Lord, You are a Faithful Provider

by Flo Martin, from Giving in the King's Service

Here is a little quiz for you to take. It’s a real easy one because I have marked the correct answer for you:

Our God is faithful:
___ a.) some of the time.
___ b.) most of the time.
_X_ c.) all of the time.

I know we all have times when money gets tight. We sit and look at all of our bills and scratch our heads and wonder where in the world we are going to come up with what we need. I want to share with you 2 personal journal entries that I made several years ago. The first is from February 6 and the second is from 3 weeks later on February 26.

Journal Entry 2/6:

Malachi 3:10-11 “ ‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

Journal Entry 2/26:

When I wrote out the above verse I had come to the end of all that I could do. Our bills were so far behind that I was really scared of what was going to happen. I had not been giving tithe because I didn’t even have enough to pay my bills, much less enough to give some away. But the day I wrote the above verse I decided to obey this verse and trust God to fulfill His word.

I decided to give to him a tenth of whatever I owed in bills each week or a tenth of all that my husband and I brought in, whichever was greater. It was really scary to do because our bills were well over $1,000.00 each week and we were not bringing in nearly that much. But I did it anyway. For 2 weeks I still wasn’t able to pay all my bills but I continued to do what I had set out to do. I was so depressed and really scared.

Then on 2/24 I wrote out all of the bills that I could not pay. I wrote my husband a note and told him the balance of what I could not pay this month and that he needed to let me know what to do. He called me at work later that day and told me that the Credit Union without our knowledge had been pulling out a little more from his check each week than needed to pay back his loan and we had a balance of $922.00 extra that we could get out.

I was so happy. I thought that would take care of most of what we still owed. When I got home from work that day, there was a check in the mail for $93.00 from an overpayment we had made. Together both checks came out to $1,015.00. The amount that we had been unable to pay on bills this month was $1,012.00.

My husband and I both knew that God had truly worked a miracle. The next day I was able to sit down and pay all of my bills. I decided ahead of time that I was going to tithe on the $1,015 we had just received. I did that first and then paid my bills. Somehow it worked out that I still had enough to pay all of my bills and even had $80.00 left over. God is so good.

God truly is good. And He is faithful. This taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten. Now I never fail to pay my tithe first before anything else. And I have never again faced the fear and worry about paying my bills that I faced when I wrote the above journal entries.

Messages from Our King

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)

”Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42)

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)

”Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7)

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