July 27 – “Practice what you preach”

I had one of those "practice what you preach" moments today.  I got the monthly email from our church treasurer showing how Seaside and Seaside Christian Academy are doing financially.  It hasn't been much of an issue since Hurricane Ike.  Right after the storm God led an LPGA golfer from Fort Worth to send us twenty thousand dollars.  That gift from God has carried us through the last two years in spite of the families we lost who didn't return to Galveston after the storm.  We are slowly using up that money, so on paper it looks like we are getting really tight for money after a period of strong financial solvency.    I have to admit that as I read it I felt a mixed bag of emotions.  It wasn't all one thing.  A little bit of fear.  Something like despondency.  Depression.  A surge of "what can I do to fix it?"  I wondered where else I could work.  What cuts could we make in our budget at home?  My hearing aids are almost paid for.  That'll help.  All valid approaches to the problem I thought.   No.  Not a single one of them.  It took a few texts from Chris to get my attention.  They had to do with how her Dad is handling his wife's dying.  Wow.  What a perspective changer.  The guy's best friend and partner and lover is dying, and I'm worrying about money.  I rebooted my thought process.   First, I got beat up by remembering Scripture.  My life verse is Matthew 6:33, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you."  Do I believe that or not?  Not to mention the lilies of the field verse right before that.  And the command in Philippians 4:6, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."   Then I remembered that our home group is going through the Experiencing God study.  The basic principles on which Seaside bases our whole existence.  God owns everything, so all the money we get comes from him, not an LPGA golfer.  We are not supposed to have a stockpile of money.  It's too great a temptation to trust the money instead of the Lord.  Since God is always at work around us, our job is to discover what he is doing and join him.  If we are doing his work that he revealed to us, then it stands to reason that he can provide the resources we need when we need them.  If we have money in the bank, then we don't need it yet.  So in a nutshell, we are just approaching where we were before the storm: a position where we have to trust God.  I'm OK with that.    Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." Father, help Seaside to be OK with that, too.  Amen.