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Favormaxxing

Written by Gary Sheng with Nait Jones.

We never talk about God's favor.

I've almost never heard about it in church, even using different words for it. We're avoiding it, and I don't fully know why. Pastors will preach about grace, about mercy, about salvation. But favor? The idea that God actively intervenes in your circumstances, opens specific doors, puts you on specific people's minds? That makes people uncomfortable. It sounds too good. Too transactional. Too presumptuous.

But I believe in favor. I've experienced it again and again and again. And I think it's time to democratize it.

Favormaxxing is my word for it. I hijacked a meme on purpose.

You've heard of looksmaxxing. The youngsters love the word "maxxing." It means making a priority of something, optimizing relentlessly for it. The term was born on incel forums in 2015, rode TikTok's algorithm into the mainstream by 2023, and by 2026 has fully detached from its origins. Merriam-Webster added it.

There's sleepmaxxing (125 million TikTok posts), chinamaxxing (viral this month), even friction-maxxing (deliberately choosing inconvenience to build resilience). The spiritual space is almost completely empty. One pickup artist turned Eastern Orthodox convert wrote about "faithmaxing." That's it. The meme format that an entire generation speaks fluently has barely been touched by anyone serious about God.

Same energy, completely different target: God's favor.

God as Co-Founder​

If you're a business person: God is the best co-founder in the world.

If you're anyone: He's the best life partner you could have, if you're obedient.

Why say "best partner"? Because:

  • He's going to open doors for you
  • He's going to save your butt when you're in danger
  • He's going to give you a big break
  • He's going to be why someone with resources wants to back your vision
  • He's going to be why one of your future business partners, when praying, has you come up in her head

I've experienced God's favor again and again and again. I think a lot of why people don't see it this way is because they think everything is a coincidence. It's all random. I don't see it as random. I see God's intentionality. I feel undeserving for all of it, and so every time something good happens I see it as God's favor. That favor feels like it's growing, because the things that keep happening shouldn't happen at this rate if it's all random.

The reason I'm talking about this is not to brag. It's to democratize it.

What is the relationship between obedience and favor? To me, they're completely causal. It's like when clouds have enough condensation, then there's rain.

There's more nuance. An obedient person can experience great suffering because God allows it and thinks it may be great for them in that moment. I don't doubt that. But generally speaking: if God has told you to do something and be someone, and you consistently listen and act and emit a certain God-fearing, God-like quality, and when God tells you to do something very hard, you do it, I know people in my life that have been blessed beyond measure.

This is also what is written in the Bible. There are plenty of stories where God told someone to do something very difficult and he blessed them beyond what people at the time could have imagined. Biblical examples AND examples I've lived in my real life have confirmed the connection between obedience and favor.

"And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." (Deuteronomy 28:1-2)

Blessings that overtake you. Not blessings you chase. Not blessings you hustle for. Blessings that run you down because you're aligned.

As I wrote in Obedience Is Everything, Acts 5:32 says the Holy Spirit is literally given to those who obey. No obedience, no power. Favormaxxing extends this further: no obedience, no favor. Not because God is withholding love, but because favor flows through the channel of alignment. You can't receive a signal if your antenna is pointed the wrong way.

Malachi 3:10: The Conditional Blessing​

"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

God is saying: will I not bless you if you bless my house?

What is the house? Multiple things can be true. You may go to a building called the church, and it's a blessing on this earth, and you may feel called to give 10% because that's what you think God wants you to do. I'm not going to tell you otherwise. That works for you.

For me: the recipients of my tithes and blessings are often individuals that I believe are the church. They are the body of Christ. I posted about this, and it was amazing to me how little there was on the internet about how you can tithe to individuals.

I don't have an inner monologue. I don't hear voices. I don't see visions. But God speaks to me through feelings. God will tell me, "Send $772.77 to this person," and I'll be like, okay. That has actually detached me from money in an interesting way.

I hesitate to give overly prescriptive advice about tithing. But for me, what's worked is trusting the feeling that God is moving through me when he wants me to help and bless people, whether with my skills, my connections, my pro bono tech advice, or my money. That is how I believe he has wanted me to be obedient. (For more on this, see Sow Your Seeds Faithfully.)

The Open Hand​

You've heard the analogy: if you're holding something so tight in your hand, your hand is not open to receive. Giving to get. The equation is you have to give to get.

But how do you make sense of the conditional formula without doing it from a transactional place?

From my experience: it's typically not quid pro quo. I may give $2,000 to a person who doesn't have the network to get me a consulting contract. But the return comes from nowhere. Not from the place I gave to.

This is also why we intuitively feel weird about mega churches. As soon as you're on the hook for paying the rent of a church building, you're incentivized to not be truthful or nuanced about kingdom economics. The actual principle is far more mysterious and far more beautiful.

The Favormaxxing Stack​

If looksmaxxing has a "stack" (skincare, gym, mewing, wardrobe), favormaxxing has one too. But it's spiritual infrastructure, not vanity metrics.

Truth Maxxing​

You can't get away with it. You're not going to get away with it. If you're willing to lie to people, manipulate people, abuse people, pretend you believe in certain principles but act in a different way: clearly your system, your consciousness, your soul, has not been shocked enough to treat truth as important.

I honestly don't feel like I'm that virtuous. I feel like I'm logical. Actions need to line up with understanding. When they do, things move faster than any secular person could imagine. (See Why You Should Seek Truth Above Everything for more on this.)

Obedience Maxxing​

God will ask you to do something that you'll only understand later, or never. You have to be okay with that. That's the point of faith. (See What Faith Really Means.)

I recently turned down a five- and six-figure contract because I didn't feel like God wanted me to do it. When I say "I didn't feel like it," I mean I felt like God didn't want me to do it. People who know the numbers think I'm insane. But obedience isn't about what makes sense on a spreadsheet.

Sacrifice Reframed​

These words like "sacrifice" have lost their meaning over time, because it is not actually a trade-off. Once you're at a certain level of relationship with God, you're like, "Oh, I would have never wanted that anyways. This path that you have for me is just better in every way."

This isn't something that everyone agrees on. A lot of people believe that God has appointed some to suffer to show that life is still meaningful through suffering. I don't have a good explanation for that. What I know is this: for me, the things God has asked me to lay down have always been replaced by something I couldn't have imagined.

The Same Meta Game, Different Starting Points​

Everyone should want to be favormaxxing. Everyone should want to be flourishing. But your starting points and your best optimal ending point are different. God gives different instructions. The obedience is universal. The instructions are personal.

Faster Than Any Secular Person Could Imagine​

Here's what I've seen: when you share something that God told you to do, and it works, it works faster than any secular person could imagine. They're almost mad and triggered.

"Why did this person get shared with all of Sony management?" It's not because I toiled for 20 years. God told me to write this blog post, and I did it. The next challenge is unlocked not one week from now, but an hour from now.

When you're obedient, God accelerates the timeline. Not because you earned it, but because He can trust you with velocity. The disobedient get slow-walked because speed would destroy them. The obedient get fast-tracked because alignment means speed is safe.

Purity Matched with Purity​

When you have pure intent and you're purely seeking to please God and be obedient, that is when you start to experience things that exist outside of your will. You didn't create them. You didn't make them happen. You feel like there's something working on your behalf.

I prioritize loving people. And it's actually quite simple. Loving people and treating the people that God put in my life on the same mission, recognizing that God put us together and loving them in the way that they need to be loved for their own flourishing and for their mission. That's going to work out.

When you're being led by God, God will put people in your direction. Treat them with the level of respect they deserve as co-image bearers of God. It doesn't feel hard. It doesn't feel exhausting.

I feel blessed that my purity is increasingly being matched with partners that are increasingly pure, yet still capable and not naive. None of these people don't know that there's grave evil in the world. They've seen the Epstein files. They know. But they've chosen to build instead of despair.

Two Stories from the Same Breakfast Table​

I had breakfast recently with two men whose stories illustrate favormaxxing from different angles.

The Impulse Baptism​

The first had been drifting for years. Successful by the world's metrics, but spiritually checked out. Hadn't been inside a church in longer than he could remember. The kind of guy who would've laughed at the word "favormaxxing" six months ago.

Then he walked into a church he'd never been to. No plan. No agenda. The pastor did an altar call for baptism, and something inside him said: Stand up. He stood up. Got baptized. Went home confused about why he'd done it.

The next day, curiosity led him to reach out to a Christian friend about it. She sent him a Bible. He read for six hours straight.

He started fasting. Changed his diet. Gave up alcohol. Gave up substances. Not because someone told him to, but because God wanted him in clarity. He told me: "I didn't even know you could feel like this."

And now he's oversubscribed. Within a month of stepping into his calling, people are saying: "What's your number to come live with us for a week? We'll get you an Airbnb. Just look over the shoulders of our employees. Coach them." He didn't market himself. He didn't network. He obeyed, and favor followed.

From spiritually checked out to impulse baptism to six-hour Bible reading to fasting to oversubscribed. That's not a career plan. That's obedience producing favor at a speed that makes secular networking look like dial-up internet.

The Divine Phone Call​

The second man at that table was Nait. He'd been on his own walk with God for years. Not always a straight line, but a deepening one. Learning to hear the Spirit. Developing the discipline of saying yes in small things before God trusted him with big ones.

One evening, God impressed on his heart to check on someone. He called. That person was in crisis, emotionally destroyed. He ministered to them for hours.

And that person, someone with significant professional influence, looked up through tears and said: "What are you working on?"

When he explained, this person, in their lowest moment, offered to direct substantial resources toward making it happen. Seed money. Connections. Infrastructure. All from a single act of obedience: picking up the phone when God said call.

Two men at the same table. Different starting points. Different timelines of walking with God. Same result: obedience producing favor that no amount of hustling could replicate.

God's Algorithm​

You can create AGI. But the only one who knows how this all plays out is God, and He's going to keep humbling the people who keep trying to predict exactly how this plays out.

God's algorithm is maximally surprising, maximally entertaining, and maximally generous in giving us opportunity to change the world.

How does favor fit? God is so redeeming. He allows for bounce-back situations all the time. God loves the stories of disobedient children becoming super obedient. God can reverse decades of suffering and being behind if He wants to. But you have to be obedient. That's the input. Favor is the output. Not transactional, but causal.

The Two Economies​

There's a reason favormaxxing sounds foreign. We've been trained in the wrong economy.

The old world ran on leverage: "I own the things that compromise your image." Think about image in the context of Imago Dei. The old economy trafficked in corrupted images. The new world runs on reciprocity through transformation. You unlock someone's future, and they want to bless you back. Not because they're leveraged, but because they're grateful.

This works horizontally (person to person) and vertically (you to God). You can't do any amount of good that God can't outdo. But when you operate in genuine transformation, God can't help but to bless and trust you and pour out favor.

"Isn't This Just Prosperity Gospel?"​

I need to address this directly, because it's the first objection any thoughtful Christian will raise.

Let me be clear: I am not saying God doesn't want abundance for His people. He does. Deuteronomy 28 is an entire chapter of blessings for the obedient. Jesus said He came that we might have life "more abundantly" (John 10:10). The idea that God wants His children flourishing is biblical. I believe it fully.

The problem is not the theology of abundance. The problem is pastors who have abused the trust of their flock by turning that theology into a funnel for their own ministry. "Give $100 to this church, get $10,000 back." The transaction becomes the point. The relationship with God becomes secondary. And the whole system is designed to fund a building and a pastor's lifestyle rather than to encourage the individual, obedient path that each believer ought to walk down.

Favormaxxing says something different: align your entire life with God's specific instructions for you, and watch what He does with your obedience. The currency isn't dollars directed to a single ministry. It's trust. It's surrender. It's the willingness to do something that makes no sense on paper because the Holy Spirit said to. Your obedience is between you and God. Your generosity flows where He tells you, not where a pastor's rent payment demands.

I also can't pretend that favormaxxing guarantees material wealth. An obedient person can experience great suffering. Job was obedient. Paul was obedient. Jesus was obedient. Favor doesn't mean comfort. It means God's hand is on your life, and that hand sometimes leads through valleys. What I can say is this: every person I know who walks in deep obedience would tell you they wouldn't trade their life for anything. The favor isn't always financial. Sometimes it's peace that doesn't make sense. Sometimes it's relationships that shouldn't exist. Sometimes it's a clarity of purpose that makes the suffering meaningful.

The abusive prosperity preachers took a real principle and corrupted it by making it transactional and institutional. I'm trying to recover the real thing: the biblical pattern where obedience and divine favor are causally linked, but the path of that obedience is personal, and the form of that favor is God's decision, not yours.

The Shift​

It changed when I stopped asking God to bless me and started declaring that God would make me a blessing.

Actually, I don't ask. I declare it, and I believe in it. It's an act of faith. My pastor taught me this. He believes that every biblical promise about God blessing His people applies to you today. That's debatable theologically, but here's what's not debatable: secular affirmations work on a psychological level. So might as well make your affirmations cite Bible verses.

(See Daily Declarations for the declarations I use.)

The Bottom Line​

The looksmaxxers optimize for human approval. The moneymaxxers optimize for financial metrics. The favormaxxer optimizes for divine alignment, and trusts that everything else follows.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).

That's the original favormaxxing verse. Jesus said it two thousand years before TikTok existed. The algorithm hasn't changed.

Related: Obedience Is Everything | The 100x Choice | Sow Your Seeds Faithfully | What Faith Really Means | How Would Jesus Want Us To Worship? | Why The Obedient Have Nothing To Fear From AI