Financial Miracles

Well, we have had several financial miracles and blessings from God recently, that I simply must share!

First, in October of last year, Joe and I were really desiring to go on a family vacation down to the International House of Prayer, but we didn’t have the money.  We figured we would need about $1000 to drive down and stay for a week, so Joe started praying and asking God about it.  We really wanted to go the week of Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day in the States) because Joe only had 4 vacation days left and it would work best to be able to go on a week with a holiday in it.  Time was running short and we had basically resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be going.  Now, at Joe’s work they have an incentive program where the employees can submit ideas to improve their work stations or procedures in order to help them work more efficiently.  If your idea is approved and implemented, your idea goes into a draw for prizes that are drawn each quarter. If multiple people came up with the idea, the prize money is split up between them all.  There are 3 prizes and Joe had his name on 4 different ballots in the coming draw, but only one of them was his idea alone.  As you may be guessing already, when it came time for the draw, Joe’s idea was picked out for the first prize of….you guessed it – $1000!  And it was $1000 AFTER taxes!    God had totally heard our prayer and knew what we needed and answered it exactly, with just enough time for us to make all our travel plans!  As you may have read when I blogged about our trip, we had an awesome time and it was a total blessing and gift from the Lord.

Now, for the second story, we were still a little strapped for cash and Joe began asking the Lord for another $1000, since we found out he’d be missing a bunch of work around Christmas, because his place of work was shutting down the factory for several days.  As Joe prayed, he thought about our financial situation and then altered his request slightly, asking the Lord for $1000 plus some.   I, however, did not know that Joe was praying for this, so when one day I received a totally random phone call from someone we barely knew at all and this person asked if we had been praying about any sort of need, I was at a loss!  I figured this person wanted to bless us financially and a number of things went through my head that I could say, but I knew I had to be honest, because I hadn’t been specifically praying for anything.  After that phone call, I figured I had blown it - lol.  I told Joe about it when he came home from work & that’s when he told me that he had been praying for the $1000 plus some.  Not long after that we received another phone call from the same person telling us to go check our mail box.  When Joe opened the envelope, there was a cheque written for $1000 plus $400 in cash!!!!  Ha!  It was totally like the Lord to answer Joe’s request so specifically that He caused the person to separate the $1000 from the rest – it was very cool!

Third story.  A couple weeks ago, there was another draw at Joe’s work where everybody’s names were in for a prize and you guessed it again…Joe won!  So, this time we weren’t asking for anything, but God decided to bless us with a trip to Phoenix, Arizona!  Joe’s company is paying for 2 flight tickets and 2 nights accommodations at a hotel with the option for us to choose to extend our stay and pay for the extra nights.  All that Joe has to do is take a tour of one of their plants there.  So, this just felt like another kiss from the Lord to tell us that He likes us.   

Last story.  Joe has tried to sell his truck multiple times in the past with no luck.  He recently asked my dad if he could maybe try to sell it for him, since he didn’t have the time to do it himself.  Also, the truck has a few minor things wrong with it, that we were concerned may need to be fixed on the front end before we’d be able to sell it.  However, completely unexpectedly, when Joe’s parents came to visit us from Alberta a couple weeks ago, Joe mentioned his truck and they said that they’d be interested in buying it!  But even better than that, they are going to take care of the repairs and the cost of transporting the truck back to Alberta!  It couldn’t have been any easier or stress-free for us and was another incredible blessing from God.

So, this has just been really encouraging for us and a testimony that God will take care of our needs and even our desires when we trust Him completely with our finances.  It is our desire to continue to grow in our ability to trust Him and to surrender our finances to Him to be used as He desires, to learn to sow more generously that we may also reap generously.  We want to give out of love and then be “wooed and wowed” (as Mike Bickle says it) when God in turn blesses us beyond what we could imagine.  More and more we are discovering the joy and excitement of partnering with God with our money!