{"id":4709,"date":"2013-08-29T12:01:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T16:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/?p=4709"},"modified":"2013-08-16T22:24:17","modified_gmt":"2013-08-17T02:24:17","slug":"when-faith-doesnt-seem-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/08\/when-faith-doesnt-seem-to-work.html","title":{"rendered":"When Faith Doesn\u2019t Seem to Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>I have strong faith and always encourage building it to get what you need in life. Yet there are times when things just don\u2019t work out. When your prayers aren\u2019t answered and you feel they should be you can lose faith and feel unsupported. But you shouldn\u2019t! Virginia (Ginny) Welch<\/strong><\/a> is my guest today. She\u2019s the author of What to Do When the Blessings Stop ? When God Sends Famine<\/strong><\/a>, her third book and has contributed to a variety of publications since acquiring a master\u2019s degree in communications. Virginia works full-time as a writer and editor.<\/p>\n

What To Do When The Blessings Stop<\/strong>
\nby Virginia (Ginny) Welch<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

How do you counsel the Christian who never succeeds? Who never achieves his or her timely business plans, even with judicious planning and hard work? Who loses home and business? Do you tell this person to pray more? Study the Bible more? Keep up the positive confession? Is God angry? What hope do you offer?\"Blessings<\/a><\/p>\n

Or is this person you? Does nothing you do prosper? Do your prayers for financial deliverance go unanswered? Are you secretly tempted to believe that things will never get better? Most important, do you look back and remember a time in your life, unlike now, when the blessings of God were a daily experience? Perhaps so many areas of your life are in the dumps that you are beginning to think that an unseen force is arrayed that against you, opposing you at every turn in your efforts to succeed. Your assessment of your life may be right on target. There may be an unseen force opposing you, standing in the way of your success, and it may be God. Your grievous circumstances could be the result of famine, a painful experience God sends to correct his people.<\/p>\n

I have experience with famine. Let me tell you about it. Prior to 1991 I was accustomed to having my prayers answered. My husband had a rewarding job with the federal government and I worked as an editor at a prestigious publishing house. We had two healthy children and lived in a fine home. We tithed, gave offerings, and stayed in the black. We attended a dynamic church and by any measure, we were happy.<\/p>\n

But everything fell apart in1991. My husband\u2019s employer\u2019s issued a job transfer, but we could not sell our home and were forced to transfer to Virginia without a sale. Soon we were making payments on two homes and began to fall behind on our Alabama mortgage. Finally the mortgage deadline came and went, and though I cried to God to send a buyer, He did not deliver us. We lost our house.<\/p>\n

Yet strangely, the day after it foreclosed our real estate agent received seven offers on the house, one for the full asking price. And though I\u2019d never struggled with unemployment, after the move I couldn\u2019t get work anywhere. I was unemployed for months then years. Then my husband\u2019s employer said we owed moving expense overpayments. Then there was the IRS bill. Then the car accident and unpaid damages. Thousands of dollars of debt we couldn\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n

So went our lives for several years. During that time I kept thinking that if I performed all the right faith exercises, I could make all the bad stuff go away, but I was only half right. Faith can move a mountain. But what we faced was not a mountain. It was famine. This is the word God spoke into my spirit. I had never heard teaching on the subject, yet I knew that what we were experiencing was exactly that and that it was from God.<\/p>\n

God still sends famine. But what He sends now is different from the drought and pestilence you read about in the Old Testament. And don\u2019t confuse famine like my family experienced with the mere annoying roadblocks Satan throws in your path. Famine is different. You can\u2019t move it out of the road by blasting away at it with your faith.<\/p>\n

God uses the weakness of human nature to work his will, because human nature does not change. We are pressured by lack and motivated by plenty. Repeatedly in the Bible God used an effective method to awaken his people from spiritual sloth and pressure them to repent: He cut off their food supply\u2014famine\u2014until they were so hungry they cried to Him for mercy. Even the prodigal son in the New Testament returned to his father\u2019s house only because he was hungry. Famine isn\u2019t God\u2019s first choice, but it is effective. That\u2019s why God sent the prophet Haggai to the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. They had grown indifferent to the things of God and had begun to put their own homes and farms above the rebuilding of the wall and the temple. So God sent Haggai to them to point out the connection between their disobedience and their failure to prosper in any area:<\/p>\n

Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Haggai 1:6<\/p>\n

Got holes in your bag? If it\u2019s famine and not ordinary faith trials, it will look like this:
\n1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Your finances will feel it first. Nothing you do prospers.
\n2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Famine works over a long period. King David didn\u2019t pray about the famine Israel experienced until it had besieged the land for three full years.
\n3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0There is always a reason for famine. Mostly likely you have failed to do something He told you to do or have not stopped doing something He told you to stop doing.
\n4.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0You should go to God to find out the reason for famine. That\u2019s what David did, and God did not rebuke him for asking why.
\n5.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0You may suffer famine because of someone else\u2019s sin. Israel suffered famine during David\u2019s reign though God sent it because of Saul\u2019s sin.
\n6.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Famine travels behind unanswered prayer. If a critical financial deadline passes\u2014and it\u2019s usually more than one\u2014and you are not delivered, it is time to stop praying for financial relief and begin to ask why.<\/p>\n

The famine God sends is a long, thorough ordeal meant to get your attention, to force you to examine yourself, to make deep and lasting changes in your soul. When He\u2019s done with you, He alone will remove the famine and restore what you have lost. He restores you and what\u2019s yours because He loves you. He sends famine for the same reason. The best advice I can give you, after what I\u2019ve been through, is to repent if you\u2019re being convicted and put God first.<\/em>
\n**************<\/p>\n

Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! Take the 31 Days of Self-Love Commitment<\/strong><\/a> and get my book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways<\/a><\/strong> for free at http:\/\/howdoiloveme.com<\/a><\/strong>. Read my 2013 31 Days of Self-Love Posts HERE<\/strong><\/a>. Join the Self-Love Movement\u2122<\/strong><\/a>! on Facebook<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Please leave comments under my posts so we can stay connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have strong faith and always encourage building it to get what you need in life. Yet there are times when things just don\u2019t work out. When your prayers aren\u2019t answered and you feel they should be you can lose faith and feel unsupported. But you shouldn\u2019t! Virginia (Ginny) Welch is my guest today. She\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[300,754,753],"class_list":["post-4709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-positive-mental-attitude","tag-faith","tag-unanswered-prayers","tag-virginia-welch"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Faith Doesn\u2019t Seem to Work - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2013\/08\/when-faith-doesnt-seem-to-work.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Faith Doesn\u2019t Seem to Work - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have strong faith and always encourage building it to get what you need in life. Yet there are times when things just don\u2019t work out. When your prayers aren\u2019t answered and you feel they should be you can lose faith and feel unsupported. But you shouldn\u2019t! Virginia (Ginny) Welch is my guest today. 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Let Me Count the Ways, a She's appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows, including Oprah, Howard Stern, and Good Morning America and has been quoted in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, and Men\u00b9s Health. After being a consummate People Pleaser who felt unworthy of getting her own needs met for many years, Daylle found a path of self-love that enabled her to build her self-esteem and reinvent herself into a dual career. She learned to get taken seriously without being overtly assertive when she became one of the first women to start an independent record label (on a dare!) and learned to play ball nicely and successfully in an industry dominated by men. To help independent musicians empower themselves, Daylle writes music business books for Billboard\/Random House, including the very popular Start & Run Your Own Record Labe and I Don't Need a Record Deal! Daylle's books have been translated into over 10 languages and are popular around the world. She speaks for colleges, organizations and corporations. Through her company, Project Self-Empowerment, Daylle creates programs and materials to help people empower themselves. One goal is to raise the money to self-publish her book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways and give it away for free in colleges and through organizations, to give thanks for all her blessings. Daylle uses her writing and speaking to help others find the kind of contentment and empowerment that she has.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/author\/dschwartz"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4714,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4709\/revisions\/4714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}