“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” (Matthew 6:31-32)
There are people who look to money the way man should look to God. They are lost without it. They look to money, they live for money, and their whole life is about money. As the economy is going to fall soon, they will fall with it. Very often when I say these things, people get upset that I scare them by telling them what is about to come. But, I would prefer to know that the fall of the economy is at the verge than to live in a fool’s paradise. Wouldn’t you?
One of the first things God did in my life was to teach me to live without money. You see, most of you if you don’t have any money in your pocket, you don’t dare to go downtown. It is part of your life. And you feel good when you have money. You feel comfortable when you have a certain amount in your pocket. But we were taught to live without money and you have to learn it, too.
One of the things I feared most was my family being in want. When God first sent me out on the mission field, I had no church, no congregation behind me. But He commanded me to give up my profession, go out and preach to a people who I didn’t even know. This particular area was so poor that the people I lived with never had a meal for a day. They would eat the bush outside. They would boil a bush tea, put sugar in it (sugar was easy to get because it was a sugar country) and give it to their baby. This is what the people and the baby lived on. One day we had to weed a field of about 10 acres with a hand hoe. We were weeding all day long, so thirsty and so hungry that at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon we prayed that God would send us some food. Then we looked around the rocks and saw a little tray coming. It was a sister who said the Lord told her to bring us water and food. This is how those people lived. They had faith in God that was above the faith of those who had things. Sometimes, they would eat just one little dumpling and a little coconut oil for all day. But when they would come home from the fields at night, they would go off to the service and meet with the living God. God taught me to live with those people so that I would learn what it was to really trust God and know Him.
Thus, when God sent us to America, we were able to come here to do a missionary journey with $12 in our pocket. No money otherwise. On the first trip, from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, we paid $8 for transportation and had $4 left. But it didn’t stop us from completing our trip throughout the whole USA.
I remember another occasion going to Maine on a mission. We ran out of money at Pittsburgh. A sister came to us and said, “Take this $5. Maybe you don’t have enough money for gas.” We said, “Thank you,” took the $5, bought the gas and off we went. We ran out of gas again in Portland. We had a Guzzler at that time, a car which consumes a lot of gas. As we ran out this time, I said to my wife, “Mavis, this gauge is saying empty and if the police catch us on a highway without fuel, they will prosecute us. Let us just get off the highway.” When we turned to come off at the exit to Portland, Mavis suddenly said, “Look at this!” There was a $5 bill on the floor of the car. So we turned into the gas station, bought $4 worth of gas and it took us right to where we were going. We still had $1 left, so we put it in the offering plate.
We learned to live without money. Money never bothered us. We would get up in the morning and had no breakfast but it didn’t bother us. We still had a mission to do. Praise be to God. And it is the same with you, brethren. Times are coming when you are going to have to trust God instead of trusting your pockets. Amen.
