve also joined one another’s families.  The truth is grief never affects only one person – the cataclysmic shift that death brings to a family is sometimes the hardest impact that it can have.  Where I’ve known healing and breakthrough in my own personal loss, it is the brokenness of my family that exposes my anger, judgement and desperation.  As I look at the consequences that death has had on our families I feel grief and sadness for what has been robbed from us.  And in that place most often what is exposed is my own brokenness – my frustration with people’s insecurities, my judgement on how family ought to be, my anger towards others’ inability to love me how I want to be loved.  Most frustrating of all is that I’m incapable of reaching out to them.  In my own struggle, there is nothing left. 

The thing is, loss exposes our weakness and our sinfulness.  It doesn’t matter what the loss is, we all experience loss in something.  Life throws things at us that surprise us, and are not always the way we expected or wanted them to be. 

The one thing I’ve learnt is that God is the only one who can hold me up and through grief, I have known Him more than ever before.  His faithfulness is true and, when those around me don’t understand or are dealing with their own grief, He whispers quietly, ‘I know, I know, I know.’  In those times His hope has resonated within my heart.  In my weakness His grace is sufficient for me, His power will be made perfect (2 Cor.12:9) - and it’s never been so true, or so necessary, before.