By Ryan Shaw
God’s purposes and plans include learning His ways of financing those plans. We learned much about His ways related to Kingdom finance through the process of obtaining the property.
We began the process by estimating a budget of $160,000 USD to cover the renovations and set-up of the property. We next began to pray earnestly for the Lord to reveal to us how He wanted to meet these needs.
If He was truly leading us to undertake this faith project then He had a plan of how to finance it. We asked for understanding to align ourselves with His will for this financial provision.
One morning the Lord deeply impressed Matthew 6:11 in my mind, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus is instructing His disciples to look to Him for the supply of their everyday needs and not to another.
We are not to be anxious and worrying about tomorrow but look to His generous hand of kindness one day at a time. His disciples would have immediately connected this with the Israelites in the wilderness gathering manna. It was given for one day only and could not be stored up.
I began to see that He would provide what we needed when we needed it and not before. Whenever a new payment was needed to keep the renovations moving, the funds would be there.
In July 2015, the same month we signed the property contract, initial gifts totaling $60,000 USD were provided. That enabled us to begin the renovations on the property before the work was delayed in early September.
When the renovations were resumed in early January 2016 we continued to use these initial funds. We needed an additional $30,000 USD by March 2016 that was received little by little through generous donors. Then a remaining amount of $70,000 USD was needed by June to complete the project.
The Lord was teaching us to pray through to victory during this season. April was filled with many hours daily in the presence of God. We sought His face, worshipped, prayed specific Scriptures He gave us on a daily basis, reminding Him of His Scriptural promises as well as those given us by the Holy Spirit, proclaiming His authority and victory over the situation through the power of His resurrection, resisting the enemy over the circumstance, releasing Jesus’ Kingdom and will into the situation and much more.
In all of this a central theme the Lord was teaching us was to hold Him at His Word. This is pleasing to Him as He has bound Himself to His promises. We come to Him, believing that if something we are seeking is His will, in time He will release it.
This was a testing season, yet the Lord drew near with daily guidance of how to pray, worship, stand, intercede, release thanksgiving and more. It seemed like every Scripture passage we read had particular application to our circumstance and how to respond.
We learned to stand on Jesus’ faithfulness, righteousness and great mercies, entrusting our need to His greatness in our midst. One area we found ourselves consistently praying was for the intervening, orchestrating, undertaking hand of God to prevail over every issue related to this project and getting into the property.
A key way the Lord led us in prayer was continuing to remind Him that getting into this property was His idea, work and plan. He initiated it, not us.
In September of 2015 the Lord spoke through two different people in one day the phrase, “the Lord has need of it,” related to the property. He had arrested and apprehended it for His own purposes.
God was taking the property for His own purpose and glory. Since this was the case He could be trusted to provide the financial needs related to it.
In early May the Lord brought the financial breakthrough. In one week’s time the remaining funds came in through two donors.
One gave $20,000 USD through investment funds recently made available they knew were to be sown into this need. The remainder through a group we had been relating with through the whole process.
Back in October (when we thought we needed it) this group was not in a place to give to the project, stating that possibly funds would be available in the second quarter of 2016. Because of the delay, the bulk of the funds for the project would not be needed until the second quarter of 2016.
This timing worked perfectly for the needed funds becoming available. We discerned this was one of the timing factors the Lord was orchestrating in the delay of the renovations during September – December 2016.
Our family moved into the house portion of the property in June 2016. There was still remaining renovation work needing to be done on the other building.
This work was completed in July and in August we set up the larger building and fully prepared it for use. God was faithful to His word back in July 2014, “In two years you will be in a new building.”
We didn’t have anything to do with making that timing happen ourselves. In fact we would have done it differently. Yet God was orchestrating His purposes and promises.
Watching the details unfold, and His exact timing brought to pass, caused out hearts to be overwhelmed with joy and gratefulness to God. Worship and praise erupted from our hearts.
God is real and involved in the details of our lives, intimately knowing all things and wanting us to be full of awe at the ways He is involved. God used this process to build our spiritual confidence.
We saw a process: (1) His promises made clear to us, (2) our response of seeking His face to do these things and (3) then watching Him act, according to His perfect will. This is the way to cooperate with God’s guidance and leading and see it come to pass in our circumstances.
Great message Ry. Just what I needed. Love your bro en Peru.