Remember the ways the Lord provides--lots of times!

Hey, at the outset I’d just like to say that the time I write these entries is often times earlier than when they actually get posted, unless they are updates with me.

I wrote this before I had started working, in the middle of a fast, and just before going to Manpower and Global Human Resources to be put back on their call lists, on Monday morning, January 16th, and was struggling with one of those entries where I needed to write it for my own recollection to remember what the Lord has done, but not necessarily post it. It was mid month, and I still had not worked one day yet of this new year. Most people would get nervous at that point that their rent won’t get paid and start hitting the trail hard with their resume. But not me—about the nervous part anyway. I know my God enough to know the ways He provides work or just simply drops the money itself into one’s lap at the last minute.

For example, I am recalling how when I first went to FIRE, I neglected to realize that you pay tuition both semesters of the year not just once a year, like the other Bible College I looked into. By late September of that year, I had a mere $1100 to make last until May. Somehow I did it! For one thing, I had a cheap living arrangement. And secondly, I applied for a financial aid scholarship the school offered, and they granted to me my full tuition for my second semester.

That was a great help, but it still wouldn’t get me through to the end of the school year as I had less money than necessary for rent and bills. I moved into a new townhouse with one of my roommates I lived with my first semester, Big Isaac. We agreed I had to share the master bedroom of a two story townhouse with Isaac, and I could pay a smaller portion of rent than the rest of the guys, which were two other FIRE students. Anyway, these guys had an understanding with me from the beginning about how I couldn’t work in the USA and by that time had only about $500 to my name to last me until the end of the semester. So they only had me pay like $110 rent a month, and then we used our deposit for our last month’s rent. Well, the day eventually came, through no lack of responsibility on my part or anything, that I literally ran out of money before spring break.

I remember trying to panhandle off of Isaac, Rolf, and Bill in order to come up with enough money to buy the big green Smith Wigglesworth book I wanted (as opposed to food or something I needed, eh!—this book would prove to be a great investment spiritually and I knew it). They all said no, I think fearing I'd keep asking for money all semester. Then at school a girl came up to me and gave me an encouragement note for listening to her talk my ear off on the phone when she was going through something. Inside the note was $25 and at the end the letter said “P.S. I felt led by the Lord to give this to you.” Well, the Lord led her right because $25 (in US dollars remember, so that’s like $40 CAD at that time) was exactly how much they were selling that big green book for at the book table during our missions conference. So I went and grabbed it and told Isaac what happened. He was impressed at the Lord’s provision (Bible school students look for ways to put into practice what we learn)

But I still didn’t have any money now, and my food supply would run out shortly. Then one day, Isaac was working on someone’s car in our front lot, like he usually did and financed his way through that semester of school by doing—and he had to go to a car parts store to get something. When he came back, he and the girl whose car he was working on began unloading lots of bags of groceries from the trunk of his car and bringing them in to the house. As Isaac passed me, he said “these are yours.” And believing he and her had bought me groceries, I thanked them.

“Oh no, we didn’t buy these.”

“Huh?”

“We ran into someone from FIRE in the parking lot who had just finished buying these groceries for you, and asked me to give them to you.”

So I asked Big Isaac who the person was and all he said was this person wanted to remain anonymous. So she (he accidentally said ‘her’ one time when I was bugging him about it so I knew it was a female) had bought me pastas and dairy products, as well as meat, and juice. Keep in mind this is March; our exams were the first week of May. Well, the pastas she bought me lasted me the rest of the semester. Also, I remember being invited to peoples’ houses for dinner every so often, at no cost to me (they weren’t pot lucks or anything like that).

Then one time not long after that, my mom calls me from Canada. She wanted to know who gave me a check. I told her that was the first I heard of it, and she explains to me how she went to go put a small amount of money in my bank account, but there was going to be a hold on my account for a few days until a check someone wrote me cleared. I was excited to find out it was a total of $90 CAD ($62 or so US). Great! I never found out who did that either!

Every Friday the street witnessing team I was a part of kept going to "The Daily Grind"--a coffee shop--which really was a coffee shop--and doesn't mean something else like it does in The Netherlands. To get in it was mandatory to purchase something at the entrance. This coffee bar was full of all sorts of characters; homosexuals, transvestites, ‘vampires’, punks, a whole variety of subculture frequented this place. And I felt I was in my element there oddly enough and built many friendships over the two or three months until school was over, and shared the love of Christ more through friendship than preaching sermons. Well, each and every week someone or another would buy me something or pay for a coffee for me. That may sound like little, but it was necessary in order to be able to enter, and after all, I had nothing.

