The bill to fix it was $30,000. The Church in 1947—trying to open the doors of Ambassador College—had a weekly income of $2,500, and it was already spent on other functions of God’s Work. So when Herbert W. Armstrong was told that the building the Church had acquired to serve as the main college building did not meet the codes to qualify as a classroom building, he was devastated.
In Volume 2 of his Autobiography, Mr. Armstrong wrote: “It became almost impossible to sleep nights. I never lost faith—really. I never doubted the outcome. Yet I had not yet learned the total, implicit, trusting faith that can relax and leave it quietly in God’s hands. I was under terrific strain. It was literally multiple nightmares condensed into a super one!”
Mr. Armstrong even stated that on one occasion he “almost snapped” and asked God to let him die during the night. “It was not until early 1949 that things eased up. By then I had come to the place that I had to pray in final desperation for ‘six months’ grace’ from this constant harassment. I humbly asked God to consider that I was human, with human weaknesses, and please to give me six months’ rest from the terrible ordeal. He did.”
So God let up when Mr. Armstrong asked Him to. God typically has us stay in the trial until we learn what we need to learn. But by easing up on Mr. Armstrong, that respite actually caused Mr. Armstrong to learn something he might not have learned otherwise: “And during that respite I finally learned how to relax in faith, and shift the weighty burden of it over onto Christ!”
By 1949, he says, he was able to learn a particular lesson in faith: the lesson of relaxed faith.
Faith That Removes Fear and Anxiety
It is possible for us to have faith in an outcome and still not relax in that faith! The college did open in 1947, and the $30,000 bill was miraculously paid. We see from that story two different aspects of faith: a faith in the ultimate, promised outcome, and a deeper faith that eases our mind along the way.
Lamentations 3:25-26 read: “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.”
Does the phrase “quietly wait” describe us throughout our trials?
Notice this example from the faith chapter—Hebrews 11. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter …. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:23-24, 27).
Not only did Moses and his parents walk “by faith”—they weren’t even afraid!
This was not just belief in an outcome. It was lack of fear along the way—lack of strain and anxiety.
Jesus Christ told His disciples: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on” (Luke 12:22). He meant for them not to be anxious, as the Greek implies. Verse 25 carries on with this idea: “And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?”
What good does our worrying do us? “If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (verse 28).
This type of anxiety indicates a real faith problem. There’s faith there, but it’s very little, Christ said.
He sums up with this point: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (verse 32). The moral is, don’t be overly worried or anxious about things we have no control over, and fear not!
When Mr. Armstrong finally learned in early 1949 this aspect of faith, he wrote: “God has enabled me not only to trust Him for the final outcome, but to let faith remove the strain of anxiety” (ibid; emphasis added).
We must ask God to perfect our faith—to let that faith in the outcome remove the associated strain and stress of trials.
Christ also taught His disciples this faith lesson: “If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall … say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done” (Matthew 21:21). In trials of faith, do we not feel as though a mountain is weighing us down? It takes faith to move that mountain off our shoulders and onto Christ and our Father—to remove that strain. It takes relaxed faith!
Christ desires to bear those burdens for us, therefore He desires us to have relaxed faith. 1 Peter 5:7 says, “[L]et all your anxieties fall upon him, for his great interest is in you” (Moffatt).
God says “all your anxieties”—not just the big ones. We need to build faith in the small things too—to where we have no anxieties, just faith in God!
How Is Relaxed Faith Developed?
Mr. Armstrong tells us, “This lesson of faith does not come easily. Sometimes it is achieved only through punishing experience” (ibid).
That $30,000 renovation bill put the Church behind on some payments to a major radio station. In addition, a couple of powerful radio stations had already been dropped. “It was a frustrating dilemma,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “I knew God had opened the way for the college. I knew the Eternal wanted the college. I knew the Work of God could not continue to grow without the college. But I knew also God wanted us on the air. He had called me to proclaim Christ’s gospel” (ibid).
At this juncture, Mr. Armstrong had to reduce the college schedule to half time. This was the summer of 1948—before he had learned the lesson of relaxed faith. “But somehow I knew God wanted neither dropped,” Mr. Armstrong wrote, referring to the college and the broadcasting work. “I had supreme and abiding faith that He would see us through. True, I had not learned to have relaxed faith. I continued to allow the strain of this situation to punish me. The following year I was to learn the secret of relaxed faith ….” (ibid).
Mr. Armstrong’s lack of relaxed faith induced stress, strain and worry, which punished him! How often do our trials feel like punishing experiences? Perhaps we wonder why God is punishing us—but is it our shallow faith that is punishing us? Have we learned the secret of faith that Mr. Armstrong said was relaxed faith?
Some 30 years later, Mr. Armstrong wrote in the Good News about this lesson: “You are carrying a lot of worries and fears and troubles that you don’t need to carry! … What needless pains some have been suffering. What needless fears and worries you may have been carrying around” (May 1980).
How many of our “trials” stem simply from a lack of relaxed faith? How often is it just a matter of perspective? If we haven’t learned relaxed faith, our trials can be greater than they need to be.
“God is giving you these trials to perfect your faith!” editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in The Epistle of James. “Patient endurance proves that we have quality faith and love. … The more God tries us, the more we should trust Him!”
James wrote: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed” (James 1:5-6).
Mr. Flurry wrote, “Wavering faith won’t get a response from God” (ibid). Relaxed faith is unwavering faith that puts your mind at ease.
Here are four ways to increase in relaxed faith.
