God Is My Provider

God Is My Provider.  Do you know what Jehovah-Jireh means?  Well, basically it means God is my provider, found in Genesis 22, the meaning of Jehovah-Jireh is, literally translated the Lord who sees or the Lord who will see to it.

As many of you know over the past three years I have been waging a battle for my health.  I have Autoimmune Disease, seven to be exact.  Because of this, I had to quit my job babysitting two precious little boys whom I loved dearly.  I thought I should be able to kick this nasty disease and put it into remission but here I am 3 years later still fighting.  (I suppose that is actually a good thing!)

As you can imagine we lost a great deal of income when I stopped babysitting in my home.  At the same time, the Lord led us to another church after 19 years in the same church home. (Nothing was wrong with our church or the relationships we had there, but God made it clear we were to make a change.)  My husband worked on staff part-time so because we were no longer members he had to quit which is quite reasonable.  We were now down $2,000.00 a month.

Add multiplying medical bills (and we have excellent health insurance) and you can see that we were in desperate straights!

I strongly dislike talking about finances

and feel quite embarrassed by our situation,

so why would I even write about

this sensitive and private issue?

To bring God glory…

If I kept our situation to myself which I would much prefer, you would never know of God’s continuous provision to our family!  He is our provider and He has never let us down yet!  God is faithful even when we have not been.  We are a testimony to his faithfulness.  I want to shout it from the mountaintop!  GOD IS GOOD!

Let me tell you the facts.  Three years later, we are still in our home, we have food to eat, our faith has been strengthened.  We have long since depleted our thousand dollar emergency fund and our retirement savings.  We don’t always pay our bills on time but we do pay them.  We have two children in college who have had to work their way through school and thankfully they received generous scholarships as well.  Our extended family has helped us replace broken appliances like a dryer as well as a duck taped refrigerator and dishwasher.  Someone gave us an Amazon gift card so we could purchase Christmas presents for our children.  My uncle has made a commitment to purchase my daughter’s pointe shoes and she received a scholarship from Leap of Faith Dance Company.   Our family also received the opportunity to clean the whole Leap of Faith building so we could add to her tuition.

Although my husband has looked for extra work, he has not found any that would enable him to work from home and use his skill set, and still be able to take care of me and our children, one of which has special needs.  He has miraculously managed our finances in the midst of mounting medical bills and with God’s help has kept us from going under!  Our God is an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING PROVIDER and my husband is an absolutely amazing husband!

On Monday of this week, while I was grilling hamburgers for our family Fourth of July celebration our pastor rolled into our driveway in his mega van.  Hopped out and gave me an envelope and said, “I can’t stay but someone wanted you to have this”.  It was an envelope with a thousand dollars worth of Costco gift cards!!!!  As far as I am aware no one even knows of our financial situation at church as we have kept this to ourselves.  Praying to God for all our needs.  I had just been praying at the grill for gas to be provided for our car so I could get to a doctor’s appointment the next day!  I thought I might faint!

Now, I have to admit that not all of my prayers have been answered in this way.  Most of the time God has given us creative ideas on how to save money, cut the grocery budget, make do or do without.  We were fortunate to enter into this unexpected situation debt-free except for our home.  We have made some mistakes along the way too, like not tithing every single month so we could pay the mortgage and not lose the house.  I don’t know if we chose right on that one?

The point being, that even though we don’t always choose rightly when we repent God is faithful to forgive and provide for all our needs!

I hope this transparent post has encouraged you to spend your time worshiping the God who is the great provider to His children.  I can PROMISE you this!  God is always faithful, he will never fail you or leave you, and He is our Jehovah-Jireh!

On another note, I don’t know who sent those Costco gift cards?  I do know that they were listening to God and they heard him and acted.  My prayer for me and for you is that we would be so in tune with God that we would be like this generous person who had God’s heart to give!  Thank you, from the bottom of my heart to the individual or individuals who showed Christ’s love to us in this way!

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

YOUR TURN…

God is my provider!  How has He shown himself to be your provider?

Blessings,

*This post was originally written in 2016, we are all doing well and God continues to be our provider!