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As you might guess from the title, this blog is about our money. It is really amazing how hard it is to trust God in this area. I almost feel as though I can more easily trust Him with my eternal salvation and destination, than I can trust Him to provide for my needs today! Since the founding fathers of our country chose to inscribe our currency with the term, “In God we trust,” I am guessing I am not the only one with this hang up.

I think money is especially difficult for followers of Jesus. We have all kinds of differing beliefs about wealth, from people deliberately living in poverty, to the prosperity gospel believers. I think the bottom line comes down to trust. Are we trusting that our God is a good God, able to supply all we need and to give us wisdom and discernment in how to use our resources?

As I mentioned, this is very hard to do. My personal goal is to get to a place of faith and trust where I don’t worry anymore about whether or not God will provide for me. I want to have unshakable faith that of course my heavenly Father is going to take care of me. Despite the fact that God has never let me down, I still doubt!

As many of you know, I really love “My Utmost For His Highest,” by Oswald Chambers. I recently read that he says that trusting God to provide for us is actually a habit and one of the first that we need to establish in our spiritual lives. The reason for this is that it is not just about our material provision, but the provision of His grace and power in our lives. If we say we are following Jesus, but are still just scraping by each day in our own strength, it doesn’t say much about the redemptive power of the cross!

My prayer for us as Jesus’ followers is that we will make it a habit to trust more and more in God’s abundant provision in every area of our lives. That we wouldn’t fall into bed at night with a feeling of having barely made it through the day, but with a sense of confidence and peace. That we would be able to look back through each day and see God providing over and over and to also look forward with expectancy to tomorrow when we know that He will do it all over again.

“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; You are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from You; You are the ruler of all things. In Your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.” I Chronicles 29:11-12

(For any of you that would like more information about a Godly perspective on finances or how to get out of debt or manage money better, I would highly recommend Dave Ramsey. He has written many books on the subject, has a radio show and a very helpful website. You can find more at www.DaveRamsey.com)

Every now and then we all need a soft place to land. If you pay attention, that is actually what most of our sitcoms are about. “Cheers” spelled it out most clearly with their theme song titled “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.” Life can be tough and all of us long for a place to land, where everyone truly knows and accepts us–even at our worst.

From the bar of “Cheers,” sitcoms traveled to a coffee shop in New York on the show “Friends.” Once again the theme was really about being loved and accepted for who you are.

Some of us are blessed to have physical places we can go like this. I am extremely blessed with a few places that I can show up, as is, no questions asked. These places are more about the people than the place–precious people in my life who love me through the good, the bad and the ugly.

In our very disconnected society of social media and texting it is even more important to connect with people in person. I don’t think our longing for that connection has diminished at all, in fact if anything I believe it has increased. Once again, the Bible has it covered. Hebrews 10:25 says, “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of His return is drawing near.”

I would encourage you, if you don’t feel like you have a soft place to land, become that place for others. Open up your heart, and maybe your home, to people who are hurting, (that is actually everyone) and you will be surprised to find that people will treat you the same in return.

The wonderful thing is that God knows us better than anyone else. Even when it feels as though the whole world has abandoned us and there is no one left, He will never leave us. He is always there with His arms open wide to receive us just as we are. And that is the very best place of all to land!

“The Lord will hold me close.” Psalm 27:10b

Do you remember the children’s game Chutes and Ladders? It is one of the first board games my children were all able to play. The concept is extremely simple: be the first one to reach the top of the board either one square at a time or by climbing “ladders” if you land on a square with a ladder. The tricky part is there are “chutes,” (slides) waiting on some of the spaces to slide you back down.

Something God has been teaching me this year is how to move straight ahead on His paths. My tendency in the past has been for my thinking to get caught up in mazes, (another favorite with my young children.) I would follow a thought around and around in my mind, instead of looking at the issue through God’s perspective. Now I am learning to ask Him what I should do and then take a step in faith. The really awesome thing is that as I take these steps, I find He provides solid footing for me.

