My husband and I visited with a couple today. He has been out of work for seven months, his wife lost her job two weeks ago. It was indicated in our visit that they have never been in a position like this before. My heart hurts for them and all of the emotions that they are dealing with right now - fear, anxiety, anger, worry, dread. While I hate this for them, I am excited to watch God work. While a couple has a steady income, a happy marriage, a healthy family there is no cause for their faith to grow. Someone that does not need a miracle will not see one. I look forward to seeing how God will love this family through this experience. I reminded the sweet wife of Jeremiah 29:11. When she lost her job, God did not say "uh-oh". Oh no, He has a wonderful plan for their lives, and all of these circumstances is part of his perfect, orchestrated plan.
I shared with this dear couple a bit of mine and Roy's story...
When Roy and I had only been married a few years we desired to move to Kentucky where my Father was pastoring at the time. We would go visit my parents most weekends and we loved the church and wanted to be more involved. Roy looked for a job, but in this depressed town, there was nothing. One Monday before we headed back home, I received a call asking if I was looking for a job. I hadn't been, but was interested if there was something available. I went on an interview that morning and was hired on the spot to be a bookkeeper for a local clothing store chain (I'm pretty certain that this was before quickbooks, but everything was on computer - ha). Roy and I decided that we would step out on faith and make the move, even though he did not have a job. He met someone in our hometown the week before we left, that told him that a frozen fruit manufacturer was looking for distributors in the area that we were moving to. It was a lead. We packed up everything that we had in the back of Daddy's pick-up truck, a horse trailer, my car and Roy's car and we were off on a "God adventure". We had, at the most, $50. We planned to stay with my parents until we had a steady income.
After we arrived in Kentucky and I started my job, Roy drove to Nashville, TN to meet this company with the frozen fruit products. They indeed were looking to grow their business and would like to have a distributor in the area that we were living. In Roy's mind a company was developed and named on the spot, and we were in business - if this company would give us credit for a load of glorified popsicles. Indeed, they were happy to have us add their product to our distributing company (little did they know that we did not have any active accounts). In an oldsmobile, Roy set out with an ice chest in the back seat filled with frozen fruit to attempt to set-up accounts with the convenience stores in our area. Some convenience stores were large corporate chains, some mom-and-pop shops and some not much more than a bait shop. Roy would walk in, ask for the owner, take the wrapper off the popsicle and hand it over. "When I come by here on my "route" would you like me to stop and deliver you a case of this frozen fruit?" The product was a hit and we were seldom told no. The only problem was, we did not have an ice cream truck. We had to be able to keep this product frozen to deliver it. In our church were car dealers. We were living in the "used car capital of the U.S." with a car auction every week.. Roy told a car-dealer friend that we needed to buy an ice cream truck. "In all of the years I've been going to the car sale, I've never seen an ice cream truck come through." On late Thursday night, someone pulled into the driveway and blew the horn. We walked outside and there was our friend with an ice cream truck. - Miracle. He told us, "I figured since I've never seen an ice cream truck at the auction, and you needed one, that God must have sent this for you - so I bought it. I hope you like it." God was at work and I don't think we even realized at what capacity until later. There was one issue with this truck, while it did have an ice cream box on the back, there was no freezer unit to cool the box. I would have to admit that it was probably more of an issue of ignorance than it was great faith, but we were moving forward. While Roy was in another town, probably about 50 miles from our new hometown, he was looking for the headquarters of a large convenience store chain in our area. Not being familiar with anything east of the Mississippi, Roy made a wrong turn and was lost. Turning around on a country road to right his wrong, Roy saw out in a field an old dairy's ice cream truck bed with a freezer unit sitting on top of it. - Miracle. Roy found the owner of the truck and he agreed to sell him the freezer unit and allow him to pay him for it over the next couple of months - Miracle (for those of you opposed to credit, I'm sorry). The unit would have to be installed, and yet another miracle, the man that sold him the unit had a son-in-law that could install it. Over the next week, Roy drove the Oldsmobile hundreds of miles into little towns around our hometown, setting up his accounts. He picked up the first truckload of "popsicles" and had two weeks to get them sold so as to make the payments. I know that the point I'm making is that God provides and does miracles. There are so many things that God did in our hearts while we took a faith-walk and learned to trust on Him. As Roy would deliver that product, he tells that he would bend down on one knee to open up the box before putting the product in the freezer, and he would pray that God would send people into that store to buy our product. We were blessed to sell over $90,000 of "popsicles" that first year -Miracle. We learned to pray and wait. We dealt with disappointment when it seemed that everything was going to fall apart. We learned about giving and making God our partner in business. And, then we learned to let it all go when God called Roy into ministry. God has a plan.... He always has a plan.
I shared two particular points with the young couple today:
1- God doesn't always answer prayer the way that we think He will. He doesn't always provide the way that we think that He should provide. We may think that we need a job, but, God may intend to provide for us in other ways. You don't have to have a job for God to provide for you. Don't get disappointed in God when He doesn't do things YOUR way. Be careful to not get disappointed in God. Give Him time and space to work all things for your good.
2- Do not make an idol of your problem or your undesirable circumstances. You see, when we think and fret more on our circumstances, we have made our situation an idol in our life. We think more of our self than we do of God. This may be one of the hardest things. Satan must get so much pleasure out of seeing us so self-focused. In this recession, America is so self-focused and selfish that we have no time for God and we certainly seldom put Him in first place. As Christians, we may be in church and even serving, but we are virtually useless because we cannot quit focusing on our self.
Matthew 6 is our reminder that when we seek His righteousness, the other things will be taken care of.
And, to continue mine and Roy's story... "And they lived happily ever after" - NOT! I've enjoyed thinking back at how God did work miraculously in our lives. If anyone is interested in hearing more, I will share if I have any comments asking to do so. It may be that this is an encouragement to someone. It may be that it is just another story and no one really cares :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment