Have you ever made a commitment to do something? Maybe you committed to meet with a friend. Or maybe you committed to doing something with your son or daughter. Or maybe you have committed to giving money to someone or even God. How well do you keep your commitments?
We need to be cautious about making commitments. I think it is important to really think through the commitments that we plan to make because what we commit to we should follow through with. The other thing is that when we make a commitment we need to leave self out of it. Are we committing to this for us or for them, or for some advantage or maybe even a blessing?
It makes me think about tithe paying. I have a conviction to pay tithe and offerings through my local church. It helps to pay my pastor, help missionaries, pay for Christian teachers, etc. But why do I do it? Do I do it because I want the Lord to bless me? Or do I do it because I love the Lord and I want to support His cause to save souls? The motive is so important. I want to be motivated by love for God.
The reason I do pay is that God has asked me to. Yes, I want to be blessed as well but I realize that His blessing may not be monetary, which I am perfectly happy with. I also realize that obeying the Lord does not always bring “peace”. I want to clarify. We can have peace in obeying God but we may not have “peace”. When we obey God, Satan does not like it and he is going to bring trials and storms our way. But the blessing is that, as we trust God we can have peace knowing that we are in harmony with God and His Word as we go through the storms.
We have been struggling financially for quite a few years. During that time we got ourselves into a lot of credit card debt. Last year we went to a Dave Ramsey Seminar for the second time. This time my husband really got on board. We have been doing the Snowball Method for our debt, which has been working very slowly. There are also those bills that end up “falling below the line”; if you have been through Dave Ramsey’s Seminar you know what I am talking about.
We also owed a lot of taxes this year. When you get into a lot of credit card debt the government doesn’t take that into account. So you work hard to make more money in order to pay off the credit cards and the government considers you making more so they charge you more taxes and the vicious cycle goes on. So this year we owed more taxes and had to put in an extension. We finally filed Oct. 15 and paid what we could toward the taxes. We had to step out in faith because we really did not have the money to pay and still pay our bills.
We have recently started another business. It is a water loss business. The basics are, you get a leak that floods your house or business, we come in and extract and dry it out. Right after we stepped out in faith to pay the majority of our taxes we got a big water job call. Praise the Lord! We are still praying in Faith that we will get paid right away for the job. These insurance jobs can take up to 4 months to be paid but we know God can make it quicker. We have seen Him do it.
There is another thing that I stepped out in faith and did a couple of weeks ago. I received my check from where I work. I work part-time and I have mostly been using that money for anything you would buy at a store, food and such, whatever the household needs are. As I shared above I have a commitment to paying tithe and offering. I also decided to commit the same percentage that I give to the Lord to put toward my smallest credit card to get it paid off, the Snowball Method. So I figured it all out and submitted the payment to my church for the Lord and paid an extra amount toward my lowest credit card. A few days later my boss called me in to talk to me and let me know he was giving me a dollar raise. Wow! The blessings of the Lord are so wonderful.
It can be hard to step out in faith not knowing the outcome. And we still don’t know how we will make it for the next day, week, or month. Is it scary? Yes! But as I continue to give it to the Lord and let Him work out the details, is so much better than trying to make it happen myself. As long as we are doing our part we have to let God do the rest or it will destroy us physically, emotionally, spiritually, and maybe even financially.
Dear Father,
Thank You for Your blessings. To be honest it is really a struggle to trust You. Thank You for Your patience with us. Continue to guide and lead us.
In Jesus Name,
Amen
Do your part today and give the rest to God. He will see you through.
Do you have a story to share? How has God blessed you when you stepped out in faith? I would love to hear your story. It is always encouraging to hear others faith stories.