On how God provides

I've been thinking a lot lately about provision. The Hubs and I have had our share of hard financial times throughout our almost-14-year marriage.  We married young.  I was only 18 and he was an older man.  21 whole years old.  They say hindsight is 20-20 and it really is.  I do NOT recommend getting married so young.  I know I married the right man, but sometimes I think about how much easier everything would be if we'd waited and established ourselves first before we tied the knot.  

But we didn't, and here we are.  We've "made it", despite the odds.  Not that we're letting out guard down and expecting everything to be smooth sailing from here on out, but 14 years is a loooong time to be married in today's time.  We thank God every day for holding us together.  We couldn't have done it without Him.  

Back to provision.  When we married, we had no money.  Zilch.  We totally existed living paycheck to paycheck, even with both of us working full time.  Back in those early days, Chris was in a rock band.  We were "walking the fence" with our faith, attempting to get in church and do right but we really struggled with letting go of "worldly" things.  One particular night Chris' band had a paying gig.  For those of you who know anything about struggling musicians, those are sometimes few and far between.  Most gigs were played for exposure and free beer.  This particular night, though, the band was paid hundreds of dollars.  Chris, as the front man was given the money and he put it in his pants pocket.  See how responsible we were with money??  Ha!

The next day it was time to divide up all that cash between the band members.  And Chris couldn't find the money.  Anywhere.  It wasn't in his pockets, his guitar case, my purse, our car.  Nowhere.  We searched and searched to no avail.  Finally it was just decided that someone had stolen all of the money and we'd never see it again.  A decision was made to purchase a cash box so this would never happen again and everyone went on their way.  

Years passed.  Our lives changed.  We had rededicated our lives to the Lord and were finally living in His will, but we still had no money.  We had both been in church before but we'd never been tithed our money.  When we rededicated our lives to the Lord we decided to go all the way.  Since the Bible instructs us to tithe, we began doing it.  

The concept of tithing did not come easily for me.  Honestly, I HATED giving up our money every payday.  It stressed me out.  That ten percent can sure seem like a lot, can't it?  It took a long, long time for me to get to a place where I didn't get nauseated at the thought of writing the church a check.  I would literally put our check in the offering plate and get a cold sweat from worrying about what sort of emergency we would surely need that money for. I pressed on and continued to tithe, mainly because Chris insisted on it.

Back to my story.  It was one of those times where everything happened at once.  Shaun was sick and needed medicine, I think one of our cars had broken down, and some other random things all had to be taken care of.  We did tithe, but at the end of the month we didn't have enough money for our power bill.  It was down to the wire.  Our power had been scheduled to be cut off the next day and we were about to have to swallow our pride and ask my parents for money.  We both prayed to God to somehow make a way for us to pay that bill.  

Chris was looking for something to wear and pulled on a pair of pants he hadn't worn in a while.  He felt something in his pocket, reached in, and pulled out a wad of cash.  The same wad of cash that went missing years ago. Our share was just enough to pay that power bill.  It's been ten years and I still get chill bumps when I tell this story.  

Here's another.  A few years later, same basic situation.  This time, the matter was food.  So many things happened at the same time again and we didn't have grocery money.  I was in a panic, Chris - of course- was calm.  We went to church that night and I was worrying about what we were going to eat until payday.  Granted, it was just a few days away, but we had kids to think about!  I was talking to a friend after service, about something totally unrelated to food, and she gave me a huge brown paper bag. "Would you like this food?  I made it for someone who was sick, but there was a mix up and they don't need anymore meals because several other people also brought food for them tonight.  I was going to just take it home, but you're welcome to it you'd like."

This friend of ours had no idea how much her kindness and generosity blessed us.  We certainly weren't going around announcing our hardships to everyone.  Quite the opposite, actually. We opened that bag when we got home that night and discovered that it held three complete meals.  Exactly what we needed to last until pay day.  

And one more.  Christmas time a few years ago.  We had already bought our presents, but were almost out of Propane at home.  This was a really bitter winter and we were having to have Propane brought out twice a month.  Crazy expensive!  I was in a panic (again!) about what we were going to do.  After church that night Chris received an unsigned Christmas card containing a thousand dollars.  Once again, we weren't telling people about our needs.  We had too much pride for that!  We were praying and trying to trust God to be on time with what we needed and He really showed out this time!  We filled up the propane tank, bought a ton of groceries and got tires for one of the cars.  

There are more.  I could go on and on, but these are the three stories that I feel led to share with you tonight.  I'm not sure why.  Some of you may not be able to relate to this post, but I know that some of you will.  It took a long, long, time but I am finally at a place of trusting God to provide what we need.    I have such a hard head.  Most people would have trusted Him after the first dramatic act of provision.  Ha! 

I am not proud of this, but there have been times when we've fallen off the tithing wagon.  This was my fault.  God has really put me in my place a few times.  I remember one time I sat in church and had a battle with Him during worship time before the offering was taken up.  I had written a check but it wasn't for ten percent.  I ripped up that check and wrote another one for a little bit of a larger amount.  It still wasn't ten percent though, and I was so convicted that I ripped up that check too and finally wrote another one for the correct amount.  I laugh when I think about that now.  What a control freak!  It's not like I was dealing with giving away huge wads of cash.  Anyway, all that to say that now our family is 100 percent faithful with our tithing.  God has shown me that if we give Him back what's His and don't waste what we have left, we will always have enough for what we need.  It may not come in traditional ways, but it does always come.  And it's always so sweet!

To anyone reading this-  please, please do not think I'm trying to come off braggy or "holier than thou".  I just felt led to share our story.