Here’s the challenge Ray Higdon puts on the table: most people who are struggling financially claim they’re trusting God to provide.
But their posture, their decisions, and their daily actions tell a different story entirely.
Faith and Fear Are Diametrically Opposed
If you’re emotionally distraught about your financial situation, you are not walking in faith. You may have a flicker of belief that God will provide, but that’s not the same thing.
Walking in faith looks a certain way. It’s walking upright and powerfully, despite the circumstances. It’s not the same as white-knuckling through fear while whispering a prayer.
James 2 is often quoted as “faith without works is dead.” But Ray points out that the works referenced there aren’t good deeds in the conventional sense. The example the text uses is Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son. That’s not a merit badge moment. That’s obedience, even when the cost seems impossible.
Abraham moved forward because he trusted God’s promise. He wasn’t calculating risk. He was acting on a covenant.
Posture Check: Faith and fear cannot coexist in the same posture. If your financial struggle has you paralyzed or shrinking, that’s fear, not faith. The two are diametrically opposed.
When You Don’t Walk in Faith, You Only See Cost
Ray shares a personal example from 2023. He was facing a $1.1 million hotel bill for one of his events. Not a small number. And he received a clear sense in prayer that he needed to bring in a major speaker.
The pricing came back for two options. Both were over $200,000. Well above anything he’d ever paid a speaker before.
The old version of Ray would have bargained with that. Hoped for a discount. Waited for a safer year.
Instead, he felt called to book the higher option.
When you don’t walk in faith, you only see cost. You see the money leaving your hands. You don’t see the investment, the relationship, the door that gets opened on the other side.
He booked John Maxwell. The event was remarkable. A friendship developed. The obedience paid off in ways that a cost-focused mindset would have talked him out of.
Posture Check: Most people see the price of everything and the value of nothing. That’s not discernment. That’s fear wearing the mask of wisdom.
Obedience Is the Proof of Faith
Ray tells another story. In 2019, he invested $100,000 in six hours of coaching with Grant Cardone. He’s shared publicly that the first hour alone helped him generate an additional million dollars that year by challenging how he ran his events.
He tells that story everywhere. Most people who heard it nodded and moved on.
One person who heard it went and did the same thing. That person was Alex Hormozi, back in 2020, before most people knew his name.
The difference wasn’t information. Both people heard the same story. The difference was action taken in obedience to a clear signal, not paralysis in the face of a price tag.
You’ve probably felt nudges like this. Called to go to an event. Called to hire a coach. Called to write a book you don’t yet have the money to publish. Called to make a move that your logic says you can’t afford.
The question isn’t whether the price is real. The question is whether you trust the one who’s prompting you more than you trust the balance in your account.
Posture Check: Obedience precedes provision. David didn’t wait for Goliath to get smaller before he picked up the rocks. He moved in faith toward the giant while his circumstances still said no.
The Parable of the Talents Applies to You
Jesus says in the parable of the talents: those who have not, what they have will be taken away.
That’s a hard verse to sit with. But Ray invites you to consider what it means for someone who is constantly operating from a posture of lack, of holding on, of protecting the tiny pile they barely have.
Most people who are struggling financially are firmly in the “have not” space. And the pattern tends to continue because the mindset that keeps you small is the same mindset that keeps you from the investments, the events, and the obediences that would break the pattern.
This isn’t a prosperity gospel message. It’s not about naming and claiming. It’s about whether your daily decisions reflect genuine trust or dressed-up fear.
Walking in faith shows up in how you move. It shows up in what you say yes to when logic says no. It shows up in whether you can hold steady when the money doesn’t land on the day it was promised.
Ray received a large payment that was supposed to arrive on a Friday. Then Monday. Two weeks passed. Three weeks. He sat in prayer each time and received the same answer: wait.
He waited. The authorization came. The money arrived.
That’s not a story about passivity. It’s a story about operating from a different frequency than fear.
What Walking in Faith Actually Looks Like
It’s not perfection. Ray admits that even when he booked the higher-priced speaker option, there was still fear present. He walked in faith, but not completely without it.
Faith is a practice, not a destination.
But the movement has to be toward obedience. Toward the calling. Toward the investment, the event, the book, the decision you keep talking yourself out of because the cost feels too high.
The question isn’t whether you believe God can provide. The question is whether your actions reflect that belief.
If every answer in prayer has you shrinking instead of moving, that’s worth examining.
Check out Ray’s book Faith Driven Wealth on Amazon if you’re working through the tension between money and faith. It’s a practical resource for exactly this kind of moment.
Excerpt: Struggling financially but saying you have faith? Ray Higdon breaks down what walking in faith actually looks like and why fear is keeping you stuck.
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