One of the great comforts in my relationship with God is, knowing His expectations of me. I can know exactly what He expects of me, regardless of the situation, and there is great peace in that. You can know, too.

How is that possible? Because God has no expectation of His children. He has knowledge. God knew me before I was born and knows what all my days will hold.

By definition, to have an expectation indicates a lack of knowledge about the future. If God is the God that knows what His children are going to do before they even do it, then He's not up there wondering what you're going to choose to do and worrying about about whether or not you'll meet His expectations. How can you expect something if you already know something? So if there is already foreknowledge, there can’t be expectation as well.

Isn’t that a freeing thought? The pressure is off! Not only am I spared the onerous task of trying to decipher what God’s expectations might have been, I am also spared having to attempt to live up to them. Think about it: expectations are usually used in an effort to control behavior or produce a particular outcome. All of us can think of times when expectations have been placed on us, or when we've placed them on others, in order to get a desired result when the outcome is unknown. But that's man and not God. God isn't placing expectations on me so that I'll perform a certain way. That leaves me with the ability to focus on relationship with Him instead of performance for Him.

Do you see how God’s lack of expectations of us also leads to the impossibility of His disappointment in us? “Disappointment” is defined as, “a failure to fulfill an expectation.” If there are no expectations, there can be no failure to fulfill what isn't there, so there can be no disappointment.

Now, just because God has no expectations of me doesn’t mean He hasn’t made plans for me, and what great plans they are!

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” - Jeremiah 29:11

The details of those plans are tied to His knowledge of me. They are woven into the fabric of what He knows about the choices I'll make, the paths I'll take, and He works them all for good. Such is His love for His children, and what a comfort that love brings!

~~ About five years ago Tony was working for a company that he felt was in financial trouble, so he decided to work on a spec house with our brother-in-law and leave the other company before things got worse. (The place closed their doors later that year.) The first week on the construction job, Tony slipped in the mud and seriously hurt his knee. He ended up having surgery to repair torn ligaments, going to physical therapy and spending months on crutches. He was unable to work during all this, but he hadn’t yet filled out paperwork with his brother-in-law and so wasn’t considered an “official” employee by the state. Therefore he didn’t qualify for any kind of worker's compensation. He was without an income, and I was only working part-time. (Still homeschooling those kids!)

How did God provide? Our rent was covered more than once by fellow believers. Someone gave us a large check in a Christmas card that year. I hit black ice on the interstate coming home from working out of town, spun around a few times, slid off the road and softly landed in the ditch, up against a reflector post. (The lady behind me rolled her vehicle and someone else ended up in the river that ran alongside the interstate.) The damage to my car was a little dent on the back panel, but the estimate for repairs came to over a $1000. After verifying with the insurance company that we didn’t have to use the money for repairs, we used the check to live on. (My car had a bajillion miles on it and wasn’t worth repairing, although the body had been in good shape. This was my first accident since a fender bender in high school!) Another check came from a car accident. I was at a stoplight, and there was a large truck behind me. We were waiting for the light to turn green when the truck bumped into me hard enough to make my car “hop” forward. (The driver said his foot slipped off the clutch and it made the truck lurch and hit mine.) The company he worked for wrote us a check to cover repairs so they wouldn’t have to report the accident to their insurance. This time we did use part of the money to fix the trunk, but used the rest to live on. All those years of driving with no accidents, and then two in such a short time frame, and no injuries from either one!

~~ I love giving to others, but there was a time when God told me to write a check to someone when we flat didn’t have any extra money. It wasn’t a big sum, only $150, but that was literally about all we had to our name. That was our grocery and bill-paying money until payday, and while I could see us sacrificing the groceries, I was having a hard time believing that God would have us get behind on bills. Why didn’t He ask someone else? And yet, I felt so strongly that this was Him talking to me…

Finally I wrote the check and stuck it in the mailbox and told Him something really spiritual like: “Fine. There it is. Are You happy now?” When I got the mail that day, there was an envelope from the bank where we had our car loan. We had just paid it off, so I assumed it was some kind of final paperwork. Inside was a check. Apparently, they had miscalculated our payoff and were refunding us the overpayment. How much was it? $151.48!

~~ When we moved to Montana, we remained jobless for five months. Nothing even remotely worthwhile was opening up for either one of us. We went through our remaining savings and were at the end of Tony’s available unemployment compensation, (which brought in considerably more than the fast food or retail jobs that seemed to be the only things available). It was the first of the month and the rent was due, but we didn’t have all the money. We had never been behind on paying the rent, but we didn’t know what we were going to do this time.

