Page 73 - Evidence of Things Unseen

I had many fears and worries about what might lie ahead of us, and I had been tossed about
all day. The next day was a Saturday and the mail brought a notice of foreclosure on our
house, and another letter stating that our van was to be repossessed. In my spirit it was
dawning upon me that God was not going to deliver me from this discipline as I had hoped,
but that I was going to receive a more severe correction this time around for going into debt.
It appeared that God was going to strip us of all those things I had gained through
disobedience, but at the same time He was providing everything we needed to live.
I stayed home alone for a week, and I was riding my bicycle to the library to keep up
with my correspondence and to ask some people to pray for my family and I. I was not
driving our car because I did not have the money to pay the insurance. God put it in my
heart to have a yard sale to begin selling some of our possessions, but I did not even have
enough money to buy some posterboard and a marker to hang up a yard sale sign. A check
came in the mail for fifteen dollars, and I knew the Lord wanted me to use this to buy these
materials. I then had a yard sale and took in about a thousand dollars.
My wife and children called from the Barnes’ and said that everyone wanted me to
come out and that we could put the dogs in a pen, so I went to join them. While there I
talked to my wife about our options, and I told her that there was a ministry in a nearby
state that I wanted to check out to see if God would open a door for us to join them. I had
spoken of this before, and it was much on my mind, so we took our children to my sister’s
in Mississippi, and Tony and I borrowed their pop-up tent trailer and headed to North
Carolina. It rained the entire way, and we never saw sunshine. We rented a campsite for a
week, but after three days we knew definitely that God was not leading us to join this
ministry. There was not even a hint of opening, and I had no witness in my spirit that we
were to be there. The campground manager generously refunded our money for the unused
days.
The Spirit spoke one thing to me before we left North Carolina. He said, “I want you
to go home and get your finances in order.” He then told me I was going to have to declare
bankruptcy to do so. We picked up our children in Mississippi and the next day we returned
to Georgia. As we crossed into Georgia the sun came out for the first time in five days. I
knew we were back where God wanted us to be, and I set about doing that which God had
instructed me to do.