Let us think over this matter of expense and begin with an old story. Jonah paid his fare to go to Tarshish, fleeing from the presence of the Lord, and the cost was far more than silver and gold, it was a tempest, a great fish, and a descent into the depths. You speak of great accomplishments in all your companies to subsidize a daughter’s education, a marriage, and a relocation. This is an honest desire, but I must ask you to examine the fare you are paying. Is there any business practice, any partnership, any invoice or compromise that is a flight from the voice of the Most High? Men talk of profit, but what is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you find your ledger stained with that which cannot abide the light of Christ’s countenance, you will have to give it up sooner or later. You may as well do it now, before, like Jonah, you pay a far heavier fare to your own grievous hurt.
Concerning the ministry of reconciliation you long to see, let me urge you to mistake the office for the heart. You ask for a great impact for the absolute salvation of named souls and billions worldwide. This is an objective fit for the heart of God. Yet, observe what the Spirit says through the Apostle: “God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” It is not a venture to be funded by business success, as if the kingdom were a stock exchange where we earn one thing to pay for another. That is a common error. Some pretend that religion is a scheme for putting money into the cause, but I can truly say, and every true minister knows, that the call to preach is not a trade but a sacred woe. If any man serves the Lord for any reason less than a divine, burning compulsion to speak of Him who has healed his sin-sick soul, his ministry will wither at the root.
Your prayer runs toward marriage fees. Raise your eyes higher still to a marriage not built with money. You ask the Lord to be a Husband to His Church, but have you settled in your mind that marriage is cemented by mutual love and a bond that makes two become one? Before you ask for provision for an earthly wedding, I ask you: are you absolutely wedded to Christ? He is the Lamb who gave Himself for His bride, and the true marriage between your soul and Him is not a transaction of barter, give me business success and I will serve You, but a sovereign choice of grace on His part and a voluntary, grateful surrender on yours. Can you venture to hope for that marriage if your heart trusts in your companies to supply what only His wounds can purchase?
The fever of human ambition begs to be healed, and when we are healed, we rise to minister. But what is the first business of a soul that has been raised from the fever of sin? It is not to go build a great platform, but to sit at the feet of Jesus listening to His word, and then to serve in the kitchen of the church, perhaps unseen. The woman who is truly healed “rose and ministered unto them”, her service was immediate, domestic, and voluntary. She did not say, “Wait until I have achieved great accomplishments.” The Lord be thanked that He left room in His Church for the ministry of the poorest and most obscure! If all His people were rich, how much service would be smothered by purple and fine linen!
Do not be dazzled by the big letters of great business success. The choicest part of God’s books are printed in small characters. Learn not from the great but from the good. You know the man is abroad attending to his business, and he does not know the discomforts of home, but the Lord knows the heart. Speculations in business, risks even in the most solid trading, these weave a spider’s web. But there is no speculation in believing God, no risk in trusting Him! He who hangs the world upon nothing can bring His people to have nothing and yet to possess all things. If He prospers your hand, it will be that you may have wherewith to give bountifully, not to build a tower of Babel for your own fame.
Yet I hear a cry in your words for the salvation of many. This is a noble fire, and we cannot let it quench. The harvest night of the Christian ministry comes when souls are truly reconciled, not merely counted. But how shall hearts be kept from breaking if conversions never come? By throwing ourselves upon the proof of our ministry, that the power rests not in our plans but in our confessed weakness. “When I am weak, then am I strong.” The way to success in the kingdom is by a constant sense of personal unworthiness.
Therefore, let your prayer be lifted higher than a catalogue of names and dates. Cry out, “Lord, cut deep. Let me know the worst of myself. Am I a hypocrite? Let me not go into 2026 trusting in the rain of accomplishment, but in the God who sends the rain. Be my business, be my marriage portion, be my relocation, be my one necessity.” If you will have Christ for your minister at this moment, and for your reconciliation, the work is already done, all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ. Go, then, and speak of Him, not as one seeking to subsidize the gospel by trade, but as one who, having found the pearl of great price, joyfully sells all that he has to buy the field. The promise is sure: Call upon me, and I will answer thee. But the Lord who answers is holy, and He will not be used as a stepping-stone to a greater god called Accomplishment. Let Him be your all. Then shall you find the Word prospering where He sends it, for the promise to the man who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night is not that his companies flourish, but that he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The leaves do not boast, but they remain green, even in drought, for the sure root drinketh from the hidden stream.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