Man, I wish I’d knew about blogging 5 years ago so I coulda documented things better since then as they happened over the years!

Keep reading:

In late Nov 2003, after graduating, I got to go to New Orleans for a Thanksgiving outreach along with a few carloads of other students. We actually left that night after the reception for my graduation. Well, I didn’t actually afford it. My roommate that I bunked with paid for me to go both to New Orleans and Dallas, TX with him. The latter was for a prayer event called “The Call:Texas” There’d been 6 other events like this through out the country in key strategic places, the first one being in September 2000 in Washington D.C. Well this one in Texas coincided with the 30 Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and had a theme of praying and fasting with about 15,000 people present to reverse abortion laws across the land and see justices elected to courts who would do something about it. This was not much unlike when I got to go to Washington D.C. a week before Bush’s relection—only a way larger crowd. Anyway, it was a memory of a lifetime, and it was paid for entirely by someone else.

Thank you Jesus!

Well, when that was over, I booked a Greyhound bus ticket to return to Peterborough with money my mom gave me (by this time I had her on my bank account with me so she could do things for me with it in Peterborough while I was abroad), but I only had enough money to make to Michigan (this was FIRE’s first semester in Charlotte, so to take a bus from Charlotte to Peterborough was still half the distance of Pensacola, FL to Peterborough!

I got in touch with Big Isaac, now living there since he’s originally from that state and had graduated over a year earlier and went home. Well, I knew God provides, so I made sure to visit him and see what happens over the weekend I was there.

He took me with him on that Friday night to a tiny black Pentecostal church in Flint Michigan, and the meetings in this church are so open to the Spirit of God--on this particular night of the week it’s less structured I’m told--that they don’t have a planned speaker. So they asked me to get up and share something, and so I did. I’ll give you a hint on what the topic was—it’s one I write a lot about on my blog! Anyway, it was totally spontaneous and stuff that was “old manna” to me. But it impacted them. Then Isaac gets up and shares something a little more thought out (he knew he’d be preaching when we got there since he’d been there frequently, I however was more put on the spot and did it extemporaneously). Well, after the night is over and the pastor is speaking to us, Isaac tells him the situation I’m in and the pastor tells him he’ll help pay for my ticket to go into Canada. Rock on!

So the next couple of days, I’m chilling with Big Isaac, and IMing on his computer, when two separate friends of mine independently of one another offer to give me like $20 or so a piece. One e-mailed me the money bank account-to-bank account, and the other friend went and deposited the money directly into my account in Peterborough. Rock on harder!

So I had my bus ticket that I didn’t have any money to afford, but was basically arranged for and I was going home just fine. Nothing to worry about! When we met the pastor at the bus terminal to get the rest of the money, he tells me they’re still talking about what I preached on and chewing it. Woah. I learned never to think of anything I have to share as “old manna” ever again, even on blogger since something that may be an old revelation to me, might be brand new meat for someone else to be impacted by!

Anyway, I look back to other times like these and see the hand of the Lord (which is easier after the fact, right?) and I just smile when I get my back up against the wall regarding how I’m going to pay for something. I got to do the traveling I did, and go the places I did in those last weeks of 2003, and it was totally paid for by God through other people around me. He is awesome. Of course, the amounts of money and the distances I’ve traveled, and my expectations of His provision are greater now as that faith muscle has been exercised. Now Holland is just, well...insane compared to getting $20 bills here and there. But stuff like this story encourage me too!

Did I mention Amy Meshnick used to cook these awesome pizzas for me every few weeks, and I'd make them last all week. They had like every food group on them, and they were AWESOME pizzas! Better than any of the pizza delivery chains can make. No grease either!

But just you wait! Keep reading this blog, and you watch over the coming months. Faith I’ve said before is stepping out FIRST, not afterwards. We walk by faith, not by sight, and if I looked at circumstances in life I’d give up. That way, you’ll be able to say I was talking about it before it all happened, and didn’t make up how God came through.

Be blessed, and thank the Lord 7 times today for how He provides.

Steve