Thursday, August 14, 2008

God Pays For What He Orders

Well, great news; we have reached our financial goal for bringing Maxim home. Through a combination of savings we already had, a decent tax return, a huge community garage sale, the generosity of friends and family and just making the effort to better follow biblical financial principles, we are ready.

Here is the biggest lesson I see in this part of the process. God pays for what He orders. He set it on our hearts to adopt Maxim, and we have had to trust that when God asks us to do something, He will always equip us. Always.

The funny thing is I can look back and see God's sense of humor too, in what details we understood in what order as we started down the adoption path. First, he simply drew us to little Maxim's face. Not that different from how we are so drawn to our biological children's faces from day one. We knew of his disabilites right away, but God knew we would not be intimidated by this at all because He has so faithfully taken care of Cyan in her cerebral palsy experiences. What is kind of laughable now is how long it took after we were aware of Maxim and drawn to him before it really clicked in either my mind or Daniel's what a huge financial undertaking this would be (40,000 buckaroos)!! Yikes! But God in His wisdom had already been reminding us for months of Philippian 4:6-8. Do not be anxious for anything but in everything, by prayer and petitions, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. I want to be careful that you understand I am not encouraging blind financial foolishness. We want to be wise stewards of everything He gives us and we have to pray daily for wisdom. But there are going to be seasons where He will ask us to do something, without giving us all the details of how it will work out. If you look just at the biblical concept of tithing, many are convinced it will absolutely not work out in their budget. On paper, it seems so impossible. So how could a $40,000 adoption bill make any sense in a household that only brings in $70,000+- annually? It sounds ridiculous and even foolhardy to many. Yet we believe that God was just waiting for us to focus on obedience instead of logistics; to just take the leap of faith and watch Him go to work. And He has. The funds have come together in under 6 months. We have heard so many similar testimonies. God is not limited by time or finances.

No bragging here. To God be all of the credit and honor.

The wisdom of man is foolishness to God, ........but

We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

What is God calling you to? What leap of faith is He nudging you toward? I encourage you to prayerfully and eagerly go for it.

2 comments:

ArtworkByRuth said...

Amen! When we learned of the cost of adopting from Ukraine I complained to God..."that's all the money we have", "EXACTLY" was His answer! Thanks for being faithful and moving forward to brining him home! Z keeps asking for us to go back to Ukraine to bring his friends home...! Can't wait to tell hime "It's time!" God Bless

junglemama said...

God is good! What a blessing! But, $40,000 for a Ukraine adoption. We just adopted from Ukraine and we didn't spend anywhere near that. I only mention this because I wouldn't want you to spend more than neccessary.