A Wondrous and Real Thing — Faithfulness

By christiana · May 27, 2026

This article was written in Chinese within a Chinese context. It consists of reflections after reading, along with some extended thoughts and inspirations, written between 2022 and 2023. For Chinese people, the logic concerning “faith” in it can be quite difficult to grasp.

Below is a passage from Bodo Schäfer’s "The Road to Financial Freedom":

“Many people are willing to help those who are poorer than themselves. But before doing so, they first want to become wealthy. The first person they want to help is themselves. But this doesn’t work. Without sowing, there can be no harvest.

Once, there was a stingy farmer who bought a new piece of land. Before making further investments, he wanted to be sure that his investment would yield returns.

So he sat at the edge of the field, observing it. He said to himself: ‘If this land can bring me a good harvest in autumn, then I will buy some seeds to sow next year. But first, the land must prove that it is worth my investment.’ Naturally, the farmer ended up deeply disappointed.

In agriculture, there is a well-known principle: you must sow first, and only then can you reap. This understanding—sowing before harvesting—enabled humanity to transition from hunting to settled life.”

When I first read this passage, thoughts poured out like a spring. I couldn’t even bring myself to nap during lunch break; I wrote several long paragraphs in one go. I’ve been wanting to share them ever since.

(Some expressions may not be entirely accurate; I won’t revise them for now. There are some faith-related elements, but they do not hinder understanding.)

❤️ Reflections

It’s fascinating—“those who believe are saved / gain wealth / receive love”—this follows the same logic as “justification by faith.” Gradually, I’ve come to realize that faith (or “belief”) is everywhere in life. In fact, we live by faith.

For example, when a healthy you lies down tonight, do you know that you will wake up alive tomorrow? Not necessarily. It’s only based on past experience and knowledge that you assume it’s highly probable—perhaps 99.999999%. That makes it easier for you to have faith. Most activities in life work the same way, including your job.

But what about things you find hard to believe? Faith becomes difficult. For instance: Will you pass an exam? Will an illness improve? Will tithing truly bring blessings as God promises? These things don’t happen daily, aren’t experienced by everyone, and aren’t reproducible like scientific experiments—so they’re harder to verify. The more something has been validated by experience and knowledge—the higher its probability—the easier it is for people to have faith.

But perhaps it shouldn’t be this way.

At its core, everything is impermanent and unknown. We actually have no control over the future. Only God holds certainty.

The earlier examples are extremes; let’s consider something in between. For instance, a person believes they have a certain talent. A friend of mine firmly believe in his comprehension ability—he believes his reading and sharing will always be of high quality. As for me, I deeply believe in my talent for reading aloud (recitation, it’s an art form in China) and drawing—almost blindly so. Because of this faith, I keep doing these things boldly, and I’ve indeed achieved results.

But do I really have such talent? It’s intangible, invisible. If I entered a recitation competition, I might not perform well. So is this faith groundless, even absurd? And yet, it is precisely this faith that might enable great accomplishments.

Conversely, if I don’t believe I have the ability to adapt quickly, or that I can manage finances well—then I truly won’t do well in those areas.

So our lives unfold according to what we believe.What you believe is what you experience.

Therefore, one should always pray for God to open oneself—open, and open further—so that blessings, gifts, grace, and abilities may flow freely. Do not assume you already know. Do not assume you can control or predict. Do not grip tightly, limit, or block the flow. Simply ask for more faith.

❤️ Further Reflection

It is precisely because “this land cannot prove right now that it is worth investing in” that faith is needed. Why can’t it prove that there will be a harvest in autumn? Because that lies in "the future".

Because "the future" cannot be brought into the present for you to see, faith is required.

Why can’t we see the future? Because we live within a one-way timeline: past, present, future—yesterday, today, tomorrow—cause and effect. It cannot be reversed.

Only God exists outside this timeline; He directly “sees” our future.

But our reality exists "within TIME". This was established from the beginning—it is a law, just like “the wages of sin is death.” That is why God tells us: you must believe.

This also answers, from one perspective, the question: Why must I believe in order to receive this gift? Why not just give it to me directly? Why must I reach out to accept it?

Because if we do not believe nor accept, we will not live according to faith. Our life would be one without faith—or with only the most basic form of it. If a person has a little faith, they experience a little of the life within faith. To experience a “wonderful and abundant” life, faith is indispensable.

