God Never Forgets us. Love Bond Giving 4! $200 a week, Christmas love, and Giving to others!
Word for Today: December 22, 2019 God Never Forgets us. Love Bond Giving 4! $200 a week, Christmas love, and Giving to others!
Beloved,
Over the past week I have been sharing on “the heart of giving” specially during this holiday season. I pray they are blessing you during this Christmas.
Being a Pastor of a small church many years ago and even now as a missionary, Christmas time can be very tough financially and spiritually. I am sure it can be for many other as well even tonight.
I believe there are people this night asking God for his help and intervention financially for their own bills. I believe there are many asking for God to provide for their family this Christmas not just for gifts, but basic things of life.
I wanted to share a testimony about these things with you when we first started our church back in 1988. We started in our house after about 11 months of me leaving the Assist Pastor position in a church in another city.
Over those 11 months I had to do a lot of praying. Donna and I were sent out from the church we served as an Associate Pastor with the Pastor’s blessing. Yet I knew there was a feeling with some there at that church that we might start a church and maybe take some people away. We had no desire to do that ever!
When Donna and I left the church we had no idea of what God wanted. We just prayed for the Lord to open the doors. I went back to do some part time work at my old job, because I felt the Lord wanted me to help one of my manager friends in his restaurant.
The money I was making didn’t come close to what we needed, but I felt the Lord want me there. About 2 months before I felt the Lord release to do anything concerning working for him outside of this job, the hostess in the store gets a God encounter.
In the middle of a busy lunch, she turns to me and says, “Are you going to start that church God wants you to start or not? Then she came back to her natural mind and said, “why did I just say that?’ I am so sorry.
I told her, that God just used her and filled her to talk to me to answer a prayer of my heart. So powerful was the word God gave this unsaved woman that I was able to lead her to the Lord right then and there. Glory to God.
After I got that word, I knew I had to leave that job and I didn’t know how we would even pay the rent or any bills. My wife still worked in a teaching job so we had some income, but not enough to do what we needed.
Finally, I got the nudge to leave and I did. Being a server/supervisor I met many people. Two of them were Christians that I talked to do when they sat at the counter. I told them I was leaving and they asked me why?
I said, “I need to start a home church.” They both said, ‘if you do we want to come.” So I told them in two Sunday from now I would start having a Sunday evening meeting. I really didn’t think they would come, but they were just being nice.
I finally left the job to prepare to answer the call of God upon my life. Donna and i had a witness for me to leave and to trust God. So I did. On the Friday before our first service I heard the Lord speak to me in a loud voice.
Henry, “how much can believe me to provide for you each week? It was so loud it startled me. I said, “Lord you know? I didn’t want to answer him because I didn’t want to speak underneath or above what I could truly believe him for, plus he already knew. I was the one that needed to know what I could believe him for.
I said Lord, “you know.” He then asked me, “can you believe me for $200 a week. My rent was $800 a month then. Isn’t God good? He could said, “could you believe me for your rent or $800?
He was specific and he knew where my faith was. I said, “yes Lord, I can believe you for $200 a week. Well Sunday finally came and the Lord’s manifest presence was in our midst. The two men that said they wanted to come, actually came and God touched them powerfully.
I closed the meeting and I did not mention an offering at all. I didn’t want to take one specially our first service, but the Lord said, “give them a chance to bless me with their giving.” I hesitated and waited for the Lord to say it again. He did two more times, each time more clearly.
I turned to the brothers and said, “Brothers, God loves a cheerful prompt to do it giver. I wasn’t going to mention an offering tonight at all, but the Lord told me to give you and me an opportunity to give to Him to bless. I told them it was between them and the Lord, no strings attached.
I played a song for a bit and then we fellowshipped and have snacks. I never saw if they gave anything or not. After they left and I got the kids to bed, I felt the Lord remind me of the offering. He said, “go see what is in it.”
Beloved, God is giving God. God is the God that supplies all our needs. Right now our needs are so large, some of our bills we call WILLIAMS BY THE PROPER NAME CAUSE THEY LOOK BIG! MAYBE YOU CAN IDENTIFY WITH THAT TONIGHT.
But back in 1988 I had to learn and still do to trust him by His word. When I looked in the basket there was 2 checks. The younger man who was 19 that came worked at Loews full time and he put his tithe in the basket of $50.
