I was a 2nd year grad student @ Fuller Seminary in Pasadena CA in 1970 when Lynn and I began learning a new lesson in the school of faith: “Where God leads He feeds!”
We were renting a tiny 2 bedroom bungalow as newlyweds and full-time students living on zero savings when I learned that 2 single classmates needed a place to stay. (In those days you assumed all seminary classmates were men:) I don’t know what got into my head. Maybe I was thinking, “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion–how can God’s love be in that person? 1 John 3:17 . Then without a thought about how God would supply our needs, I yielded my study as a bedroom for the first guy and the living room sofa/futon for the other.
One night, as they headed home for a free dinner, Lynn handed me an empty 6 pack of Coke bottles to redeem for a ½ gal of milk and add it to the 2 cans of hash, a package of green beans and the remainder of a dozen eggs to prepare a feast –without saying a word to the guys that we were dead broke & to whom we could have appealed for help.
Rather, we thought it more befitting to ask the Host of Heaven for His blessing. We wanted to know, “How Big is our God?”
At the end of our sumptuous meal, I politely asked if anyone wanted more. Good thing they didn’t respond because our cupboard was completely bare.
Later that evening, I glanced at the mail and noticed a tuition payment due from Lynn’s school and mentioned to her also that I needed to replace the tread barren tires on our only car. (Yes, there was a time when couples only had one car:). But, where would the money come from without any jobs to provide income?
All we could do was pray.
The next day the most amazing “coincidence” occurred: a totally unexpected scholarship check for $1500 arrived for more than enough to cover Lynn’s tuition, new tires and lots of hash!
Can you think of a better way to learn how “to preach to the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ… and to experience “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:8,20)?