A friend was the caretaker at someone’s summer home, and the owner was looking to have cement poured for a floor in the garage. But first, the gravel that was there had to be dug down and leveled out. Normally, this would be done by using a backhoe or Bobcat, but our friend said we could do it and earn the money the owner had provided for the job. The house was located in a small town about an hour away. Tony and I, the kids and the dog headed over there first thing in the morning. We packed a lunch, brought all our shovels, rakes, picks, the wheelbarrow and the dog’s water dish.

For most of the day, the kids played in the big yard and by the little creek while Tony and I shoveled and moved the dirt and gravel. At their own insistence, they did “help” for a little while, but soon grew weary of it. It was hard, dirty work and blisters were on my hands by lunchtime, even though I wore thick, leather work gloves. Animals had used the doorless garage as a shelter, so there were feces mixed in with the dirt. The dust that was kicked up brought on an asthma attack and when I blew my nose it was black.

It was dark outside by the time we finished. The kids were beyond bored, the youngest one was sleeping in the car with the dog, and we all were more than ready to go home. It had been a backbreaking day of physical labor, but the rent was going to be paid on time.

Oh, Lord, You always provide! You have provided us with food when we were hungry, money when we needed it, and work when we needed to earn money. You promise to meet all our needs, and You are always faithful to fulfill Your promises. All thanksgiving, praise and glory goes to You for Your provision to Your children!

The doorbell rang, the dog barked, I dried my hands and went to see who was there. It was a gal from church. She gave me an envelope and said it was from someone else from church that wanted to remain anonymous. After she left I opened the envelope and inside was a thick stack of twenties. Neither my husband nor I had told anyone at church this morning about our current financial situation, but we had taken it to God and that’s all we needed to do.

~~ Twenty-two years ago, almost to the day, my husband was laid off from work right after our daughter was born. (We already had two boys, ages 4 and 2.) I had a very small bookkeeping business at the time that brought in a little extra money, but it wouldn’t be enough to support us by any stretch of the imagination! My husband was able to collect unemployment while he looked for more work, we cut expenses every way we could think of, and I took on more bookkeeping clients, but we still couldn’t keep up with the bills.

I finally had to call the landlords and let them know we were going to have to move and find a cheaper place to rent. We were living in a very nice three bedroom house, and we were looking at moving to an apartment in order to save, at most, a couple hundred dollars a month. The landlords responded by asking if it would help if they lowered the rent by $150 month until Tony was working again. We did the math and figured it would cost us more money to move than to stay put at the lower rent, so we took them up on their offer.

Tony went back to work part-time within a few months and we called them to let them know we could swing the full rent again. They said to wait until he was back on full-time. So when he was working full-time again, which wasn’t until that Fall, we let them know. They told us that they had decided to keep the rent where it was, and for the following five years that we lived there they never raised it!

~~ Our move to Montana thirteen years ago was prompted by another time of unemployment. Tony had been working in Seattle as an outside salesman for a company in California. The company hit hard times and had to lay off all their outside people, so Tony was out of a job unless we wanted to relocate to California and work in the company plant. We had a little money in the bank, the job market in Seattle was good and we were optimistic about finding other work where we were, so we decided to stay put and declined the job offer.

Months went by and nothing was opening up for Tony. I still had my bookkeeping business, plus I homeschooled the kids, so we weren’t looking to put me to work unless we absolutely had to. Our nest egg was slowly turning into an empty nest and the unemployment would run out eventually.

For years we had wanted to get out of the city and move to Montana, where Tony was born and raised. Tony’s sister lived in Helena and owned a duplex, and one day she called us to say that if we wanted to move to Helena, we could rent the place from her and her husband. (She knew Tony was unemployed, but she was still willing to extend the offer to us!) Could this finally be our opportunity? There was certainly nothing keeping us where we were at, and we figured it would be easier to be poor in Montana than in Seattle, so we made tentative plans to move.

I called U-Haul to see how much a truck would cost to rent, and was shocked to find out we would need $1200 for the truck and the gas. Where would we get such a sum? We still had a little money in our savings, but we needed that to live on until Tony got a job. So we gave the situation over to God and told them that if indeed, we were supposed to make this move, He’d need to provide us with the money for the truck.

It was the beginning of summer and we decided to have a yard sale to raise some cash. It wouldn’t bring in enough to rent the truck, but it would be a start. Friends and neighbors knew of our desire to move, and they started donating things for us to sell in the sale. More and more items kept getting dropped off at our house and it took me days to price everything.

