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When You Walk Through The Fire

7/29/2016

            “It’s kinda crazy up there right now,” my husband said as he walked in the door from work.
            “Oh really, like what?”
            “Well, their funding is falling short.”
            “So, what does that mean?” I asked as I filled up a glass of water and turned to walk toward the dining room.
            “Well, they can’t pay me tomorrow.”
            “Can’t pay you? What do you mean they can’t pay you?”
            “They said they’ll pay me next week. It’s the strangest thing. They’re falling short on their funds, so they’re not paying us until next Friday.”
            “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
            “No, it’s doesn’t, but it’s probably gonna be okay by next week.”

A week turned into a month and the months turned into a year. For one solid year, we never knew when we were going to get paid or if we were going to get paid.

It was brutal.

But seven years later I can look back on that year as the first brick in a growing spiritual foundation. I think of how much security I put into a paycheck.

“But, what if it is gone tomorrow? Then, what will I trust in?”

“It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in mere man”. Psalm 118:8

Our financial trials did not cease that year . . . or the next . . . or the next. No, they continued for years. And do you know what I felt in those years?

Fire.

Not just a scorching heat fire but a refiner’s fire. The kind that blazes out pride and self-reliance. The kind of fire God sends removes things that have no purpose. The kind of fire that shapes you into who God wants you to be.

At times it can be scorching hot.

But I learned that my trust had to be in Him. Nothing else. What good is it if I trust in money? What good is it if I trust in a job? A boss? A raise? Is that where I put my trust? No. I had to learn to trust God and God alone.

Oh, how I wanted out of my situation. I wanted to wake up the next day and be free from it all. Sometimes, I’d wake up only to discover the heat had been turned up a few more degrees. I had to hang on, wait for Him to work, and believe He would not leave me in my situation. I had to find promises in the Bible and cling to them—knowing He would come to my rescue.

Are you like me? Are you going into the fire? In the midst of it? Coming out of it? Do you long to see a change in your situation, whether it be in your marriage, in your finances, or in your children? Then do this. Let the fire burn away what the Lord wants removed. Don’t fight it. Press in. Yield to it.

Because I can promise you this: You will emerge a different person. God will mold and shape new things in you. And while you are there, always remember Who is in the fire with you—the Lord Himself. He was in the fire with me, and brothers and sisters, He is in the fire with you.

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." Isaiah 43:2

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An Unexpected Call on my Birthday

7/25/2016

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Rachel's Raft Excerpt

July 25, 2013

           My neighbor asked me to go to lunch for my birthday. Afterwards, when we pulled up at our house, I looked down at my phone and noticed a voicemail from a number I didn’t recognize. As she was talking with the kids, I listened to the message.
            “Hello, Rachel. This is Valerie from Christian Broadcast Network’s 700 Club. Would you give me a call at your soonest convenience?” she said as she left her number.
            My heart leapt.
            After she drove off, I ran over to Michael, “Guess what?”
            “What?”
             "Guess who just called me,” I paused not giving him enough time to answer, “The 700 Club!”
              “No way! Call ‘em back, call ‘em back!”
              I called my mom first to ask for prayer.
              “Can you believe they called me today? On my birthday? Of all the days!” I exclaimed.
              “It’s like God’s giving you a hug today,” she said.
               I walked to the backyard and called Valerie, speaking with her for half an hour about the car accident in my driveway. She was giving the first initial call, and let me know that I’d hear from someone in production if my story was moved to that stage.
               My dimly burning wick started to spark--I was relieved to see God moving on my behalf.

