Page 49 - Living Epistles

imagination - not the fact of being without money, but the possibility of it
being replaced through the promises. Could that exchange really take place
and he get an hundredfold?

The day came when he reached his last pound. The Holy Spirit then told him,
“Cut the ropes and take the promises.” It was a direct call to step out on God.
But it is always easier to talk of such things than to actually do them. It had
been much easier to give 100 pounds out of plenty than to part with this last
1 pound and come to the end of his savings - for the first time in fifteen years.

“Oh, how the devil pitied me and brought such arguments!” he said. “He told
me it would be a step in the dark and that if there was a convention or
anything of that kind, I wouldn’t be able to go unless I had 1 pound laid by. But
the Holy Ghost showed me that if God wanted me to go anywhere, He would
surely provide the means. The danger was on the other side: for if a person has
money, he can go without consulting God, like Jonah, who could afford to pay
his passage to run away from Him! The fact is, we can never really be
bondservants until God does control our means.”

So Rees took the plunge and learned the blessed truth that his extremity was
God’s opportunity. His eyes were opened to the fact that he had a claim on
God for what he could not supply himself. Just as surely as the Spirit had told
him that the people of the village had a claim on his money to meet their
needs, so now he saw that he had a claim on God’s resources to meet his.

[Joseph’s note: People of God, do you see the truth of what is stated here? If
we willingly follow the Lord and lay all we have at God’s disposal, He will also
lay all He has at our disposal. If He can use us to meet the needs of others
around us, then He too will be available to meet all our needs. Truly those who
sow sparingly will reap sparingly, but those who give all to the Father to be
used according to His will, these will find that all the resources of heaven are
opened unto them.

For the past ten years I have lived by this principle. If God should show me
that I was to give my money to another, then I would do so. Even if I had been
saving the money for a future bill, and it would leave me short to give it away,
I have found that it is the will of the Father that I give. In turn, when my need
is at hand, He will be the guarantor of it.

Truly there is a blessedness in operating from the Father’s wallet. His