The other fellow, honestly looked like a homeless person. He dressed poorly and wasn’t to well groomed not to judge him, but to share how God moves. When I looked at the other check it was for $150.00. The man was a jet engineer at Pratt and Whitney aircraft in Windsor Locks and that was his tithe. The check was form their credit union and it had his name and title on it.
Beloved, with 2 people, just 2, God provided $200 just as he asked me to believe him for. The Lord said, “here is your rent money.” So I had to save it each week so I could pay my $800 rent.
Do you know I minister to so many more people now, and we don’t even get that much some weeks. God does provide and touch people to bless us and our needs have grown much more now that we are missionaries.
We don’t have all we need every single day in the natural, but the question remains, Henry, “how much can you believe me for? My answer has to be, “Lord you know.”
About a month ago God told me I needed a certain amount of finances. It was a larger amount. I couldn’t see how I would need that much, but the Lord knew how the enemy would come to try to shut down so many peoples finances and ours too.
Now we are right at the point where we need every bit of that money he said we needed for our personal needs and to go where God is sending us. Only God knows perfectly.
Beloved, I have to take what He said, lay it at his feet for him to breath on and show me what he desires on getting what he said we need. In 1988 he sent two precious brothers to sow their tithes. It was exactly what I needed. TWO PEOPLE, START A CHURCH AS GOD TOLD ME THROUGH THAT WOMAN, AND GOD MADE A WAY.
I AM PRAYING FOR EACH OF US TONIGHT AS I SHARE THIS TESTIMONY FOR GOD TO INTERVENE IN ALL OUR LIVES AND TOUCH THOSE “TWO MEN” WE NEED RIGHT NOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE NEES WE ALL HAVE NOW.
LET US HEAR GOD TELL US WHAT WE NEED AS HE TOLD ME SO MANY YEARS AGO. LET US HEAR HIM SAY, “WHAT CAN YOU BELIVE ME FOR IN OUR SITUATIONS WE FACE TODAY? HE IS THE SAME, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND FOREVER.
Beloved, the other testimony I want to share is about Christmas. I remember our first year pastoring, we had no money to get any presents. We were going to make some for the kids. We were able to get one little thing for each of them.
Christmas is not about presents, their price, their cost, but about sharing the love of God in specials ways that can expand throughout the year. On the day before Christmas Eve, a sister came to our house and gave me an envelope.
She said, “God told her to give us this for Christmas.” I wept before her and the Lord that He was so kind to us. The envelope had $500 in it. Beloved, she was able to do that for the next 3 years and when she moved away, God didn’t.
A new brother in Christ came to the church around the first week of December. I did not tell anyone what our needs were or that I needed Christmas money. I just prayed and put it in God’s hand.
On the day before Christmas Eve, He came and knocked at my door. He said, “God told me to give this to you for your and your family. Do you know how much it was? $500. He did it for the next 7 years.
For 10 years God touched someone to bless us for Christmas. We didn’t just spend it on ourselves, we were able to give to others as well and bless them for Christmas. We were able to give as God had given to us.
I was thinking about that this week as the Lord told me to write down testimonies of His love giving to us through his people and where we could be his vessels of giving as well.
There was a precious sister in Christ who started a ministry to pregnant woman and they had come to where the finances were hit and not many offerings coming in.
As she shared with me her need, the Holy Spirit immediately told me to pay “her ministry rent.” It was over $1000 and it is all we had, but the Lord said to sow it. That work was able to continue to this day. They have helped so many young woman specially pregnant and troubled ones.
God gave us the opportunity to “ not allow” that work to die or lose their building. It was His money anyway, and what a great God we serve to allow us to bless people even our of our need.
When I remember these things tonight, I thank God for his faithfulness to us and through us. I thank God for touching people to show us His real love with these supernatural interventions from him.
I thank God to speak to my heart to sow supernaturally into others with no thought of my life, but just because He asked me to as others have done for me and my family.
This Christmas let us examine our hearts for “love giving.” Are we just giving? Are we just buying presents because we have to? Or are we truly sowing God’s precious seeds and gifts to others as he desires.
True Love giving is summed up with Jesus words, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” “No greater love than this that a man lay down his life for His friends.”
May the pure holy love of God burn in us tonight that “love giving” would not be during a “holiday season” but we would every day become the hands and feet of the Lord to give as God would lead, to pray as God would have us pray, and to do all He has asked us to do, In Jesus name.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!