Providing all our needs!

   One of the great testimonies of my and Betsy’s life has been the Lord’s continual provision for all our needs.  We have learned that the only limitations that exist within His promise of providing for His children is our own degree of trust and dependence upon that provision.  This has been a continually increasing revelation in our lives. I am sure we will continue on this path until the day He takes us home.

            One of my earliest memories of the Lord providing for our needs in that daily and practical way that is so consistent with His loving care came in the early years of our marriage.  We were living in Anchorage Alaska, attending a small full-gospel church that met in a Quonset hut in our little low-income neighborhood on the edge of Anchorage.  The pastor had just preached on being specific in prayer with your needs so that when the Lord answered those prayers you would have no doubt who deserved the glory.

            Returning to our little apartment that aftermoon after church, Betsy and I kneeled before our sofa and prayed that specific prayer the pastor had preached on that morning.  We had a situation that desperately required $500.  We had been praying for this need, but admittedly not specifically for $500.  That afternoon we were specific, praying as the pastor had instructed his congregation.

            It had been announced at church that day that they were forming a church softball team to compete in a league with other churches. Since I had always been a ball player, I was anxious to join this group of men and be a part of the church team.  The field they were to practice on was only a few blocks from our apartment, so Monday afternoon, glove in hand,  I walked over to meet the men. We were new to this church so although I had seen several of the men in church, I had not yet come to know any of them.                   

When I approached the field that afternoon several of the men came over to greet me, making me feel welcome.  One man who I later learned was also named Larry, waited and approached me when the others returned to the field to resume their practice. Larry then very directly walked up to me, reached out to shake my hand, and said “in church yesterday the Lord told me to give this to you”.  In my hand he placed $500. (He later told me that the Lord actually told him to give this to the new long-haired guy he saw in church that Sunday morning, and that he would be at softball practice.)

          This all came about because Larry was in need of a new car. The car he wanted was about $5000. He had saved the $500 and was planning on using that to put down on the $5000 car. The Lord told Larry to give me (the long haired guy he would see at sotfball practice) the $500, and that He would provide the $5000 Larry needed. It was only two or three weeks later when Larry came to church and testified the Lord had provided the $5000 to buy the car. The Lord used this situaiton to provide for both Larry's needs.

The lessons we were learning about God’s desire to provide for us continued. We soon moved out to Palmer Alaska, a community in the Matanuska Valley about an hour north of Anchorage. One of the reasons we moved to Palmer was to help establish a small church in Wasilla, a community about fifteen minutes west of Palmer. We began attending the little log cabin church where the pastor soon asked me to sit in a small pew at the back of the church to greet people as they came in the door.

         One winter Sunday morning we had driven the remote road from our home in Palmer to the church in Wasilla with a gas tank that was almost empty. Winter work was at times hard to obtain and our financial situation was always stretched thin. That day I loaded our family of four into our truck and confidently drove to church with a ten-dollar bill in my pocked. Since gas was cheaper in Wasilla, I was planning on buying gas after church to make the drive home.

          That morning service proceeded with a rousing time of worship as I sat alone in my “deacons pew” at the back of the church.  Part way through the worship the pastor would stop to take an offering. It was one of my jobs as a deacon to pass the plate up and down our few pews.  As I returned with plate in hand to the back of the church, I sensed the Lord encouraging me to put my ten-dollar bill in the offering.  Our congregation was small and the church needs often seemed to outstrip the giving.  Nevertheless, I was not overly anxious to respond to what I felt was the leading of the Lord.  As I returned to my seat and the congregation returned to worship, the urging from the Lord increased. It continued doing so even to the point that I could not concentrate upon the worship.  Recognizing the Lord’s urging was not going to go away; I walked over to the cabinet where I had placed the offering and put my ten-dollar bill in the plate.

            As I returned to my pew and worship, I know that tears of fear were pouring down my face. I was fearful of driving my family home over the snow packed isolated road to our home in Palmer without putting more gas in the tank. I wish I could say I worshipped with confidence, believing God would take care of our present needs, but I cannot.  Although I was sure of the Lord’s leading urging me to put the ten-dollar bill in the offering, I was not near so confident in His providing gas for our journey home.

            As the worship service drew to an end, I stood in front of my deacon’s pew worshipping the Lord, hands raised, but tears still falling. When the final song came to an end, I lowered my outstretched arms, only to find a twenty-dollar bill stuck to the palm of my hand.  The rest of the congregation was at least fifteen feet away from my little isolated corner in the church. I knew for a fact that no man had placed that bill in my hand, the Lord Himself had chosen to meet my need in a way that I would never forget.  Once again, the Lord was giving us a lesson about His desire to “supply all our needs according to His riches and glory”.

