I will be vague on the details of the next story from my life and outcome-based faith.

About a year after Sharon’s death, I thought I heard God promising me a provision for a particular need and longing. This was a specific outcome, and I was surprised to have the thought so strongly. I wondered if God wanted to give me an encounter with His provision that would balance out my experience with Sharon’s death….. that this was something that I could trust Him for, a promise where I should practice outcome-based faith and experience Him providing. This idea took on more weight when I was talking to a friend a few days later and he shared that he had recently had a dream about me that was the exact fulfillment of the outcome that I thought I heard from God (which I had not shared with anyone)!

It was not my nature to put a lot of trust in a future outcome promised by God. But it was exciting to anticipate having a story of God making a longing come true in a dramatic way, a testimony about God showing up and meeting a need.

For a while, my life progressed with encouraging signs that the promised outcome was being fulfilled. But then things started to look like it might not happen. Some significant barriers to its fulfillment emerged. I thought, “Here is where I am supposed to practice outcome-based faith, to walk by faith and not by sight. Sure there are some barriers, but God can overcome them and I am supposed to believe that He will. This is not going to be like Sharon’s cancer where God did not intervene.” I even thought that my (unusual for me) trust in the specific outcome was a part of overcoming those barriers.

But the outcome did not happen, and I suffered more disappointment because of my practice of outcome-based faith. Worse, I felt like others were hurt because of my determination to walk by faith and not by sight for the outcome. If I had not adopted that approach, I would not have pursued the outcome as long in the face of the barriers and I would have spared myself and others some heartache. And part of that heartache for me was that the experience that I thought would be healing ended up having the opposite effect. It opened up wounds from Sharon’s cancer about feeling like I could not look to God to intervene and change the trajectory of how things would turn out.

So the story that I thought was going to balance my aversion to outcome-based faith from Sharon’s death ended up reinforcing the idea that outcome-based faith is a bad idea. All this explains why I balk when I hear teaching that encourages Christians to have faith for certain outcomes in their work and businesses. This feels like very shaky ground to me. I know that there are testimonies of this type of faith working out, and those stories are told with the teaching. But there are also stories like mine where an outcome-based faith can be damaging, bringing not only deep disappointment and disillusionment but harm. Imagine business plans based on a promised outcome that does not happen. This could lead to business loss resulting in layoffs or even bankruptcy.

So here I am still at the same place as the end of Outcome-based Faith II, but now you have a better idea of how my story impacts my thinking. More wrestling next week.