Check the Trash!

Reaching the unreached. Raising kids. And raising funds. All things God uses to lead us to lean on Him, and sometimes they’re connected.

A couple of weeks ago, my mom sends me a message that the garbage man didn’t come for two days in a row. Huh? She called them twice to come back to get the trash, and they came but passed by my parents’ house, twice. She even waved at them while standing next to the giant, overflowing recycle bin. Super weird. But I was thinking, “Why is she telling me this?”

God wakes my mom and gives her a job to do

Then she tells me right before she went to bed on Sunday night, she was praying and felt she should look through the garbage. She ignored it and went to bed. But she woke around 2:45 a.m. with the same feeling and couldn’t go back to sleep. She got up and had her customary devotional time. Again, an unmistakable sense came to her that she should look through the trash.

Finally, she relents and goes out to the garage and begins to dig through the giant recycle bin.

Wouldn’t you know it, that $2,000 check for our kids’ education fund was there? Ready to be taken by the garbage man in just a few hours?

The Lord stopped the garbage man from coming twice! And He gave my mom a supernatural “tug” to dig through the trash just to preserve that check. Wow.

God moves in the heart of a donor

What my mom didn’t know was that the check was already on a journey.

Look at this message I got two weeks before about how that $2,000 check came to be written. It’s so good, so God!

“My wife and I were praying about how to best steward $1,000 of kingdom money that we hadn’t yet allocated to kingdom work. I went into prayer wanting to give the money to a couple we support in Nepal. Funny enough, I felt strongly and specifically led in prayer to invest the money in your kids and that we were supposed to make it $2,000 instead of $1,000. I haven’t experienced that kind of redirection many times in prayer before, so I thought I’d share it with you. God is the Lord, and He’ll take care of you and your kids.”

“God is the Lord, and He’ll take care of you and your kids.”

So, God redirected funds once intended for Nepal, doubled it, sent it to my kids for their scholarship fund, saved the check from the garbage man twice, and woke my mom up at 2:45 a.m. to find it.

God is at work

Friends, we are living in a supernatural reality where God works. He does His thing; it doesn’t depend on us. Rather, we get to witness it and testify to it. There is no natural “circumstantial” explanation for this story.

Oh, and by the way, Mom later informed me that when she got the “magic” check in the mail, the envelope was open and could have been lost or fallen out between California and Florida. Just saying.

He wants to use you, too

Things are going on around you in the spiritual that you can’t fathom in the natural. Be encouraged that He is at work, and ask Him how He wants you to join Him in it. Listen to the Spirit as He tugs at your heart. You never know what part of the story He wants you to play.