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How God Provided Food for Us

7/19/2016

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Rachel's Raft Excerpt:

A Summer Morning in June 2010

            The next day was Bible study, and I was in desperate need of it, so I got the kids dressed and drove to our church. My eyes a little puffy from the previous night, I walked in late and sank down in the seat next to my friend.
            “You okay?” she asked.
            “Not really, Michael isn’t getting paid, once again.”
            A few eyes turned to look at me.
            I looked at her prayer request list and saw “The Kelleys” already on it. Ruth, who was sitting behind me reached up to give me a hug.
            “Oh well, at least they already know.”
            Then my teacher, Ally asked,
            “Rachel, how’re ya doing this morning?”
            “Oh, not that great. Michael isn’t getting paid again.”
            I could not stop the tears that were already coming--it was all I could say--I couldn’t get one more word out.
            “We’re gonna pray for you guys this morning,” she said.
            They did, and she continued on with the lesson, while I continued to fight the tears. I couldn’t concentrate; my mind went from wondering what we were going to do, to what other jobs Michael could apply for, to the balance in our account and growing debt. And questioning God as to why He would not fix it.
            When the class was over, I reached for my purse, put my Bible inside of it, and walked toward the door. As I did, two ladies, Rozena and Jeanette, stopped me.
            “Rachel, do you think it’d be okay if we stopped by for a little while?”
            My gut dropped.
            Sometimes, I didn’t know if people were going to help or if they were going to give advice. Before, I thought financial issues could be solved simply by getting another job or asking for a raise. But what I was discovering was that it was not that simple. If God was not moving a certain direction, there was no changing Him.
            “Uh, sure, that’s fine.”
            “Okay, we’ll be by in a few minutes.”
            I picked the kids up from the nursery and drove home. A few minutes later they arrived, so I invited them in, and we sat down in the living room.
            “Kids, y’all go play outside for a few minutes,” I said.
            “So, tell us how you are doing.”
            “Well, not that great. I feel like we stepped out years ago and have gone from one crisis to the next. I just don’t understand what God is doing. Or why He won’t help Michael provide for his family.”
            “What’s going on with his paychecks?” they asked.
            “The school’s funding something or other. No one’s getting paid regularly. . .from the President, down. And the shows have almost dried up all together. I feel like we are failing.”
            Then every so sweetly and gently Rozena said,
            “Try not to think of this as a trial, Rachel, think of this as a test. You are not on trial in front of God, He’s giving you a test.”
            Contrary to what I was starting to believe, I was not sitting in the courtroom with an angry judge, wondering what crime I had committed and if I would be forgiven. I was sitting in a classroom, with a loving teacher, being asked to take a test, to show that I was learning from a faithful Instructor. And at times, I felt I was failing miserably. Other times, I felt closer to God than I had in years. He was bringing me to my knees and sometimes to my face, in desperation.
            And with that, Jeanette, who was sitting on my right, pulled out a piece of paper, and said,
            "Okay. Tell us everything you need at the grocery store."
             And she meant everything--even down to the spices in the cupboard. She made a very long list of food and toiletries then said,
             “Alright, well, we’re gonna go to Wal-Mart, why don’t y’all come with us?”
             “Okay, sure.”
             "Good, also. . .there’s a consignment sale goin’ on right now. We’re gonna go over there and get whatever y’all need. Shoes, pants, dresses, even if Michael needs things, we will get ‘em. Why don’t we go there first, then the grocery store?"
             “Oh you guys, you don’t even know how much this means to me. Really, you have no idea,” I said, my voice cracking, “thank you. . .words can’t even describe.”
            I gathered up the kids and grabbed their coats.
           “Why don’t you drive us to the consignment sale, and then bring us all back to your house for us to get our car?” Jeanette said.
            “Okay, great,” I said.
            That should have clued me in on their next move. Before we turned into the church where the consignment sale was being held, Rozena said,
            “Turn in here," as she pointed to the gas station. “We’re gonna fill up your car.”
            If Christ appeared to me that day, it was in the form of two sisters from my Bible study. And when they bought our family of five clothes, food and gasoline, they became a tangible force of grace and provision in my life. For with these actions, my two sisters followed this verse perfectly:
            "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." James 2:14-17

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God, please send a raft.

