Write the Check

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; Proverbs 3:5 (NIV)

Imagine my surprise when I heard God say “Write the check.”

Let me explain. A few years ago we walked through a very difficult time financially. My business almost folded and for a year and a half, I didn’t get paid. As I prayed about finding a job, God said “Wait.” Wait didn’t make sense. I knew I could get a job. As a matter of fact, I could get a job making more than I was making in my business. But God said “No. Wait.” Being unsure of how this was going to turn out, I put conditions on it. “On one condition. I will wait and not get a job as long as You provide. You promise in the Bible that You will provide all of our needs so, as long as you provide, I’ll wait.” (I thank God that He is patient with us when we are learning to trust Him.)

The waiting took a year and a half. We cut back on everything we could cut back on. We lived minimally and over and over again, just as we ran out of money to pay the bills, God showed up. He never showed up in the same way twice but, He always showed up.

One day in the wait, as I was praying, I heard God say that He wanted me to give Him a percentage of the profits from my business. I laughed and reminded Him that a percentage of zero was zero. I didn’t agree at first because when you make an agreement with God, well, you have to keep it. This was a big ask. I prayed about it. The percentage was high. I worried about being able to keep my commitment. But as I prayed a light bulb went off. If God was giving me a profit, he’d work it out. This was not really my problem to handle. My job was surrender all of this to Him. I agreed.

Fast forward a few months. We were notified that the business had won a new contract. It hadn’t started yet so money was still really tight. I was at a church planting/multiplication conference with my church. The speaker was talking about the story in Joshua where the priests are told to cross the flood gorged river. The water was running swift and fast and the water level was very high. God said “Step into the river.” At this point, they had to decide if they believed in his promises or not. Would they step in and see God work? Or would they be the obstacle to seeing a miracle? 

The speaker said “What is your step of faith?” At that moment, I heard “Write the check.” I knew what God was saying. He was saying “Write the check for my percentage.” I said, “There is no money in the account. We’ve only had one little contract and are barely paying the bills.” I heard it again. And then a third time, I said “OK.”

After the conference was over, I immediately went home and ran some reports on the business. And there was a profit. It was more than I expected. I wrote the check. 

Here’s my question for you. What is the step of faith that you are not taking? What is God calling you to do that is challenging what you believe about Him? Do you trust Him enough to take that step?

Press On

Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. Hosea 6:3 (NLT)

Zacchaeus. What do we know about him? When we talk about this story we comment on the fact that he was short. That’s why he climbed the tree. We comment on the fact that he was rich. And those riches got him some enemies. He came by his riches by working for the Romans, who were hated by the Jews. He collected taxes for them. As a matter of fact, he was so good at it that he was the head tax man. And everyone knew that he skimmed extra off the top of the taxes for himself.

There is one thing about him that we don’t talk about as much. In Luke 19 in the Message it says he wanted desperately to see Jesus. The Holy Spirit was working on Zacchaeus and his desire to see Jesus was more than he could handle.

So he went into the crowd of people that despised him. I am sure when he said “Excuse me, I need to get through.” they moved closer together to block his way. At that point, he could have given up. He could have said “I am not good enough to know Jesus. I’ll just go back to my work. What would he want to do with me anyway?” But he didn’t.

He followed that pull in his heart. He put aside any thoughts of what the people would say and he did something that could not have been easy in a longish tunic. He climbed a tree. He did everything he could to get a glimpse of the man that his heart was speaking about. He put action behind the longing.

What about you? God is calling to you every single moment. He is the one putting the desire in our hearts to know him; to seek him. What will you do about it? Will you keep doing the same thing you do every day expecting different results or will you make a change? Will you do something different in your life so you can see who Jesus is, so you can get to know him?

I love today’s verse. “Let us press on to know him.” Whether you have to change your routine, start or stop habits, get away for some quiet time or even if you have to climb a tree, press on. Do it! As Zacchaeus experienced, it will change your world.

Steps of Faith

Today you will know that the living God is among you. Joshua 3:10 (NLT)

Joshua had led the people of Israel to the Jordan River. They were going to enter the land of Canaan. The river was at flood stage and all of the people had to cross. That was surely a dangerous proposition. Not only was the river dangerous but after they crossed it, they were going to be venturing into the unknown. On the other side of the river were lots of different enemy peoples.

As Joshua came to relay the instructions to the people that God had relayed to him, he said “Today you will know that the Living God is among you.” The Living God was among them in the way of the Ark of the Covenant. God spoke to Moses from the Ark. It was known that this was his presence in their midst.

The Ark would lead the way making the path clear. God would go before. But I think what Joshua meant was “Today you will experience God.” As the people walked to the swollen river, I wonder what they thought. Did it seem impossible to cross that especially with woman and children? Did they look ahead and say “We can’t get there from here?”

We do that don’t we? We look at where God is leading and say “WOW! That looks like more than I can handle.” We stop and say things like “I have to pray about it” or “Maybe now is not the right time for this.” What if the Israelites had done that? “Lord, we can’t step out now because we have to pray about this and well, we’ve been wondering for 40 years, surely a few more days won’t matter.”

We don’t have a physical Ark to follow now but we do have God’s presence. He promises it to us in the form of the Holy Spirit. He is leading us and telling us to take the next step. He is telling us to trust that he has prepared the way.

The priests, who were carrying the Ark, went to the river’s edge and stepped in. The Bible says the water stopped a distance away and became a wall of water. Below where they were standing, the rest of the water drained into the sea.

What if? What if we trusted that God was going before us? What if we walked to the water’s edge even though it looked too scary to cross? What if we stepped in (even when we were afraid) to see what God would do? Would we, like the people of Israel, know who God really was?