Sunday, March 26, 2006

One man pretends to be rich and has nothing;
another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.
Proverbs 13:7

What a wonderful reminder this verse is! I've spoken many times on this blog about how wonderful my husband Eric is. But like us all, Eric struggles with things sometimes. One of the recurring struggles in his life is in trusting the Lord in our finances. Like most men, Eric feels a heavy burden to provide financially for our family. I work just a bit outside of our home but he brings in 98% of our income.

Our financial situation was one of the things that made Eric hesitate when trying to decide whether or not we would be adopting again. He felt that he had a job to provide FIRST for his family before considering new children. Where we differed in our opinion was in areas like college--he feels we should pay for our kids to go and I don't feel that it is a must (although that would be a nice bonus if we were able). In the end Eric decided that the bible didn't dictate that he provide his children a college education. =-)

Throughout the past few months, with the constraints of the adoption costs and the knowledge that our daily living costs are going to rise significantly when the new children get home, it has been easy to get caught up in fear. Fear that we won't be able to pay our bills...that our children won't have everything they need (or everything we want to give them that they don't need).

Friday night Eric went through a few hours full of fear and worry about all of this. It was so frustrating to me because one of my strongest "Spiritual Gifts" is faith and I just KNOW the Lord will provide like He always has! But Eric wants to see it. He went to sleep Friday night feeling very poor.

Saturday afternoon Eric shared with me that "God shut me up today Anita." Huh? What?! =-) Eric shared that overnight his little side business had made more money than it had the previous 24 days. To him, this was God's confirmation that He would indeed always provide for our family when we are faithful to Him. Amen!

So I want to challenge all of us to think of ourselves not as poor, but as wealthy! We are wealthy in the love of Christ. We are wealthy in His faithfulness...wealthy in His provision for us...wealthy in His unending forgiveness for our weaknesses. This week I am going to focus on my spiritual wealth, and allow the Lord to figure out the rest--just as He always has!

0 comments: