Faith Challeged

Faith Challenged

I have been debating whether to share this or not and as I prayed about it, God showed me that He does miracles in our lives so that we may share them with others and He can receive all the glory, not so that we can keep it to ourselves.

Early this year a friend of mine shared a book with me titled God's Smugglers and told me that I had to read it. Little did I know the impact that it would have on my life and my faith when I agreed to read it. This book is a true story about a Polish missionary who lived during the cold war, he lived an incredible and dangerous life transporting Bibles across closed borders-and tells about the miraculous ways in which God provided for him every step of the way.

The part of the book that made the biggest impression on me was the training that brother Andrew received while in training to become a missionary. He was taught to rely only on God to provide for him financially for all of his needs and never to ask anyone to fund his missions. Time after time he told of these incredible miracles of how God provided for him. Time after time I read how God would help him "smuggle" bibles into communist countries and the guards at the entry point would be "blinded" and not notice the stack of bibles in his little car.

The more I thought about how this man trusted God to meet all his needs the more I craved to have this kind of faith. The more I craved it the more I was challenged to live this way myself. God's timing on this is so perfect. I was reading this book right around the time that Andre came home to tell us that He was receiving a ten percent pay cut on his salary. His employer was cutting back on a lot of things in hopes to keep the company viable. At this point we were already struggling to pay our bills with more bills than money every month, and now he comes home telling us we will have even less and we were pretty sure the company was on it last leg.

And now to what God was getting ready to teach me and reveal to me. I have had a credit cards to my name since I was sixteen. I have used them and depended on them all of my adult life. And through college and my marriage we have accumulated debt that we have not been able to pay off for a long time. In the last couple of years I have justified using them in thinking that I knew that God would understand when I used them because they were necessary things like gas, food and especially my insulin and testing supplies. But the more I read the more I was convicted of my dependence on these plastic cards. God allowed me to see that my faith and trust was not really on Him to meet all my needs but on the credit cards. I always relied on them to get me out of a jam if I ever needed them. And I was needing them a lot lately.

No one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one or love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Mathew 6:24

So once I realized what He was revealing to me I decided that I wanted to live completely and totally dependent on Him and stop using my credit cards completely. I have always wanted to before but never had the courage or the conviction to do it. I told Andre what I had been reading about and I prayed and made a promise that I would not use the credit cards anymore no matter what. It felt really good and then....
God decided to put me to the test.

One week later I came home and thought, that we had a power outage in the neighborhood. Then I realized that it was only my house that did not have electricity. It was a Thursday afternoon and we had no money in the bank until Friday (pay day) and when I called the power company with my cell phone to find out what happened they told me that my check had bounced. The lady on the phone was really nice and told me I could use a credit card to get my power turned on again if I wanted to... but I had promised God... but it is an emergency... but I promised God no matter what... but we had no other choice... I went back and forth like this and decided to call Andre.

He told me to use the credit card and then we hung up. I couldn't do it. I did not want to go against my husband but I could not do it. I couldn't go against my promise to God. So I decided that I would call the lady back and I would give her my debit card number knowing that we did not have the balance in the account and there would not be enough money in it until Friday afternoon. But I took my chance and decided to trust God with the result.

I gave the lady my information and we hung up. I waited and I prayed, I went into the closet and got on my knees with my bible and began reading the psalms and praising God. I did not know what else to do. I waited and waited and pleaded with God to do a miracle. I told God that I wasn't going back on my promise and that we would use candles that night and cook some chicken on the grill but that I was not going to use the credit cards. About 15 minutes passed by and then... the electricity came back on!!! It was a miracle! I know deep down in my heart that it was. God heard my prayers and he saw the sincerity in my heart and blessed me for it. It was amazing. I was amazed!!!

It has been four months now and I have not used my credit cards once. God has provided free lance work for Andre to supplement our paycheck and we have not stopped paying our bills or tithing to our church. I am amazed. I was going to the credit cards on a very frequent basis and since I made my promise and was tested on it I have not had to use them at all!

I struggled to share this story because I was worried what other people would think of us and frankly I was embarrassed about where we were financially. And now even though we are not out of debt we are working to pay it off, not adding to our debt but most importantly living completely and totally dependent on God for our finances. Andre's job is still on very shaky ground but I can say with certainty that we know that God is in control. I think the biggest gift I have gained from all of this besides learning to trust in God has been the peace that has come with it. I have complete peace about our financial future and trust God completely Hallelujah!

I hope this blesses someone today.