            While living in Palmer, I worked construction in the summer then looked for other work in the winter months.  One winter I found a job as a handyman for a bank in Anchorage. I would ride a bus the hour plus distance into Anchorage each day and then catch the bus home that afternoon. After working several months at this job, I approached my boss to see if he would give me a raise.  Being a lifelong banker, he was all about keeping a budget. He sat me down in his office and had me write out all my monthly expenses.  We then compared my expenses to my take home income. I was taking home about $1100 a month, and according to my budget I was spending about $1200.  My boss looked at the budget and said “ok we can fix this”.  He pointed to the item in the expenses column that said ‘tithes” that was followed by “$150”.  He said to me “if you take this out of your expenses, you can meet your budget each month”.

            There were many more lessons I would need to learn in life if I was going to live a life of faith, but one thing I had already learned from the Bible is that you paid your tithes.  Tithes are a “first fruit”, not a last priority we do if we have money left over. I told this to my boss saying “the reason this budget has been working is because we pay the $150 tithe first.” He could only shake his head in dismay.  This was a way of thinking he was not used to.  In his perplexity he responded by giving me a raise anyway. Just as the Lord used the wealth of Egypt to finance the journey of the children of Israel into the desert, he often uses the “mammon” of this world to bless and provide for His people.

            After some years of living in Alaska, the Lord returned us to San Diego area where we purchased a home in the east county. There we began attending another small church. Soon we were again involved in ministry, working with the teen-agers in our church and in the community. As the ministry grew, the demand for my time in ministry also grew. I was working a job as a finish carpenter that gave me the freedom to adjust my schedule to work in ministry, but the more time I spent in ministry the less time I spent making money and paying my bills. Soon our finances were in trouble. I was behind on my house payments and was getting letters from the bank threatening foreclosure. I responded to these by working more hours, but would soon find myself taking time off work to spend with teens, visit them in the hospital, pray for their sick family, or just to be there on their school campuses to support them.

         Finances had gotten desperate, especially regarding our mortgage payments. I realized I was behind enough that even working full time would not get us caught up.  Betsy and I took time to seek the Lord in prayer, and the message we received from the Lord was to “not worry”.  The Lord continued to encourage me to prioritize the work with the teens, assuring me that He would take care of our finances.

          If was a Sunday after church that the Lord finally showed us His Way of taking care of our needs. A man in the church approached me after service. He had recently bought a “fixer upper’ down in San Diego and wanted me to do the remodeling of it in my spare time. At first, I was ready to say “no”. This was because in truth I had no “spare time”.  However, when He wrote out a check to me for several thousand dollars, paying me ahead for the work he wanted done, I recognized that this was the Lord “supplying all my needs according to His riches and glory”. The Lord not only provided the money, enough to square up my mortgage, but over the following weeks and months He provided the “spare time” for me to get the work done.

Several years later Betsy and I found ourselves serving as missionary pastors in Southeast Alaska. Our kids were 6, 8, and 10 years old, and wanted desperatley to go to summer camp.  The problem was the closest summer camp was up in British Columbia above the northern end of southeast Alaska. To get there would take a float plane to Juneau, an eight-hour ferry trip to Haines, and then renting a car to drive several hundred miles to the camp in British Columbia.  When we added up the cost, it came to about $1000.  We did not have anywhere near this much money. 

            The kids were so desperate to go that they were the first ones to ask us if we could pray for the money. They had seen the Lord provide so many things for us already in their young lives, they did not see praying for this need as anything out of the normal. I can remember my oldest boy at the time praying with such intensity. Gritting his teach and clenching his jaw, he prayed “God please give us the money to go to camp”.  We left our prayers there before the Lord.

            It was only two or three days later that we went down to the harbor to pickup the mail that came in by float plane several times a week. In that mail was a letter from a small church in Haines Alaska at the northern end of the southeast passage.   One Christmas during our time of ministry in Pelican, we had received several boxes from this church, each containing prayed for items (this is the subject of another testimony titled “A Christmas Miracle”).  The letter we received that day was the only other letter we ever received from the Haines church during our three plus years in Pelican. In it was a note saying that as they had been praying, the Lord impressed upon them to take up an offering for the pastor in Pelican. That night, this little congregation of only 20 or 25 people, took that offering and sent it to us. The check included with the note was for $1000.  That summer our entire family learned an unforgettable lesson about the Lord’s provision for His people. We learned He provides "all our needs", and also "the desires of our hearts". The kid’s saw their prayers answered when Betsy took them for a wonderful time at camp in British Columbia.

         The months and years between these few testimonies were filled with dozens more examples of the Lord always providing for out family. From making money appear in our bank account that we could not account for, to laying upon the heart of a man to finance the purchase of a bush airplane so we could do fly in ministry, the Lord has shown us that no situation, no financial hurdle, no material need, is ever impossible if we will simply put our trust in Him.