Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Full Confidence . . .

Do you have full confidence in God? I mean, do you believe with every fiber of your being that he's going to do what he promises? A couple of days ago in Bible time I read the, "Do not worry" passage in Matthew. As I was reading it, I asked myself if I really believed it. Do I believe whole heartedly that God is going to take care of me and my family the same way he takes care of the flowers in the field. And my answer . . . YES!!!
I do believe it. I believe it for two reasons. The first one is He said he would. That should be enough, but there's more. The second reason I believe it is because of God's history. Not His global history, but His history in the Taylor Family and in my life. God has always showed up, always right on time. I want to tell you about how faithful God has been over the summer. I think you'll be amazed!
For those of you not familiar with Connections, let me give you a couple of quick facts. We're a new church, less than a year old, reaching prechristians and young families. We're still under 100 people (but growing). I have a couple of side jobs that I do now and then when I can get the work, but mostly I put all my time in making Connections go. Financially things have been a challenge, as they are with any non-profit in this economy. But the fact that most of our people are college aged or unsaved makes it even a bit more challenging. Still God has been faithful. Here are the last few months and what God has done to save the day.
At the beginning of the summer, we needed money to pay all our bills at the beginning of the month. We prayed and God showed up in the mail. We got a 600 dollar check from our escrow account. We're still not sure if they miscalculated something (we bought this house when we moved here about a year ago), or if it has to do with a change on our mortgage insurance, but either way, we needed it.
Fast forward 30 days, same situation, just a little worse. Tammi came in and sat down with me to talk finances. "Here are our options. We can take a partial paycheck and pay the mortgage or we can take no paycheck and pay the rent for the church. What do you want to do? Oh and we need to pay our worship leader and children's worker too." As a man, that's tough, I mean, that's my main gig, providing for my family. Even more than starting a church and loving on people, I'm commanded to take care of the Taylor clan. Tam and I prayed together and the next day, in the mail box we got a support check for 1200 bucks. How amazing is that!!! We didn't ask for it, we didn't even make the need known, it just showed up.
Thirty days later, same song, third verse. This time it was a check for 1000 dollars for some work I hadn't even done yet. The original agreement was that I'd get paid after all the editing was finished. We were still a month out from even doing the shooting, much less all the editing, but I was holding in my hand a 1000 dollar check. The guy who sent it had no idea he answered our prayers.
Number 4. Probably my favorite story (that's happened so far). I'm sitting in a parking lot waiting for a lady 4 spaces up to back out so I could park as close as possible to the front door. While I was waiting, I noticed the car directly to my left was also backing out towards me. "Surely she'll see me!" I thought. I tapped on the horn a couple of times then laid on the horn as hard as I could (as if that would make it louder). I actually broke the plastic piece that activates the horn. My horn didn't stop her, but my driver side door did. She apologized and admitted it was completely her fault. My car left an imprint in her plastic bumper, "Reatta" (only backwards of course). Lucky for her it was a loaner car, hers was being fixed. The Reatta took a good sized dent up by the front wheel well. When the insurance company called me to talk about a fix they said I could just keep the money if I wanted or I could have it fixed, either way it was up to me. I still have the dent, and my house. Another mortgage miracle. I love my car (it turns 20 in January), I'm bummed it's got a dent in it, but I'm thinking about keeping it just as a great story of God's faithfulness. He always shows up.
Last month I felt God calling me to sell some things to make things go and I was faithful to that. I understand completely that God calls us to do our part too. We have to be men and woman willing to give it all up for him. We can't just stand there with our hands out all the time.
All in all the last 4-5 months have been amazing. To me it's just more proof that God is behind the ministry we're doing here. And I know he'll continue to be faithful because he has always been faithful, he has always provided.
Let me close with another verse I ran into recently. It's in the book of 1 John, chapter 3 starting in verse 21, "Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him." IF our hearts do not condemn us . . . in other words, if we are clean before God, no unconfessed sin, no baggage that we're carrying around, then we have full confidence in God! He will do what we ask, He will help us accomplish His will on this earth, He will help grow Connections and continue to provide for the Taylor family. I believe this with every fiber of my being! I have FULL CONFIDENCE!!!!

2 comments:

Pops said...

Good stuff! God is faithful...all the time.

MigelDelgado said...

Wow,I am speechless. I have also noticed this in my life. Thank you for sharing that.