7/19/2016

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Rachel's Raft Excerpt

Fall 2013

      “Hey,” I said, “I have some bad news. We have termites.”
      Silence.
     “You’re kidding.”
     He was upset and confused, as was I.
     “Well, God’s gonna have to provide, somehow,” he said before we hung up.
     When Jill answered the door, the kids ran in to play while she and I walked toward the dining room table to sit down.
     “I don’t know, I just don’t know anymore. . .I’m broken. I don’t have anything left.” I said as I put my head down on her dining room table.
     Stunned, she sat, listening to the termite story and the wise words of the termite man.
     “What? That’s unbelievable. Just think of it like this Rachel, you’ve been chosen,” she said as she smiled.
     “Ugh. It sucks then, to be chosen.”
    “At this point you’d do anything,” she said as she looked at me in the eyes.
     “Yes, anything, I’m so broken, honestly…whatever, wherever, we would do it!”
     “Like, if God asked you to go to Africa to work in an orphanage, you would do it.”
     “Oh, for sure, we would--we would go,” I said as I looked at her from across the table, “Yes, we would go anywhere, do anything, whatever God wants us to do.”
                                                                                                 *****
            That evening, after the kids were in bed, I was laying on the couch with a blanket pulled up over my legs. Michael was showering, and I was thinking about all that had happened that day. He came out of our bedroom and was standing at our door, at the foot of the couch, holding his toothbrush.
     “How was Jill’s?”
     “Good.”
     “What all did she say.”
     “You know,” I paused, “She said something very interesting today that really took me off guard, made me stop and think.”
     “What’s that?”
     “I was telling her how broken we were, that we were at the bottom, and that we would do whatever God told us to do, no matter what. She laughed and said, ‘You’d go to Africa and work in an orphanage if He asked you to, wouldn’t you?’” I told her that for sure we would.”
     He looked at me.
     Silence filled the air.
     Then, very intently, he said,
     “We should just go get on a cruise ship.”
     At that moment, I felt like I’d never felt before. It was a supernatural awakening. It was a Holy Spirit rush through my body. Words of life to a lifeless body.
     I sat up.
     “What did you say?” I asked, my eyes gazing into his, my entire body revived with a word.
     “What?” he said, “A cruise ship. We should all go live on a cruise ship.”
     “A cruise ship,” I stopped, feeling like my body had just woken up from a very, very deep sleep, “Oh my gosh, that’s it,”
     “A cruise ship? You think that’s it?”
      Silence.
     “Yes, that’s it. That’s the answer to our prayers. That’s the raft,” I paused as I envisioned a cruise ship in my mind. “That’s the God-sized raft I’ve been praying for, for over a year.”
     The Spirit of God overwhelmed me in that moment. An infiltrating feeling of hope in a hopeless body, overcame me. My mind raced to the vision God had given me a year prior. The vision of Michael desperately treading in the water when a raft came along and scooped him up.
     A raft I’d prayed for. A raft I had spent countless hours asking God to send, not knowing what it was, but knowing it was our help in a helpless situation.
     A raft that had now arrived, in the form of a cruise ship.

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The Termite Man with a Prophetic Word, Part 2

7/12/2016

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Rachel's Raft Excerpt
Summer 2013

      “Well, let’s talk about different treatment options, m’am, if that’s okay with you. Do you want to stand under that tree?” He pointed to the dogwood tree that was no longer in bloom.
     “I think I need to sit down. Can we go inside?” I asked.
     We turned toward the house, toward the damage, and walked inside. I took him into the living room and offered him a seat on the couch opposite of mine. It was hard to listen to what he was saying. In my mind I was wondering how I would tell Michael about the termites. How would we pay for it? How extensive was it? A million things were running through my mind.
     “Okay, well, we have two different options,” Larry began. “We can treat the entire house for about $800 assuming you have the holes dug in the concrete already, which I think you might. Or, we can do a section of the house for about $250 to $300.”
     “Um, ok,” I said still not comprehending it all.
     Then, he looked at me intently and asked me this:
     “M’am, can I change the subject?”
     “Yes, please.”
     He paused, then said,
     “Do you feel that you are sticking your finger in one hole to find water comin’ attcha from another hole? Then you stick your finger there and it comes out somewhere else?”
     Tears welled up in my eyes as I lifted my heavy head at his words.
     “Yes, I feel like that.”
     “Well, this is what I believe the Lord wants to say to you today. He works all things together for good to those who love the Him and are called according to His purposes. I know you might not to be able to see it now, but He will work this out for your good. It’s a promise to you today.”
     And with that, he went back in to the treatment option plans.
     I was stunned.
     I was trying so hard to hold back the flood of tears that was coming.
     It was as if Jesus Christ himself had appeared to me in the form of a termite man and had spoken to me in terms outside earthly reasoning.
     When he was done speaking, he got up to inspect the house further and to get the chemicals needed to kill what was left of the destructive insects.
    I sat down on the red laminate floor, my face to the ground, and watched as the tears spilled onto the tile.

