Editor's Note: In this bi-weekly update, Discipleship Training School student Michael Green from Britain who is participating in the multi-generational DTS in Kona with his wife and two small sons, sees a clear demonstration of YWAM's "faith in finances" practice.

Last Thursday both the FTSE and Dow Jones reached new six year lows. If I were a journalist, I would use words like plunged, plummeted, slumped and other stomach churning, fear inducing verbs. However, Thursday will be indelibly etched on my mind for other reasons. The image that I have is of Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM, calmly sitting in his chair and announcing that amongst the 600 or so YWAMers and friends gathered, an offering of $602,451 had just been collected. But I should probably back up a step or two and explain how we got to this point.

This academic quarter on the YWAM Kona campus, nearly 160 registered students failed to turn up. No one is quite sure as to why this happened, but it left a $600,000 hole in the campus’ finances. I’ve faced similar sized financial black holes in our business finances in the last year and my tendency has been to quietly run around in ever decreasing circles until exhausted, and quite dizzy, I fall to the ground in a shaking heap of pure panic – and then try to come up with some kind of logical solution to the problem. I’m beginning to understand that there just might be another way.

At the risk of losing a few readers, I’m going to draw a parallel from ancient Jewish military strategy – well, one battle to be precise. The king of the time, Jehoshaphat, was facing three enemy armies, any one of which could have annihilated the kingdom of Israel. If ever there was a time to run around in circles and collapse on the floor in panic, this was it. Instead they chose a different route, “We have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon (God)” (2 Chronicles 20:12). They sought the Lord, and He gave them an amazing military strategy: send out the unarmed worshipers and leaders in front of the army and . . . well, actually that was the sum total of the strategy.

We read this story with the benefit of hindsight knowing that God then threw the opposing armies into such confusion that they destroyed each other, but I can’t help but wonder what the harp player in the front row was thinking as he marched towards what looked like certain death. If he was anything like me, he was probably thinking that this was the most idiotic strategy that he had ever heard of and that being obedient to God was likely to prove fatal. However, what they sang as they approached the enemy was, “The Lord is good and His steadfast love endures forever.” That is some kind of faith!

The challenges that we currently face are unlikely to prove fatal, but the fear of losing a job, not having the money to pay the bills, our companies going bankrupt, are rooted in exactly the same thing – I’m not sure that God is going to come through for us this time. My life has been a witness to this. For years my faith has been in my cash flow projections, my bank account balance and my ability to provide for my needs.

One of the recurring themes of this DTS has been what it means to live life in the Spirit. I realized last week that my primary receptor of God’s word has been my mind. With years of our wonderful British education system, an endless diet of consulting frameworks and impeccable business logic, I am highly efficient at deducing what is logical, rational and reasonable. Anything that does not meet these criteria is quickly discarded. The problem with this is that sometimes God’s word to us is neither logical, rational nor reasonable. Just think of those worshippers taking on the opposing army’s crack troops – blitzkrieg with a harp! I can only wonder at how many times God has spoken to me and it has never made it past the filter of my mind.

I’m not talking about blind faith - that somehow everything will just work out how we want. That would be no different to putting “faith” in winning the lottery to get us out of our difficulties. However, I do believe that we were created to be in constant communion with the Holy Spirit through our spirit. I’m discovering that the discipline for me is to first receive God’s word into my spirit in order to discern if it is of the Lord. If my spirit is at peace, then my mind may be screaming that what I am about to do is utterly crazy, but my challenge is to simply obey and make room for God to do the impossible. I am absolutely convinced that life is much bigger, the possibilities infinitely greater, and our destiny so much more exciting when we are obedient to everything that God says, and not just what He says that appears logical to us.

So back to the $600,000 offering. Loren was utterly confident on Monday that we would have an offering three hundred times the size of the $2,000 offering of the previous Thursday. How could he be so confident? Logic would say that we would receive a similar size offering to the previous week. So how? The Lord spoke to him, and decades of obedience and receiving the word of the Lord in to his spirit meant that he could trust what his spirit was telling him over his logic and reason. On Thursday night, he didn’t rely on hype, he didn’t preach an emotional message, he didn’t focus on the consequences of not receiving the money. He simply told the story of what God has done through YWAM over the years and then had an offering taken as he calmly sat on his chair.

What I found most incredible was that when asked the next morning why he hadn’t been more excited as the offering total was announced, he replied that his time of greatest joy and excitement was when the Lord told him on Monday what He would do. After all, would you be more excited watching a video replay of a football match or seeing it “live” in the first place?

Last Thursday night was about much more than the campus’ finances. It was a demonstration of the triumph of faith over fear, the word of the Lord over logic, and the strategy of the Holy Spirit over cash-flow projections. Stock market highs and lows will come and go, but “the Lord is good and His steadfast love endures forever.” And in the words of Prince, “forever is a mighty long time”!