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Annie64 -> RE: How Does God Discipline You? (4/27/2008 2:59:24 AM)
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Interesting question. I recently had an experience that couldn't have been anything else but the Lord's discipline, and it was through our finances.
In April 2006, my family went out of town and we left our tithe check with my brother to put in the offering at church while we were away. My husband and I both believe in tithing, and have done so all our lives. About a year later, my brother found the check--he had forgotten to put it in the offering, so he gave it back to us. By that time, I had come to the concusion that, since I am extremely prone to mistakes in our checking account, that check that had never come back to the bank must have come back and I forgot to mark it. I had added that amount back to our balance and forgotten it. That meant that money that we had set aside for God had long ago been used for ourselves. Of course, we never meant that to happen, and I never felt we were disciplined for that. It was for what happened next.
My husband and I discussed what to do about that tithe check and agreed that we needed to give that much extra to the church to make up for it. We couldn't afford to do it all at once, so we would do it over time, and talked about how much to give at a time until it was all paid. But then somehow we decided not to start doing it right away, but to think about it further. Well, the thinking about it further didn't take place, nor did any extra tithing.
In the mean time, I went back to work to finance sending our two younger children, who had grown disenchanted with homeschooling, to a Christian school. My husband got two raises. Our income greatly increased. But somehow it wasn't enough. We'd had plenty of money before to have everything we needed, pay all our bills, and even have many of our wants, but after an increase in income of thousands of dollars annually we didn't have enough money anymore. My husband made us a budget and worked over it for hours and on paper it still looked like we didn't have enough money. To ad insult to injury for the first time ever, we were going to have to pay taxes instead of getting a return. Worst of all, it became apparent that we weren't going to get the financial aid necessary to send our oldest son to the Christian college of his choice, or even to the slightly less expensive Christian college of his second choice. My husband became very depressed, and felt like a failure because our needs weren't being met, especially our son's "need" to go to a Christian college as opposed to a godless institution about which we had heard so many bad things.
And I remembered the tithe check that was never made up. I told my husband about it and he didn't remember our earlier conversation about it at all. Nor did he think our present financial troubles were related to it. But I did. He agreed that I could make it up if I wanted to, but not all at once. So I did. I always write out tithe checks when I pay other bills, writing the tithe check first. The night I wrote the last check to make up our missing tithe, I paid the rest of the bills and saw what was for us a big surplus--even after paying taxes.
ALL the financial issues but one totally reversed themselves or proved not to be a problem after that lost tithe was made up. Best of all, my husband's attitude did a 180, and the depression dissipated.
The only thing that didn't fix itself was the college tuition problem. My husband took my son to a state college located in our city to see an admissions counsellor to ask if he could still get a merit based scholorship at this late date. This is not a community college, but a nationally recognized state university. When they saw his qualifications, they said he could. He applied, and we are still waiting on his acceptance letter, but it is only a formality--there is no question that he will be accepted. We're not excited about it, but at least he won't be staying on campus. And we haven't totally given up on the idea that a miracle might come through yet for one of the Christian colleges to which he applied months ago. Since God didn't "fix" this for us, unless He's about to and hasn't done it yet, it looks like this may be where He wanted our son.
What have we learned from it? Not that it's important to tithe--we already believed in it. Nor do I think it was about following rules. I can't really speak for my husband (who I don't think is even yet convinced it was related), but I learned from it that it really is important to put God first, and that He really will meet our needs. And if our son has to go to a state university, God will be with him there, too.
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