1. Pray to Discern Your Part and God’s
Pray for the wisdom to distinguish everything you can do from what is completely out of your control.
“When troubles or emergencies arise, we should be tremendously concerned!” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “We should be ‘on our toes’ to do whatever is our part, but trusting God in relaxed faith to guide us and to do His part which we cannot do for ourselves. We should be freed from destructive strain and worry” (op. cit.).
We usually punish ourselves by wrestling for influence over areas that are out of our control.
Pray for the guidance and help in doing the things we can do, and pray for God to do the things we cannot do.
“We need to learn that God does not do all things for us. He does many things in, and through us. We have our part to do. But there are some things we cannot do, and which we must rely on Him to do, wholly, for us. It takes wisdom to know which is which” (ibid). And wisdom is something we can ask for in faith, nothing wavering (James 1:5-6).
When Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, learned that a huge alliance of Moabites and Ammonites was coming to make war with him, naturally, he “was afraid,” as rendered in the Moffatt translation of 2 Chronicles 20:3.
“Is fear your usual reaction, too?” Mr. Armstrong asked. “Do you not first fear and worry, and then either try to run from this trouble or else try to meet it in your own power and strength—with your own thinking and planning and doing?” (Good News, May 1980).
So Jehoshaphat prayed, and God answered: “Fear not, falter not before this vast army … You will not need to do any fighting; take up your position, stand still, and watch the victory of the Eternal …” (verses 15-17; Moffatt).
Jehoshaphat obeyed. The Israelites began singing praises to God as they marched out, and God set an ambush against the alliance to where the armies turned on each other.
“Jehoshaphat did not merely leave this trouble with God and then do nothing about it himself. First, he prayed, and asked for wisdom, guidance and help. Then he did what God said. He had to do his part—but the battle was God’s …. [Jehoshaphat] merely did his own part. But he believed God and relied on God” (ibid).
2. Prayerfully take action
In his Autobiography, Mr. Armstrong talks about relaxed faith as a faith that is coupled with works (as James 2 illustrates). It is not faith that we work up—but faith does require action on our part. “Now I was able to cast the burdens on the living Christ,” Mr. Armstrong wrote, “meanwhile leaping to action to pray intensively for guidance, and to energetically DO whatever was in my own power to do—but in a faith that was relaxed and confident, trusting God with the results.”
In the April 1980 Good News, Mr. Armstrong related the story of the college almost folding up before it started: “I couldn’t see how it was possible for God to do it—but I didn’t need to see how. …
“Meanwhile, I did everything in my power to do my part. I was literally ‘on my toes,’ … trying to overlook nothing—and all the while wondering whether God would use any of the lines of activity I was employing or provide the need some altogether different way. Well, the way He did it was totally unexpected—but He did it! That’s all that matters, isn’t it? I didn’t do it, He did it! He kept His promise—He always does!”
Sometimes God will use our actions to solve the problem. Whatever it is, don’t hold back. That is faith in action—faith with works!
Our editor in chief applied that philosophy to the six-year court battle over Mystery of the Ages. He had a relaxed faith through the ordeal but was constantly on the offensive, applying methods of human effort that God may have used to work His miracles. But God ultimately did not use those methods—those of seeking justice from the legal system. God awarded justice completely outside of man’s judicial system—a true miracle!
3. Be instant in prayer
We must be in a constant attitude of prayer.
The Apostle Paul says to be “patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Throughout our trials, we must keep that line of communication open. And notice how that is connected directly to being “patient in tribulation”!
The fact that God instructs us to do our normal daily prayers in private, on our knees, does not mean we cannot talk to Him at other times in addition. Wherever we may be, we can pray in our minds immediately.
How that can relax us! To know we can put forth a prayer to our heavenly Father wherever we are, in whatever situation or conundrum we find ourselves.
The Apostle Paul wrote a marvelous passage on this subject, found in Philippians 4. He charges us: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (verses 6-7). Paul had peace that passed all understanding; he had learned the secret of relaxed faith.
One way he achieved that is found in verse 11: “Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”
That brings us to our fourth point.
4. Be content in the state you are in
The peace of contentment comes from having thanksgiving while we make requests of God.
Are we truly thankful for the “state” in which we currently exist?
Imagine where you are right now is point A, and where you would like to be is point B. Point B could be a material possession, a state of living, relief from a certain pressure, anything.
If all you can think of is being at point B, then anything that falls short of point B could seem a huge trial. But if you do as Paul commanded, and be content with point A, then anything beyond point A is a huge blessing! It is all a matter of perspective. The exact same circumstance between point A and point B would cause one person to view it as a trial, while another (content in whatever state they’re found) would see it as a massive blessing.
Again, how often are our trials the result of a perspective warped by a lack of relaxed faith?
A Gift From God
Since faith is a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit, it is a gift from God. The previous points, therefore, deal with specific things we should request of God, so He can supply us with more of His faith! Then Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), will help us perfect that faith! In fact, God says we should specifically be asking for deliverance from our fears—or relaxed faith! (Psalm 34:4).
Pray for the wisdom to know our part versus God’s part; pray for guidance as you take action; pray continuously through the trial; and pray for the contentment and peace that passes all understanding!
As Mr. Armstrong concluded in his April 1980 Good News article on faith, “[T]he development of patience is one of the purposes of your existence! So if God puts you to the test and tries your faith, rejoice and praise Him for using this experience to create in you more enduring faith, greater patience—two high points of holy character! … So trust Him! Keep on trusting Him. Be patient! The answer is sure! Arise from your bed of doubt and walk the walk of faith!”