Page 164 - Evidence of Things Unseen

immediately. In this way the Lord provided the means to pay my wife every month.
In February of this year my son turned eighteen, and my child support obligation was
fully met, and paid on-time. God has been faithful. There were more trials to come,
however. Little did I realize how much my own trials were to resemble Joseph’s. My wife’s
wealthy friend that she moved in with hated me with a passion. She was very restless in
seeking to cause me trouble, despite her confession of being a Christian. She began to go
down to the Mennonite community my daughter was in and tell the people my daughter
was staying with that I was a terrible person and that Kristin should not be helping me in
any way. My daughter Kristin had been receiving my mail and forwarding it to me, but due
to the influence of this woman the people at whose house my mail was being sent decided
they should not be involved anymore.
This was merely a minor inconvenience to me, but it disturbed me that this woman
was going out of her way to spread evil reports. My wife accompanied this woman and
listened quietly as her friend made charges against me. This woman heard that I had been
hired by the mission in a staff position, and although she had been the driving force behind
the demands that I pay child support and alimony, she sought to get me fired from my job.
She called the mission director and accused me of being an abuser of my wife and children.
The director called me into his office later and related these things to me. He said that he
informed her if these things were true that there was no better place for me to be than at the
mission, for their goal was to help troubled men.
This woman called repeatedly to the director, and then she even had the pastor of her
church send an e-mail to the director to warn him of the type of man he had hired. This
pastor had never even met me, yet he gave forth this evil testimony. The director called me
to his office again and shared with me the e-mail he had sent back in response. He informed
the pastor that he had known me for over a year and had sufficient knowledge of me to form
an opinion of my character. This director had recently given me an award at the mission's
holiday banquet, saying that I had been the best Resident Manager the mission had ever
known. Thus, the attempts of the enemy to cause me discomfort were thwarted.

Isaiah 54:17
No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that accuses
you in judgment you will condemn.

Like Joseph of old, God had given me favor with my employer. The director of the
mission became my defender, negating the need for me to defend myself. Yet the worst
actions of this woman were still to come. She went to this Mennonite community again, and
she openly suggested that the reason my daughter had sided with her father was that there
was an unrighteous relationship between us. She went so far as to suggest that my daughter
and I had been having sexual relations together.
The woman in the home my daughter was staying at was so appalled at this
suggestion, knowing the purity of my daughter, that she told her husband that she never
wanted to meet with that woman again unless her husband was present. This wealthy
Christian woman began spreading this accusation around to others who were willing to
listen, and I even heard the report come back from the mouth of my own mother.
When the Lord desires to prepare a son to share His glory, He does so by first
subjecting the son to shame, reproach, falsehood, and many trials. Joseph, the son of Jacob,
spent many years in prison being known as the man who attempted to rape Potipher’s wife.