Words of Truth

> What’s Wrong With the MSM?

One of my sisters called me this morning to tell me that her house was on fire. The good news is that everybody got out. There was some damage though.

She told me that the fire was contained to the back upstairs laundry room, bathroom, and the kitchen. The upstairs needs to be gutted, and is currently being gutted by a few guys from her church, one of whom is a carpenter. The main bedroom downstairs, the computer room, dining room and living room are all fine with no damage. The roof is also fine. If they had fire insurance (which they don’t), the house would most likely be declared a total loss, but it is fixable, since there’s no insurance. It makes me think of that Carfax commercial where they change the car ad from “some water damage” to “new upholstery!”

Some people from their church gave them a $200 gift card to Hy Vee (an Iowan grocery store), and $50 in quarters so they could wash all their clothes. There are other donations coming in from the Red Cross and other places. The Red Cross is putting them up in two rooms (motel?) until Thursday, and they might be able to even move back in later on this week. Keep praying!

Part three of what God is doing in my life right now:

I went back to work Monday night July 28th, and I worked that night and the next night. Wednesday morning as I was getting ready to go home, I started getting that sick feeling. I came down with some nasty crud, and had to call in sick for the next three shifts. I lost all my OT for that week, as well as my bonus pay. I started looking at our budget and realized that, by getting sick and missing work, we were going to be about $1000 short for August. I didn’t know what to do, so we started praying and asking God to reveal His faithfulness to us.

I was slowly recuperating from being sick over the next week and a half, and I finally (this week) was able to work more than three shifts. We have about four or five bills that we have had to push to the next payday because of this, and even with that, we only had $14.33 in our bank account last week. Thankfully we had enough school supplies and stuff that we only needed to spend around $20 to resupply the kids for school this year. But there were no “school clothes” purchased this year.

Our gas gauge is broken in our van, which Kim needed to use to drive the kids to school, starting August 19th. We knew that we had enough gas for at least two days of driving, but probably not much after that. Fourteen dollars worth of gas doesn’t get you as far as it used to, so we knew God was going to have to do something, since the kids needed to go to school, and we didn’t have the money to take them (and wouldn’t until August 29th…missing the first two weeks of school is not a good way to start the school year). We prayed and prayed that God would give us the money we needed for gas. And you know what? He didn’t.

He did something better. We have tried every year to find someone close to us with whom we could carpool, with no success. We did “partial” carpooling the first year here, where we drove halfway to school (to where the other people live) and they would take the kids the rest of the way to school. Then we would pick up their kids and ours at the end of school. Last year we couldn’t find anybody to help in the morning, and only one family that would help in the afternoons. They pick up the kids from school a couple of days a week, which is helpful, and we are thankful for that, but it didn’t do anything to alleviate the morning commute.

So this year, we got the list of parents from the school again, and we found a family with a kindergartner in the subdivision just down the road from us. Kim called them Tuesday night of that first week of school and asked if they would be interested. They said sure. The father in that family drives past our subdivision on his way to take his son to school, and then on to work downtown. So he has agreed to pick up our kids at our house every morning and drive them to school, since he’s going there anyway. We told them we will give them some money for gas, since that saves us a 60 mile round trip every day of the week. And since the other family is still picking up our kids every other day or so, Kim only has to drive to the school two or three times a week now, as opposed to ten, which is what we would be doing without car pooling.

Linking back to my previous post of the night, I told God that I was going to trust Him to deal with our gigantic debt problem. It seems now, looking back at the past three weeks, that God was saying, “Ok, Steve, you say you are going to trust Me with this huge lack of money? Let’s see how you do trusting me with a (comparatively) small lack of money.” We did not doubt, we did not complain, we simply trusted that God would work things out, so long as we are doing our part. And He did. He continues to abide by Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (NASB)

God did not answer our prayer in the way we asked. But He did meet our need, and in a totally unexpected way. God is good, and whoever tells you different is lying.

So to continue from the last post, we had a good week at camp. I had decided to start living for God instead of myself. I remember telling God Thursday night at camp, “Ok, God, if you want me in the ministry, then I need help paying off this debt. I don’t know how I am going to do it, because it seems impossible.”