Last week I ended my post by sharing that my husband and I had decided to test God as He entreated us to do so through Malachi 3:10. So in December of 2013 we tithed for the first time in about 8 months. We committed to tithing for the next 3 months. We prayed and asked God to show us if He was in this. If He wasn't, then we would stop tithing after the 3rd month. Well...He was faithful and showed Himself just enough that my husband and I were fully and unshakably convinced that tithing is in fact a principle for today and that there is indeed blessing as a result of this act of faith. But there was one problem, although He showed himself "just enough" to convince us of tithing, it was not, however, "just enough" to put us in a position to not have to borrow money from our credit cards. Now I know that does not sound like much of a blessing but I believe that for this particular breakthrough, God was working in phases.
Right after the tithe in December, we received several money gifts, food from people not wanting their excess to go to waste and even great condition hand-me-downs for the kids and even my husband and I. What's more, my husband got a call from the school district offering him a homebound student, which had not happened in FOR-E-VAH! And although this was great, and did help some, it still was not enough to make ends meet. We were still borrowing from our credit cards, only this time, we were only borrowing 75% of what we had been borrowing, and that, my friends, is still a butt load of money! The coolest thing was, of course, that in spite of there being an obvious deficiency in our finances, questioning giving our tithe was no longer an issue. God faithfully settled that in our hearts and, in my opinion, THAT is a HUGE breakthrough! But that wasn't all.
Somewhere in the middle of 2014, my husband's homebound student was now fit to go to an actual campus and we were back without that extra income. And although in November of 2014 he got a promotion, the stipend he was to receive as a result of said promotion would not kick in until the Fall of 2015!! Needless to say, we were stuck!!!
Throughout the months of 2014 God highlighted different issues in my life. He showed me that I had a spirit of poverty. He also showed me that I had a spiritual disease of being a compulsive under earner. YES these are real conditions of the soul. I won't go into detail only because that topic in and of itself would be its own post (and that may very well be something I do in the future) but for now, just know that these two things placed me in a perpetual state of feeling unworthy and being discontent with what I had, not to mention, plenty of shame and condemnation attached.
I knew from being a recovered alcoholic and drug addict that this was something over which I was powerless. The truth is, if I could have stopped it on my own, I would have a long time ago. But I couldn't. Thankfully, I could now assimilate the effects of these two spiritual diseases over my life, however, I could not, for the life of me, or even just the survival of me, bring myself to break that cycle!!! I needed the ONE who could indeed do something about it, and that ONE is Jesus Christ!!!
I started talking about it more...in prayer. Just like the tithing thing, every chance I got I would go to the prayer team at church or other bible studies and I would ask that they would pray to break this spirit of poverty and under-earning. I would also pray for the release of our debt. That was the only way out. I knew it from experience! I knew that deliverance would come if I humbled myself though prayer before God and man (James 5:16).
On several of those prayer times, I was asked if I still used credit cards. I admitted that I did. They encouraged me to give those up. I accepted that I needed to but I was absolutely terrified to actually do it. Therefore, there was no resolve. And here I was all over again feeling like I was damned if I DID get rid of my credit cards, because I would have no fall back, and I was damned if I didn't, because BEING IN DEBT IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD. Proverbs 22:7 says, "...the BORROWER is a SLAVE to the lender." Yet Jesus said I was free! Romans 13:8 says, "Let NO DEBT REMAIN OUTSTANDING, except the continuing debt to love one another." Yet I had credit card debt galore!
I truly believe that humbling myself by praying over and over again, with amazing godly people, worked overtime. I started to feel a supernatural peace that God was working everything out to completion and that He was faithful to show me what to do! How did I know it was working, you ask??? Well let me tell you! On December 21, 2014 (YES!!! 4 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS), in a most unexpected way, we handed our credit cards to two of the most amazing godly prayer warriors in our church, upon THEIR request!!! LOL! I laugh because it was so weird!!! Who does that?!?! AND me...I just opened my wallet and gave them ALL my credit cards!!! Who does THAT??? But you know what??? It felt so natural. It was time! Somehow, in that very moment, God supernaturally interceded and did for me what forever and a day I could not do for myself!
Now a really cool thing to tell you right now would be for me to say how so amazingly godly and bold I was to hand them over! But honestly, I think Holy Spirit just sort of took over my body, like a robot, because I distinctly remember handing them over and in my head saying, "what the heck are you doing???" HAHAHA!!! But it happened! And then we get in the car and my first comment to my husband is, "well THANK GOD we have already bought our kids Christmas gifts!!!" YEAH I SAID IT!!! Sick right??? But you know what? Immediately after that I was overcome by so much awe and gratefulness! Not only were our prayer warriors bold enough to hold us accountable, but GOD completely stepped in as well and caused me to follow thru on a desire I long had, but no strength to take action to fulfill it!
So here we are again, my beautiful blog family, needing to make this into a PART 3! You don't want to miss it because what happens next, most of which just happened this past week after writing part 1, is insanely amazing!!! See you next week!
SIDE NOTE: There is a lot of information out there about the spirit of poverty and the disease of compulsive under-earning. If this strikes a cord with you I encourage you to look into it. There is a difference between a negative confession of faith that I am poor or not worthy, and asking people to pray because I can admit that there is something that has a hold over me. The former is a pitiful way of thought and the latter is a catalyst to a stance of power. Truth is...you cannot bring to the light of Jesus what you cannot admit that you have in darkness! So don't believe for one second that praying over and over again for deliverance of this is a confession of "oh poor, poor me, I am destitute and lame!" NO! that is just the devil trying to get you to not seek prayer. Pray until something happens!!! I promise He will do for you what He did for me!!!
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