More than Sufficient

Our faith journey may seem to have come about suddenly. It may appear as if we wanted to be radical for Christ. Neither is true. Neither would have been sustaining. Instead it grew out of a formative period of learning to be Spirit-filled and a deepening prayer life. I cannot emphasize enough that God had been patiently working in our hearts for a number of years. Faith grew out of an abiding relationship.

We wanted to give this spiritual vibrancy to our children. To pass along this walk of faith that rested in the sufficiency of Christ. What we had managed to give them, as we learned later, was a highly controlled environment that kept us well within our comfort level and in some ways even isolated us from God.

Early one morning in late autumn I was sitting on the floor of our bathroom huddled up to our small electric heater. At that time we were planning a trip to Mexico in early January. I was beginning to feel the crunch of our bank account dwindling and hoped for some cushion upon our return. As I prayed I begin to ask the Lord to supply us with $5000 to meet our needs. I’m not sure why that figure came to mind or exactly how that prayer got formulated but I continued praying it in the weeks leading up to the trip.

As we prepared to go a friend and a friend of a friend gave us travel miles which purchased our tickets. A couple provided $1000 dollars; some of which purchased our first digital camera. But no specific answer to the request. We traveled to Mexico, surveyed the situation, returned home and eventually decided to go.

One Sunday a few weeks after our return, we arrived for the morning service. The accountant who was working on our taxes pulled us aside to give us news of our returns. We normally received an amount back, but I had only worked about half the year and we didn’t have high expectations. Were we ever wrong and blindsided by the ways of God. “You are getting back a total of $5432 this year” she informed us.

As we stepped into the service, the assembly was singing Arise, My Soul, Arise rewritten by Indelible Grace: “My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh, With confidence I now draw nigh, And ‘Father, Abba, Father,’ cry. Arise (arise), arise (arise), Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off your guilty fears and rise.” Tears welled up in my eyes and streamed down my face.

As we drove home afterwards Diana and I begin to unfold the entire story to our children. They were unaware of how we had been praying, and it was a powerful moment to tell them that God had not only answered but had actually given us more then we asked. They took it all in for a moment, and then from the back seat one of them said, “Dad, today we learned that God is not sufficient. He is more than sufficient.”

All photos taken on the January 2005 trip to Mexico