Can God trust you?

by Toni Ullom

Have you ever said to yourself, " Lord I'd love to have more to give to you. But there is so little left over that what little I have doesn't seem enough to do anyone any good. If you would send me some extra, I'd use it for your kingdom." Recently I had the chance to prove to God that I would keep my word. I had been listening to Gary Carpenter talking about having faith in what you ask for and being a good steward of God's money. One of his congregation had asked God to send her a specific amount of money and she would use it where he wanted. I thought, Ok if she can do that so can I. So I did, but I wanted to make sure that there was no way I wouldn't recognize that it was from God. So I asked that it come from some unusual way.

You can ask anyone who knows me, I watch my checkbook like a hawk and can pretty much tell you down to the dime what I have. Not because I am greedy but because I want to make sure that any drafts are covered before they come in. Everyday I check to make sure I haven't made any mistakes on my figures. You can also ask anyone who knows me and my husband, we are compassionate toward those in need. It's not about money, its not about the fancy things in life, its about lending a hand as much as possible to our friends who are in need. If I had one bag of beans and someone was hungry, I'd share it or give them the whole bag. I do believe if a person is able to work then they are responsible for helping themselves, however there are those who try and can't seem to get past one tragedy till another one is there or a father doesn't pay his child support and leaves a mother lacking for her children. Those are the folks I have a tender spot for. I've been told by many that if I were rich today, I'd be broke tomorrow, maybe they are right.

A couple weeks had past since I had asked God to send me a hundred dollars extra, in an unusual way and that I'd put it where he wanted it. One afternoon the phone rang and it was my bank. Naturally them calling me made me a bit uneasy until they apologized to me for loosing a hundred dollars. A check for a hundred dollars I had deposited almost eight months earlier had been stuck in the night deposit.

Now my not missing it, that in itself was strange, but it gets stranger so hold on. Not only had I not missed the fact that it wasn't there, I never caught it on my check book when I balanced it and I didn't come up short on my bills because of it not being deposited. I had been talking to a friend, Brandi,  earlier that morning and told her, "You know I feel like I'm just standing still with God no matter how hard I try or how much time I spend with him, I wish he would just do something to let me know I'm not just in a rut with him." I got so excited over the call that I called Brandi to tell her about it, but I got her answering machine and left a message. I had just hung up the phone and was saying aloud, "Ok God I have your money so what do I do with it?" Suddenly the phone rang, the voice on the other end said " You called?" It was my pastor, Earl Chiddix's wife. I said "No I didn't call, why?" she replied, your phone number showed up on our caller Id. Well I hadn't called them since Christmas and here it was six weeks later, I even hung up and hit the redial button on the phone and sure enough it wasn't the church I had called, it was in fact Brandi.

So I prayed and felt sure that the church was where it needed to go. The day after I gave it to church, the following service, I went to pray before church as anyone involved in the service does. When I came back to my seat there was an envelope with my name on it and a twenty dollar bill in it. I figured since it came in a unusual way, I should give it back to God, after all it was his money before it was mine.

Earlier this year we went from an income of over 64000 to an income of 31000 per year. We had more debt with the large income than we could meet without straining. We are living on less than half that, not made any real hard reductions and  yet we are closer to being debt free than we have ever been. Doesn't make sense in the realm of reality, but God doesn't work in the same realm that we see with human standards.