Trusting God Throughout the Pandemic

Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”  (Genesis 22:14 NASB).

COVID-19 has devastated our economic landscape. Many, including Christians, are struggling to make ends meet. Stimulus bills have pumped trillions into the economy, but even the government does not have unlimited resources. When we have no other way to turn for help, God is always there.

It is like that time $60 saved my life.

On one occasion, when I served as a missionary, I was doing advanced work to set up a recruiting tour traveling to 35 cities east of the Mississippi River. We were enlisting youth for short-term mission trips. I was traveling with my wife and our two little girls. We arrived in Los Angeles from Hawaii, picked up a loaner car, and started for our destinations in the eastern US. We had round-trip plane tickets and enough money to start our trip, but not enough to complete our travel. We would have to trust the Lord for the finances to end our tour. Previous to this time, I had traveled on missionary ventures by myself, and God had miraculously provided. But this was a bit different. I had my family with me, and my daughters had these strange little habits — they liked to eat and regularly.  

A few weeks into our trip, we arrived at the home of our contact outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. We were out of money. We conducted our business, and the next morning our host family sent us off with a large brown-bag lunch but no financial blessing. As we hugged our hosts to say goodbye, there was a knot in the pit of my stomach.

As I started our car that morning, my eyes went to the gas gauge. There did not appear to be enough fuel to get us to Tennessee, our next stop. I had recently heard stories about Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into Eastern Europe. When pursued by the authorities, his gas gauge in his little car, reportedly, never went down. I watched my gas needle seem to move toward empty faster than ever. After driving for a couple of hours, though it was not quite lunchtime, I suggested we stop to eat. When you don’t know what to do, you delay and silently pray, of course. As my wife got out the lunch, I went into the station to inquire about the driving time to our next stop. The news was not good. I did not have enough fuel to make it to our next destination in Tennessee. I did have a charge card, but I knew that if I started spending money that I did not have, I was starting down a slippery slope.

As I returned to our car, I noticed my wife had a big smile on her face. As she had unpacked our lunch, she found an envelope on the bottom of the bag. It had $60 in it. When she gave it to me, it was like she had saved my life. 

The meetings I arranged that summer started that fall, and the tour ran for 13 years. As Abraham ascended Mt. Moriah to sacrifice Isaac, God had a ram in the thicket for the sacrifice. God had our ram in the thicket on the bottom of our lunch bag. Where God leads, He feeds, where He guides, God provides.

We are living in a time where there is a great temptation to make government our security. Stop-gap measures may be necessary for the short-term, but government treasuries do not have enough money to meet our long-term needs. For Christians, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10), and his supply is virus-proof. God is our provider in good times and bad.

Copyright © 2020 Ken Barnes, used by permission.