We had the sale on a Friday and Saturday. Our lawn was completely covered with stuff, and cars coming to the sale were causing traffic jams on our street. There were several near-miss fender benders by vehicles slowing down to see what was going on and why there were so many cars and people trying to get to this one house. Horns were honking and drivers were shaking their fists at the pedestrians crossing the street in front of them and at the other vehicles that came to a stop to parallel park along the curb.

The sale was a great success! At the end of the second day, after we had cleaned up all the leftovers and taken them to the thrift shop, we sat down and counted up the money. Just over $1200! The move to Montana was on!

Dear Lord, You are so creative in how You provide for Your people! In Moses’s day You had food fall from the sky. For us, provision came today in an envelope full of twenties and years ago through a yard full of odds and ends for sale. No matter how Your provision arrives, it always does arrive! Thank You, God, for Your continued faithfulness!

One more "shout" on provision in my next blog...

When are our darkest times? When we fear.

When do we fear? When our faith in God is wavering. When we’re unsure that He’ll do as He’s told us He will.

How do we combat the fear? By remembering what He has promised us and proclaiming it! By telling of His faithfulness to us thus far, and recounting it! By praising Him for it all!

As I wrote in my last blog, here is the first of my shouts from the rooftop. Let me tell you some – just some – of the awesome ways God has provided for us over the years! (These are especially good reminders for me right now, as we are personally going through a trying economic time. But God is faithful…)

~~ When I started thinking about which stories to include in this, the first one that came to mind was an example of God providing food for us at a time when we weren’t going hungry, but He blessed us anyway. That’s our God!

Years ago, we were visiting friends and family in my husband Tony’s hometown. The kids were antsy from being cooped up, so we drove down to a riverside picnic spot just to let the kids play outside for awhile. We ran into Tony’s childhood best friend, Danny, and his family. They had had the same idea and were there picnicking with their three kids.

Actually, they didn’t have much there for a picnic, more like a snack. Not having a lot of money on them, they had picked up a box of chicken and French fries from KFC on their way down. We hadn’t planned on staying at the river very long, so we had no food with us. Danny and his wife insisted on sharing their little box of food with us, even though we kept saying we weren’t going to be staying there that long and that we’d eat when we got back to town and that we really weren’t hungry…you know the kinds of things you say in situations like these.

Well, they refused to eat unless we did too, and the chicken and fries were growing cold, so we gave in and Danny prayed over the food and asked God to bless it and multiply it. I remember picking up a fry and eating it very slowly, not planning on taking anything more than that out of the little box. The kids were running around playing and we let them know they could come and eat whenever they wanted to. We adults sat at the picnic table and visited and munched on the food. (Danny had noticed that I’d only had one fry, and again insisted that we help ourselves to what was there, so we did.) We were busy talking, and the kids – five boys and two girls – would run over to the table and grab a piece of chicken or some of the fries and then take off again. They never stayed long enough to sit down, but they ate and so did we.

Finally it was time to go and we started to clean up the table. We noticed that there was still some chicken and fries left, so we asked the kids, "Who hadn’t gotten any food?" (There was no way everyone could’ve eaten and there still be some left over!) All seven of them said they’d eaten and were full and didn’t want anymore. We adults were full, too.

Looking at each other, we realized what God had done. In the midst of our conversation and play, God had multiplied that food right under our very noses! We were humbled and overwhelmed by this miraculous display of His generosity and love for us, and we all thanked Him for it right there on the spot!

Oh, precious Father! Just recounting this story reminds me again of how much You love Your children and how You like to bless them in even the smallest of ways, with something as common as fast food. Thank You, God, for Your loving provision and for giving me something to shout about! To You be all the glory!

More shouts on provision in the next blog!

I didn’t even realize it, but I’ve fallen off the roof.  Well, maybe I didn’t actually fall off.  I think I would have noticed that.  It was probably a slower descent, a step-by-step down the ladder, one rung at a time.  Maybe that’s why I wasn’t aware of it, maybe that’s how it crept up on me, until today when I realized I was no longer up there. 

What was I doing up there in the first place?  Singing His praises, shouting from the rooftop about the goodness of God and how He has blessed me!  But the shouts have gotten quieter, until they just became a muted conversation between me and my God, or a quick reply to another believer’s question of, “What is He up to in your life right now?” 

Yes, I’ve still been praising Him, in a lethargic kind of way, but I haven’t been proclaiming Him!  I haven’t been shouting from the rooftop! 

But today I feel as if I just awoke, and I find myself on the ground, with the roof high overhead and the ladder stretching from here to there, and I’m going up…

Stay tuned for SHOUTS!