It is so strange how you can learn to look at things differently in an instant! It is truly like being blind one moment, and the next moment someone gives you a new pair of glasses and everything is crystal clear!
Let me tell you something about my personal faith journey around finances, or money and my “daily bread” that I have always prayed about day after day in the Lord’s Prayer.
Remember, I accepted the Lord Jesus as Savior and as Lord in my life in faith on the 10th of October 1969, in my Standard 8 (or nowadays Grade 10) year. From that day on, I can testify with great gratitude, through the Lord’s abundant grace in my life, I serve and follow Jesus fully!
Two years later the Lord called me with the words of Isaiah 6:8: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” To which I, like an Isaiah, replied: “Here I am! Send me!”
Finally, I had the privilege of serving the Lord within the Dutch Reformed Church for almost 15 years, together with my beloved wife and two daughters, as a pastor and pastor couple. And like all Dutch Reformed ministers, I received a stipend (or salary) every month for what I did there.
Until that day, October 10, 1993, the day we were baptized as believers as a family. Then the Lord very clearly told me the following two things:
“You resign as a Dutch Reformed minister, because what I am now calling you to do and what you must do now, you cannot do as a Dutch Reformed minister.”
And: “You will never again accept a salary from anyone for anything you do in My Name and service!”
The Lord continued: You have a proverb that says: “Whoever eats his bread, speaks his word!” Meaning, if people pay you a salary for what you do, they ultimately expect you to say what they want you to say! And says the Lord: It will never be like that again in your life and ministry! From this moment on, I am your only Lord, but also your Total Provider! As long as you do what I tell you in obedience, I will make sure that your bills are paid!
That moment, now 32 years ago, changed everything in my life around money and finances!
Let me admit right away: It was also the most challenging faith path I have ever walked with the Lord in my life as His child!
I have always known that He was the Total Provider and Provider in my life and my family's life! He has always taken care of us and given us, as we pray, "our daily bread"! Whether it was through that allowance that I received from the church treasury month after month, or whether it was through all the other entrepreneurial businesses that my wife and I were busy with in our free time.
But from that day in 1993 it was as if I had to learn from the beginning to look with eyes of faith at my finances, how I budgeted, and what we as a family were allowed to buy or did not “have the money” not to buy.
And this new path of faith forced me to start the day early every morning with a new discipline where I started the day “in the presence of the Lord”!
I will tell you more about that next time.
Let me conclude with the words of 2 Corinthians 9:8 that the Lord used to lead me to a new peace in this regard as well.
Please allow the Lord Himself to speak to you through this verse what you need to hear today: “And God is able to make all things abound to you, that in all things, always having all sufficiency in all things, ye may have all sufficiency in every good work.”