This week I told more provision stories. They were stories of how God answered prayer, moved in people, and moved in circumstances, all the while showing us He is our good Father, always seeing us, always for us.
There was a time we were going to be spending three months in Macedonia, and my husband and I each regretted not bringing something with us. We were talking about it and then I went into our bedroom, and those two things were sitting there next to each other alone in the middle of our bedroom floor. One was a mug my husband had regretted not packing, not something important, not something God cared about, but He cares a whole lot about people.
We learned that day to pray whenever we packed that the Lord would just put in our bags anything we forgot. We forget too much how He can and does take care of us. He must do so many miracles like that that we never notice. I told a few other stories about learning to pray first. We called a washing machine repair man who wasn’t going to be able to come for a few days. We realized we hadn’t prayed and the washing machine was fixed instantly. Another time computer fix-it people spent ten hours working on my computer and couldn’t fix the problem. I realized I hadn’t prayed and did, and it was fixed. I got on those stories because just two hours before I did my recording I was looking for something in the kitchen and kept looking where it belonged and my husband looked and one of our sons looked, and I gave up and moved on with dinner without it and then realized I hadn’t prayed. I apologized to the Lord and started praying. Walking back over to that same drawer I prayed, “Lord, please help me find…” I pulled open the drawer and it was just right there. I didn’t even have time to finish my sentence.
Once the Lord sent the miracle on the way before we even knew we needed help. Our phone stopped working, which was also our internet connection at the time. We were living in Istanbul. My husband didn’t want to take the day standing in line at a government office trying to report it and went out to go about his day and figured he’d tackle it another time. He left and there was a knock at the door. It was the phone repair man. He thought I was a lunatic as I asked him over and over again why he was there. He was like, “Is your phone not working? Well…” He had no idea why I was so crazy. God must have put us on his work order for the day before we even knew our phone wasn’t working.
Back when my husband left his work in Istanbul and we decided to work for Jesus and live without an income, the Lord sent us an encouragement, showing us a little glimpse about how He could provide for us. We didn’t need food or anything at the time; it was just an encouragement that He was in the decision and would be taking care of us. A man showed up at our apartment; he had never been there before. We don’t even know how he found us, but he brought us all the fruits and vegetables he hadn’t sold that day from his food cart that he used to sell in the streets. On his way over, he had stopped and bought treats for the kids, cookies and a whole cake. We ate that for dinner that night and our family gained an expression, “God provides cake too.” He doesn’t just make you eat your vegetables. God gives good gifts. He is a good Father. We have abundant life in Christ!
The final story of the week is of the time God gave us a glimpse into how He protects us. We had just arrived in Macedonia. Our now twenty-year-old daughter was only two then. She was very verbal, could speak in paragraphs. She and my husband were waiting alone at the bus stop to head into the Roma (Gypsy) village where his language teacher lived, where we would be living in the next year. It is called Shutka. My daughter asked him why those two men always came with them when they went there. My husband looked around and saw no one. “What two men?” She pointed to them. “Those two men. They always get on the bus and come with us when we go into Shutka.” They always did. This was just a time when He gave us a big reminder of the fact that we were always guarded.
Psalm 91:9-11 “If you make the Most High your dwelling– even the LORD, who is my refuge–then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”