And if even such a life requires faith, what about eternal life? Isn’t that even harder to prove? Harder to show you? Without faith, how could one obtain it? (Proving an autumn harvest is far easier—based on knowledge and experience, its probability is high, and people can more easily generate faith.) Tell me: if someone has entered eternity—having died in the flesh—how could they return to prove it to you? How could they tell you what comes after? How could they say, “I’ve experienced it; it’s truly like this”?

Well—there actually is such a one. Jesus!

How marvelous.

And so God asks us, because of Jesus, to have faith—**the greatest kind, the kind least grounded in worldly experience.

❤️ Reflection Again

Faith and anxiety coexist—but they are negatively correlated.

If you believe there’s a 99.99999% chance you’ll wake up tomorrow, you won’t worry at all tonight—you’ll sleep peacefully. (Though someone with sudden illness or recent poor health might feel differently.)

If your child has always been healthy, you won’t worry every day—you believe they will grow well.

But if you lack faith in something, anxiety arises. For example: Will you pass an upcoming exam? Will tomorrow’s presentation to your boss go smoothly?

Yet fundamentally, these situations are no different—they only differ in probability. **None of them is 100% certain. We are all living by faith.

So: more faith, less anxiety.

Then reverse the logic—start by having more faith.

—But on what basis? Should we believe without reason?

Yes. It need not be based on prior knowledge or experience.

In daily life, stronger faith often comes from past experiences—ours or others’—from things that have already happened: “This is something I do every day; today will definitely be fine.” But this foundation doesn’t truly hold, because we have no real control over the future. No need for examples—we don’t even know what will happen next.

Yet the human brain resists this lack of control. Its mechanism is to learn, summarize, predict, and judge—to gain a more accurate sense of control. This thinking mind is the “small self,” the “old self.” What we need is to transcend it and unite with a greater consciousness.

Thus, faith itself can be “without reason.”* It does not belong to worldly logic.***

As humans, when we desire a certain outcome, we inevitably worry. A fully spiritual life is extremely difficult for us; the brain still leans toward prediction, even though its predictive power is limited.

It may take many rounds of practice to become truly courageous—**to believe without a trace of doubt.

💙

The above were only some thoughts at the time (March 10, 2022). Now, after reading more material and gaining new understandings about faith, love, limiting beliefs, and the laws by which the universe operates, these ideas have come to feel quite basic. Some of the expressions may not be entirely accurate.

We do not, in fact, have no control over the future—because, as mentioned above, things unfold according to our faith. Therefore, “none of us can accurately predict the future, yet all of us see our dreams come true” (from the book). You might say: I haven’t seen my dreams come true. But that is because you did not truly believe; instead, you chose what you wanted—perhaps the easier path, or perhaps, for various reasons, the desire to maintain the status quo. Faith may not be easy for a very long time.

Faith is even a principle of “creation,” because we, in a sense, share in God’s creative power. And based on God’s boundless love—since God is love itself—He fulfills us according to our faith. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” So you begin to understand how important it is to transform one’s thinking, to remove limiting beliefs, to remain joyful and free from anxiety, and why vision matters—why it is important to sense one’s life mission, purpose, calling, or whatever one chooses to call it. Within that faint and intangible sense of faith and blueprint lies your remarkable creative potential.

How to obtain faith, and what comes after believing, is a later topic—we will return to it another time.

“Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”— Matthew 21:22
“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”— Mark 11:23–24
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”— Hebrews 11:1

💙 One final point.

You may have noticed that the rather “extraordinary” thoughts above originated from a book about becoming wealthy**. This is not surprising, because money itself is a form of flowing energy; it is not an exaggeration to say it is a somewhat “transcendent” existence. It is also closely connected to many fundamental questions in life—vision, self-exploration, personal development, and so on. The book also speaks of gratitude, giving, and miracles. The author understands—understands the invisible laws of how things operate.

When reading the earlier parts of the book, one might momentarily think: "Wait, what am I reading? Isn’t this The Courage to Be Disliked? Isn’t the book…?" One cannot help but marvel at how truths resonate across domains. Whether starting from wealth, love, philosophy, psychology, medicine, or law, everything ultimately seems to converge toward the same thing.

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