All of my life, as far as serving the Lord full time is concerned, money has
been an issue with me.  By that I mean, trusting the Lord has always been
difficult.  Why?  Well, because so many times, during extreme need, God just
hasn't come through for me.  That's my human interpretation, you understand.
In the last couple of weeks, some unusual things have been coming up
concerning money.  Last week, the Lord spoke to me and said, as I questioned
Him about providing for my family, "Which is it going to be?  Are you going
to believe in money or me?"  I stopped and said, I will believe in you.
Actually, it was more specific than that.  He really said, Which is it going
to be?  Money is your God or I am.  I knew what the Lord was doing; He was
painting me into a corner.  He is very good at doing that, I have learned,
and learned the hard way, too.  Then, this week, He cranked it up another
notch by informing me that I was not to pray for my own financial needs
because that was already taken care of by Him.  This freaked me out big time
because not being able to beg and plead and cry and almost threaten God at
times, about money, was a way of life for me.  Yet, it was clear what He was
telling me and I could see no way on earth I could do this.  Of course, God
was not asking me to do this on earth; He was saying it was done from His
standpoint and that is in Heaven.  So, I knew what I had to do and was not
looking forward to it.  I decided, as I was praying for others, that it was
a cotton picking waste of my time to be praying for my own financial stuff
when there were so many others in need in so many various ways.  So, I
simply decided, I will not pray about my own financial needs.  As a result,
I asked the Lord, so what do I do now about this?  He told me to go work on
the 60 second commercials I felt He had encourage me to write several months
ago when I felt He was leading me to advertise on a Christian station.  So,
I said, what for?  I don't have the money to pay for them; I need 3,000
dollars to do it right.  He said, Do it anyway.  So I went and worked on
them and got them completed and all written out.  You know the rest of the
story because the money came in for it Friday night.  Additionally, this
week, two people told me that they were going to start supporting me each
month as though I were a missionary.  This morning, I walked out of my
office into the kitchen.  We moved my office from a front bedroom back into
what used to be my breezeway between our house and garage last weekend.
This was so our grandsons could have their own bedroom and not have to sleep
on the couch or the floor in the living room.  They are thrilled to have
their own bedroom now, too.  So, as I was saying, I walked out of my new
office area and started walking up the three steps that lead into the back
of our kitchen.  I always know when the Holy Spirit gives me some form of
illumination that is important because I can tell you exactly where I was
and what I was doing at that very split second in time.  This has happened
to me dozens of times in my life and I still remember each spot as if it
were frozen in time and burned into my mind.  So I had my right foot on the
middle step and the door was half open.  You have to pull the door toward
you in order to open it.  At that very second, I heard my own spirit say,
Isn't it nice not to have to carry the burden of worrying about your own
financial needs now?  I was blown away at what I heard because I had not
even been thinking about money at the time.  I felt at that very moment,
like weights were lifted off my shoulders and I saw, in my mind's eye,  that
my shoulders were empty of anything sitting on them.  At the same time, it
kind of spooked me because when it comes to money, I have always been a big
baby and done a lot of whining around about never having enough money when I
was full time in the ministry.  This was why, a year and a half ago, I
refused to give up my job when the Lord began calling me into ministry.  I
made up every excuse in the book why I shouldn't give up my job.  So what
did God do?  He took the job from me and he took about 3500 dollars a month
away from me.  He took my toll free number, a bank account, and a number of
other things.  In short, he shut my whole little business down with no
promises of anything in return.  He also did this at the most possibly worst
time in my life.  Why?  He wanted to remove blockages in my life which He
knew, I didn't, but He knew were in His way, and because I chose not to
listen, He did it for me in his sovereignty.  Remember when he told His
disciples in John Chapter 15 that His Word would purge them?  I know what
that means now.  So, I have been on a totally new journey in my relationship
with God over the last 18 months.  The first few months nearly killed me and
I often prayed I would die; the pain was literally that great.  As the Lord
began healing the brokenness and the pain, while renewing my mind at the
same time, I began to see new things emerging that I never dreamed would
ever happen in my own life.  A little over two years ago, I said to the Lord
one day, I am not happy any more and I don't think I ever will be.  In the
last year, the Lord has brought happiness to me in ways words cannot
describe.  I have written about them many times but words simply fall short
of the meaning of that measure of happiness.  I know we never think of God,
necessarily, being happy but I am hear to tell you, God has so much
happiness within His eternal nature, if He ever let it go at one time,
nothing could stand before Him.  That same happiness He has in reserve for
you, too, and He wants you to have a measure of His happiness.  There is
some pruning He is going to do in your life in order to one day be able to
deliver that happiness so be warned; it is coming and for some of you, it
has already begun.  The pain is not for your harm but it is for your healing
and He will not stop until He has all of you.  At the same time I am telling
you all this, my daughter could go to prison for up to five years.  Even the
burden of that has been lifted.  Don't I get sad any more?  Of course but
the sadness has a different feeling to it now which I find impossible to
explain.  The Lord has surely not forgotten about you, although, for some of
you, the circumstances say other wise.  He isn't going to let you go either
regardless of what those circumstances say.

Phil.

I Flew Kites With Jesus
www.SafePlaceFellowship.com