Saturday, February 21, 2009

Glory stories

Since my dad is sharing some of his "glory stories" over on his blog, I thought I'd share some of mine. Maybe we can start a trend. I love reading how God has provided for people. I treasure the stories of how God provided for my parents. They gave me rock solid proof of God's way with His people. When it came time for me to depend on Him, I can honestly say it was fairly easy, and not because I'm a giant in the faith. (I'm not, by the way.) It was easy because I had seen God's faithfulness over and over again. To doubt would have been ludicrous.

God has not dealt with me any differently than He dealt with my parents. We have never had an unmet need, and there have been an abundant supply of things we do not need, but He just gave it because He is good!

One of the things that frustrate us when we first begin to serve the Lord is the how unable we are to do His will. God taught us a lesson about this on our first major trip when we started on deputation. Our income wasn't coming in yet, and we had meetings to get to. Gas costs money, and we simply didn't have it. I vividly remember packing us into the car, and as we drove out, asking my husband, "Uh, Babe? How are we gonna pay for the gas to get there today?" Ryan just said, "I don't know!"

We stopped by the post office on the way out. There was a check for just enough money to pay for food and gas to get us to our destination. It was from a penny drive in a bus ministry. (A bus ministry in our churches is a bus rout to and from church for underprivileged children.) These kids had collected pennies for six months, picked a missionary, and mailed them the check for the full amount. I remember Ryan standing there with a giant grin on his face, blinking back tears as he held a letter, written by the bus kids in crayon.

How can you doubt God's provision when He does stuff like that? It is true, we cannot do His will with what we have, and with who we are. We are not supposed to do it at all though, God wants us to see that He can do it!

3 comments:

Sarah D. said...

I love your 'glory story'! I remember one day when Chad was out of town on business. Our grocery supply was extremely limited and I had to wait one more day before I could buy any more. I was so depressed. After writing our tithe check, we had enough money to pay our bills down to the last dollar. Just not enough for groceries to last all week! It just so happened as I resigned myself to serving plain rice to the kids and be happy about it, out of the blue, our pastor called and invited us over for dinner! I was so thrilled to get to eat a real meal! And they sent the leftovers home with us, so we could eat more later!

Emily Campbell said...

Thanks for sharing, I'm going to to have to post one on my blog! Its always nice to hear how God provides for his Children!

Unknown said...

I love how you titled them "Glory Stories"! They make you wanna shout glory that's for sure!

Your blog is so pretty and simple.
There was a recent baby shower here in which the mom to be wanted everything to be brown and pink polka dots! The cake was so pretty!