Yesterday on my way to church I was discussing all the things that God brought my family through as a child, through a major recession where we were scarcely better off than my ancestors were during the Great Depression prior to World War II. Unknown to me, my pastor was going to preach about the very same subject, unknown in my discussion at the time. I explained how there were times when my parents, my brothers and I first got into the church that we had no groceries in the house and another family of new converts we had met in a neighboring city had showed up with bags of groceries on our doorstep to have a cook out. Other times they would be in the same dire circumstances and we would show up on their doorstep with sacks of groceries for a picnic, only to find they didn’t have a single moldy crumb in their refrigerator. God always provided, no matter how bad the times were.
I remember as if it were yesterday, my father coming out of my parent’s bedroom where he had been praying and telling my mom, “Get the kids ready. God just told me to take the Oldsmobile and give it to Kevin.” Mom was flabbergasted. We were broke most of the time and months of trying to sell the extra car we had sitting in the front yard by the highway had been fruitless. Dad couldn’t even give it away. Times were that hard. We had changed signs 3 or 4 times ranging in price from $2,400 all the way down to $800 and finally $400. Not one single bite. Not even a nibble.
We drove the half hour to Kevin’s house, which wasn’t much more than what we lived in, a shack with tar paper still showing on the sides where a tornado went by and ripped up his shed and pulled siding off the house but did no damage to anyone in the home. Kevin was a minister, and the son of a UPC preacher. Our families were fairly close. When we pulled up that short, steep, muddy driveway, he walked out to meet us. My dad rolled down the truck window and greeted him and told him God had told him to come give him the old white Oldsmobile sitting in our front yard. Kevin grinned, his wife, a close friend of my mom, burst into tears and ran inside. We didn’t know why until Kevin told us later inside.
What we did not know at the time was that while Kevin had been praying that day, God told him he was going to give him a car. He’d blown up a whole series of vehicles. They lined his back yard fence out there in the country where he lived, old vans, trucks, a couple VW beetles, a Fiat. Kevin’s luck with vehicles was as good as my fathers and even my own. If you could keep one running long enough to find another one, then God was truly on your side!
Kevin had been so sure that God had spoken to him that he told his wife…who immediately told him he was nuts and that it was not going to happen. They were broke. They had no money and his last car had bit the dust hard. She came and apologized to him in tears after we left. Anyone else out there ever had that great gift of faith, when you know that you know that you know that there is no way out? I’m trying to stop learning my lessons the hard way and start accepting when God makes me a promise!
The rest of you that don’t have any problems just jump to another article if you never have no problems, never go broke or never have something come rushing in on you like a freight train.
Months later Kevin went with dad to a vehicle auction to try and find another vehicle. He had nearly nothing in his pocket to buy a car with. His wife (being the staunch believer that she was and a good Pentecostal preacher’s wife) told him that he was not going to find a car and that he didn’t have enough money. Cars were going high that day and it was starting to look like his wife was right, when they came up to the car Kevin wanted. Dad raised his hand and bid everything Kevin had…a whopping $350. The auctioneer rattled on and no counter-bid came. He called again, rattling on like a Kentucky Colonel…and no one bid. Kevin broke into a big grin when the auctioneer banged his gavel and sold him an 80’s model Dodge Diplomat for $350. The car wasn’t even 10 years old and looked clean inside and out. He got in the glove compartment after going to pay for the car and found out that God not only blessed him with a nice car…but the paperwork in the glove compartment revealed it had a new engine and transmission put in it 3 months before pulling it out of the government fleet! God knows how to provide.
I realized when I came back to God in 2003 that it was not going to be easy. Living for God is a fight if you are an honest believer. The Bible says that those who will live Godly will suffer persecution. Trials test our faith on a daily basis, and for some people it isn’t a financial battle. Sometimes it is health issues. Other times the devil weaves a trap for you to try and bring you down. I’ve lived through times like that, when it seemed all the forces of hell were trying to silence me, shut me up, shut me down and destroy me. I know what it’s like to have someone file false charges against me and try to put me in prison, I’ve seen God step on the scene in prophecy and state that it would not happen. I’ve learned that when God speaks things happen. There is nothing he cannot do and he has never lost a battle.
I heard a message last year about When God Has Faith in a Man. It changed my life, because God does wonders that build our faith all the time…but it is our stand when times get rough and even impossible that builds God’s faith in us. I think often of the words of God to the angels as he stood in Abraham’s tent in the plains of Mamre.
And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. Genesis 18:17-19
If you can put yourself into the promises of God’s word, then understand that that thing you are going through, that thing you are facing, that battle, that test, that trial, that circumstance…it cannot destroy you. The Lord is bringing you into your destiny to show you his glory. Trust him and let him mold you into his plan. Trust God. He will establish his church against all odds, against all forces of hell, nature, politics, trouble and trial.
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