Oddly enough, another name for this board game is “Snakes and Ladders.” While I have never actually seen the board for this version of the game, I have experienced something very similar in my life. I will be moving along on what feels like a firm path to me, just minding my own business. Suddenly I will hear “hissing” in my ear. “Did God really tell you to be doing this? You are going to fail you know. Who do you think you are?” The voice of the enemy can be so loud sometimes that before I know it, I am sliding downward away from the path God had me on.

As I learn to recognize these attacks, I am able to get back on firm footing more quickly. I am learning to stick to the truth of who God says I am and the truth of the direction He has told me to be traveling. I love Psalm 18:36. It says, “You have enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip.” Another verse to encourage me, (and you if this is your struggle) to think in God’s “straight” way instead of in mazes, is Romans 12:2. This verse talks about being transformed by the renewing of our minds. It is so wonderful that God can even change the way we think!

Even though our lives are not supposed to be about climbing to the top of some ladder of success, I hope this encourages on your daily walk with Jesus, that you can know He will make your steps firm as you listen to His leading. I also pray that you will be on guard for the “chutes” or attacks from the enemy that would cause you to slide backwards.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

For some strange reason, I woke up Monday morning with a lot of anxiety. I know none of you can relate to this, I am sure you all woke up Monday morning completely calm and peaceful! But seriously, Monday mornings always hold a fair amount of disquiet for me during the school year. Having so many children, the phone calls and emails stack up quickly over the weekend, so my to-do list on Mondays is usually quite daunting. Ordinarily, I take some time Sunday afternoon to schedule out the week so I at least have an idea of what I am facing come Monday morning. This Sunday I hadn’t gotten that done, so I woke up with a feeling of “flying blind.”

God is always so faithful though. Even though I already felt “behind,” I still had my quiet time that morning, (I learned many years back now, that if I skip that, I might as well go back to bed) and sure enough, He showed up. Reading My Utmost For His Highest, Chambers was saying, “To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth.” That is so true. For all my planning I actually cannot control the day. He goes on to say how even though we can’t be certain of what will happen next, we can always be certain of God.

The really cool part is that this isn’t a bad thing. God isn’t waiting to pull the rug out from under us. It is actually quite the opposite. God has all sorts of amazing surprises prepared for us as we walk more closely with Him.

So does this mean that I am going to toss out my calendar anytime soon? Probably not. But I am trying to hold things more loosely, trying to check in with God more frequently about what He thinks about things. And I am trying to live into the, “spontaneous, joyful, uncertainty and expectancy,”* of a life rightly related to God.

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” I Peter 5:7

*Oswald Chambers

I was thinking about praise this morning, specifically about when we give God praise. It is easy to praise Him when everything is going well, when your family is healthy, you have a job, the bills are getting paid and the kids are staying out of trouble. We can easily sing, “God is so good.”

The same is true after a problem has been resolved. After your loved one has been healed from an illness. After you have found a new job. After everything is all better.

It’s easy to praise before anything is going wrong and it’s easy to praise afterwards, but praise from the middle? That’s hard. When we have been struggling through a problem for long enough that we are worn out, but we still don’t have the end in sight, we can start to lose hope. It can feel frustrating that God is still expecting us to praise Him in those circumstances.

Maybe that is why God had the Israelites pick up the stones from the middle of the river. When the Israelites had finally made it through the wilderness, when they were finally in sight of the Promised Land, when all they had left to do was to cross a river, God asked for praise one more time from the middle. He miraculously stopped the river upstream, during flood time no less, to allow His people to once again cross a body of water on dry land. My personal inclination when faced with something difficult, is to rush through it as quickly as possible. Flood waters standing up in a wall a little ways away, I want to run across the riverbed! But God had a different idea. He instructed them to pick up rocks from the middle of the river to set up as a memorial to what He had done for them once they got to the other side, to remind them of what He had done in the difficult middle.

I find God does this in my life as well. Maybe I am not picking up literal rocks, but God does teach me a lot in the middle of hard times that He then expects me to use on the other side as a testimony of His goodness. Because that is another thing, God is always good, no matter how bad things get. He is always with us and He also never leaves us in the middle.

“Come and see what God has done: He is awesome in His deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land and they passed through the river on foot…we went through fire and through water, yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.” Psalm 66:5-6&12b.