Most people in my family like to gamble. It's on both sides of my family, mom's and dad's, and yet me, ummm...not so much. Risk taking is not my thing, infact I can count on one hand how many times I've been to a casino and I'm not jonesing to go back anytime soon. Perhaps it's because I can't stand the feeling of risking. Risking even the smallest amount of money because I've never felt like the loss was worth it. Even before I became a believer, it was never much of a temptation for me. But this post isn't about gambling, it's about faith. Today I'm faced with making a difficult choice. My husband is asking for my blessing to take a financial risk in order to see our business grow and honestly, I'm really scared. Being that our financial state is just holding and we are about to begin our "slow time" I'm not sure if it's a good idea to go all in. I've been praying about it and I think God's telling me that I need to show my husband that I trust him and believe in him again. It's possible that God is using this "test" to build my marriage.
Ten years ago I left a steady job to work from home with my husband for our video production company. At first it was great and we doubled our income in the first two years, but then it became more and more difficult to keep up the momentum and soon my husband was relying more on me than I could handle. To make things more complicated he dragged his heels on making business decisions which resulted in a failure to market our company beyond word-of-mouth. Our business became more of a free-lance job for him than anything else. After a while, the man I believed in, the one I knew had all the potential in the world to be successful, seemed to stop believing in himself. After a particularly difficult financial period my husband promised me he would do whatever was necessary to support our family. Unbeknown to each of us we had opposing ideas of how that would happen. Of course it didn't happen the way I had expected and since we continued to struggle, I had convinced myself that my husband broke his promise. Consequently, I stopped believing in him, and worse trusting that he would take care of us. That's when I felt betrayed and became very angry. That anger grew and branched off in many facets of our marriage and slowly attritioned our love for eachother. That was until God healed us. In one instance at the alter my God took away the anger and replaced it with a renewed love. And from there we began to heal. I am very happy to say that I love my husband very much. But I suppose it's time to trust him again. Phew this is hard, and I'm tearing up as I type.In my devotional time over the last two weeks God's been telling me that He wants to bless me. Actually He's saying, "If you let me, I want to bless you." I thought, "Well that's crazy, of course I will let you bless me!" So why now, when I'm faced with letting go of a few hundred dollars a month, am I having so much trouble allowing God to bless me? Because I don't like to gamble! I don't like risk. And I can't understand why God would be asking me to give him something for it. And to make it more challenging God is asking me to trust my husband's judgement. It's another test of faith. I know that God can do something amazing with something so small. And that small thing isn't our few hundred dollars a month, it's my faith...in Him and my husband.
Here I am professing that I have faith so big that I'll leave a job for a new church home and faith so big that I start a new chocolate business, and faith so big that I believe that God will bless us in the midst of our financial mess, and now that dirty christian woman is coming in and messing it all up! This remindes me of the disciple Peter. Peter who in one day professed his love for Jesus when questioned three times and a few hours later denied three times that he was even one of Jesus' disciples.
Peter to Jesus (paraphrasing), "I love you, you know I love you, of course I love you." Oops they're putting you to death? "I don't know Jesus, no I'm not a disciple, nope I'm not associated with him." (John 21:15-19 and John 18:15-18) Me, "I trust you, I have faith in you I know you can do anything." What? Give away a few hundred dollars a month? Uh no, I don't think I can do that. No I can't." Boy, I am so thankful that God extends grace and mercy to us, the ones He loves.
Another lesson God is teaching me is that love and faith go hand in hand. If you love someone and you know they love you back and have your best interest at heart, then you must have faith in them. If I love God I must have faith in Him. Psalm 85:10 says, "Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield it's harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way."
The Lord is never a gamble because he's always the same (Hebrews 13:8) and always a good choice! Hebrews 11:6 says, "But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out]." I am so thankful that we can trust God. I supposed it's time for me to do just that.
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| Me and my Vincent |
Can you relate? Are you being asked to take a chance on someone or something? Is God asking you put your faith in Him? If it's really God, well then, "Go on Honey, take a chance!"
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord today I trust you and am willing to give you my faith. I trust that you will allow our business to yield it's harvest as I humbly give my husband my love and trust. Lord I pray for my sisters-in-Christ today that are struggling to let go of something small and trust you with their futures. Lord give them faith big enough to move mountains and show them a huge harvest of fruit for their faith. In Jesus' name I pray. AMEN
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