Photo courtesy Kevin Dooley
I have been young, and now I am old,
but I have never seen a righteous person abandoned
or his descendants begging for food.
Psalm 37:25
“Money is God’s problem, not mine.” That’s my life motto when it comes to money.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect God to simply make money appear. I myself have a big responsibility too when it comes to money, including working hard for the past fifty-two years, walking faithfully with the Lord, spending and saving prudently, and being generous with my giving.
But in the end, when I have done what I can do and should do, meeting my own needs and the needs of others around me is God’s responsibility. That means I know that no matter what happens in this wicked and transient world, when I have been obedient to the Lord in the area of money, I have nothing to worry about.
This is how I learned that lesson.
I experienced a rude awakening the first month of my first year in seminary. I had traveled from Los Angeles to Dallas to attend Dallas Theological Seminary with the understanding that I had the full financial support of someone who was interested in my becoming a pastor. But because of unforeseen circumstances, that support fell through. Suddenly I was left high and dry and had to scramble to find work. Being single and having to support myself with a full study schedule in seminary was extremely stressful.
I lived off of macaroni and cheese most days. It would be decades after seminary before I could eat it again. I remember one day when I couldn’t afford even that and went without food. It was the only day of my life I’ve gone hungry. But the next day I opened my mailbox at the student center and discovered twenty-four one dollar bills stuffed in it. Then someone offered me free rent if I’d live in one of their apartments and minister to the poor people on the block. The rundown, roach infested apartment was in an old victorian home in an impoverished section of town next door to a halfway house for drug addicts and ex-convicts. Ministering on that block had a lasting impact on my future ministry.
Amazingly, I made it through four years of seminary and graduated debt free – a testament to God’s provision.
But my divine training on the interplay between hard work and God’s provision didn’t stop with seminary. After meeting and marrying Patti, we started my first pastorate in a small, poor church in an equally small and poor community in southeast Texas. Sadly, during that pastorate, our second child was born premature and had to spend several days in NICU. That experience left us several thousand dollars in debt.
But again, God intervened. A visitor to the church privately handed us a check and said, “I want you to use this just for your wife.” As it turned out, Patti’s nurse practitioner license was about to expire. We used that money to renew her license, an act that would have lasting beneficial financial consequences for us for the rest of our lives.
I don’t have space enough to tell you all of the many ways God has abundantly provided for us since then, including how time and again the Lord has met the needs of New Commandment Men’s Ministries. But I can say this: God has been so faithful to us that it would be a terrible sin if we ever again worried about money.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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