On one recent Sunday morning I was in prayer to the Lord and speaking with him about the need for fuel in my car and my wife’s car. If the Lord did not provide we would not be able to drive everywhere we needed to. To make matters worse, on Friday we had taken our oldest son out for his birthday dinner and had accidentally tipped too much to the waiter. Now my bank account had gone negative by $7. To be exact, it was -$7.36. You might be surprised out how quickly we can let $7.36 define who we are. Suddenly I was in desperation crying out to the Lord. We had another full week till payday and another birthday in 6 days. I had no clue how we were going to make it. I remember saying to the Lord, “I have always treated my bank account as Your bank account. If you don’t want the bank to steal $36 of your money as an overdraft fee then you better do something Lord.” Yes, I could see Him smiling, seeing me worried as though he didn’t have this taken care of.
Since the Lord had been teaching me about daily provision I asked Him for 2 tanks of fuel that day. He responded, “You have $100 in the safe in your bedroom.” I responded to Him, “Lord, that is for Josiah’s birthday.” The Lord quickly responded, “Daily provision. Take care of today and I will take care of his birthday.” So, I took the $100, and on the way to church, put gas in my wife’s car. I gave $10 at church. I filled my truck up that afternoon and then saved $20 to deposit on Monday morning to cover the negative balance in my checking account.
Monday morning I deposited the $20 and smiled (with $12 in my account) at how they had not charged me an overdraft fee. I’m still not sure how that happened but they didn’t take God’s money. Later that day we had over $1,500 come in to take care of bills that week. WOW! We were able to get Josiah’s gift but that isn’t the end of the story.
The following Saturday we took Josiah to O’Charley’s for his birthday dinner. We took one of his friends and had a large party of 7 people. When we arrived they put us in a large round table right at the front near the hostess and next to all the traffic. You couldn’t miss us! But, for 20 minutes we sat there, unserved, contemplating our orders until we knew what we wanted but had no one to give our order to. I could have easily become frustrated but I remembered Isaiah 26:3 “He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him.” In the peace of the Lord I had an idea. I looked up the O’Charley’s number, called, and asked to speak to the manager about recent service feedback.
When the manager answered I told him how my family, at one time, was a big fan of O’Charley’s but increasing prices and decreasing service had caused us to stop frequenting the chain. My son wanted to try it for his birthday and so we were sitting in dining room but no one had waited on us for over 20 minutes. He was quite embarrassed and said, “You are here now??!!!??” “Yes” I confirmed. He said he would have someone to our table right away. But before he finished saying this a waitress walked up and asked if anyone had helped us and then proceeded to take our order.
Shortly after giving her our drink and food orders the manager found our table. To his embarrassment we were sitting in the most prominent seat in the place. You couldn’t miss us and yet somehow they had. As a result of the poor service the manager offered us a couple of free appetizers and free desserts for everyone. This worked out great! Josiah had ordered an appetizer as his entree, 2 of the kids were free, this resulted in us only paying for a few entrees. As you can see from the picture below, we fed 7 people for $23.02 receiving $40 of free food and we all enjoyed dessert.
The waitress was very good, thanked us for being so patient and we still gave her a more than expected tip. As I handed her the cash for this bill I was reminded of what the Lord had spoken to me earlier that week. “Take care of today and I will take care of his birthday.” I wondered if we had not somehow been supernaturally hidden from the severs and hostess to provide for this blessing. I also thanked the Lord for teaching me how to live in His perfect peace. The old me would have just left in frustration but the peace of Christ ruling and reigning in my heart allowed for the Lord to bless us in a supernatural way.