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Finding God at Rock Bottom

7/2/2016

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Rachel's Raft excerpt:

Winter 2010

          One evening, I was in the kitchen, warming up his dinner when I saw him pull into the driveway. He walked in, looking rather tired, walked over to me, gave me a hug, then turned and walked out of the room. When he came back in, he said,
            “It’s kinda crazy up there right now,” as he rubbed his hand through his hair.
            “Oh really, like what?”
            “Well, their funding is falling short.”
            “So, what does that mean?” I asked as I filled up a glass of water and turned to walk toward the dining room.
            “Well, they can’t pay me tomorrow.”
            “Can’t pay you? What do you mean they can’t pay you?”
            “The President said they’ll pay me next week. It’s the strangest thing. They’re falling short on their funds, so they’re paying the employees next Friday.”
            “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
            “No, it’s doesn’t, but it’s probably gonna be okay by next week.”
            He went on to explain to me about the funds the school was receiving for the foreign students and how they’d be processed the following week, freeing up the paychecks for the staff. I understood the explanation, but I still had uneasiness in my spirit.
            The next week, Michael came home from work.
            “They didn’t pay me today.”
            “What do you mean they didn’t pay you?”
            “Yep. That’s right. They’re still not able to pay us. They said it’ll be Monday.”
            “Monday? That’s four days from now.”
            “I know! Trust me, I’m mad about it, too. But they said I’ll have it in my hands on Monday.”
            “What’s goin’ on up there? You think it’ll get worked out?”
            “I don’t know. I hope so,” he said as he sat down on the couch. His eyes staring off in the distance. “I hope so.”
            The next morning, I woke up early, feeling insecure—like I couldn’t trust if the school was going to pay us or not. We’d always had a sure foundation of at least a pay check, but this was just weird. We had talked about Michael applying elsewhere, so we started sending out resumes. Early one morning, I checked my e-mail account as well as Michael’s.
            No new mail.
            I was hoping that one of the resumes would open a door to financial freedom but, nothing. Just silence. And junk mail. I noticed his calendar that was sitting on the floor next to his laptop. I opened it to January--no shows, none for February yet, either.
            It was so cold outside. The wind was blowing the single, yellow light that hung at the intersection of Sam Davis and College Street. Back and forth it blew in the wind. I turned to look out the window by the couch where I was sitting. Placing my Bible in my lap, I noticed a tear in the couch.
            I sat in silence.
            An unfamiliar feeling--doubt looming in my mind. What was going on?
            “God, I feel like I’m at the bottom here.”
            I closed my eyes. I expected to hear something new and freeing. Something that would send my worries out the door and into the chill where they belonged. I sat. I expected God to answer me in a way I could touch and feel--preferably with cold hard cash in the equation. An e-mail. An interview. I believed we would wake up and have all the answer’s regarding our income flow. And as I sat, I heard something I never expected. Something that jarred my soul.
            “I’m at the bottom. And if you want to be with Me, this is where we are going to hang out.”
            It was as clear as the mist that had collected on the window screen.
            An answer I never anticipated.
            It was not what I was looking for. Not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to be rescued that day. I didn’t know what He meant--going to the bottom. I didn’t know I would claw and scrape the muddy walls all the way down, not free fall. But I knew my answer, in the terms I was anticipating, was not coming anytime soon.
            And with that thought in mind, I braced for the descent.

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When You Walk Through The Fire

An Unexpected Call on my Birthday

How God Provided Food for Us

God, please send a raft.

The Termite Man with a Prophetic Word, Part 2

Finding God at Rock Bottom

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