toothpaste

After being in Jarabacoa for 2 1/2 years, the Lord send me a breathe of fresh air. It came in many ways and one of those was Glad. I learned ALOT from her and we spent some crazy times together.

She lived out true trust and power of prayer. Glad is an LPN who came down to do the physicals for all the kids as the school year was beginning...and ended up staying for 4 months. She brought stuff for 4 weeks, but instead of having people ship her things, she decided to just pray. She prayed for clothes, shoes, financial support, where to live, what ministries to be a part of, even for toiletries.

We Americans are so self sufficient and individualistic that we often don't give others or God the chance to supply these everyday needs...because we don't live in a way that allows us to have these basic needs or we are not humble enough to receive what God sends through others, but would rather go out and get the right color or design or flavor...but that's a whole different entry...

I saw Lord's faithfulness in Glad's life. Glad ended up with more clothes, shoes, picture frames, and stuff than she could even use. THANKFULLY this ruthless trust and total dependence on prayer rubbed off on me.

There was a time when I was out of money for the month but I knew that I would be paid in 5 or 6 days. It was a Wednesday. I know what day it was because in the DR, our mail come every other Tuesday, so life was often measured by "maildays". I had received my mail on Tuesday night and, as always, had already opened and read through all of my mail. Oh beloved mailday!

Wednesday morning I ran out of toothpaste. I decided to trust God even for this and get on my knees and ask him for something as simple as toothpaste. I sort of giggled as I did it and felt like God was giggling too. I thought that it was silly to pray for toothpaste, but I also had learned alot about who my incredible, amazing, loving God was and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he wanted to, he would provide - even toothpaste...and if he didn't want to...I was wiling to just wait on Him and see what other solution He came up with.

So I prayed. When I got home from work, there was a box at my house. It had come the day before with the other stuff, but had gotten mixed up with the mail from another ministry, so I didn't get it until Wednesday evening. It was a box from the women's ministry at my home church. The women's ministry had put together little odds & ends into boxes and sent them to each of the church's missionaries. Amidst a whole box of stuff that I don't even remember, there was big old tube of toothpaste!! It was the only toothpaste I ever received in the mail as well as the only box SBC ever sent me.

I left it in the Lord's hands and HE took care of my needs in His own way. What I LOVE about the story is that God knew my need ahead of time and had already provided the answer - long before I even realized my need or stopped to pray about it. It had been put in the mail about 3 weeks before I even prayed for the toothpaste...and had arrived in the country the day before...but it didn't make it to my hands until after I'd spent the day praying and truly trusting.

God always knows our needs. I think he is often trying to send us a tube of toothpaste, but we don't feel the need, or we see the tube but it's the wrong brand or wrong flavor, or because we usually have SOME alternative to our problems - some other way for US to resolve things, and so we miss out. We miss out on seeing the visible expressions of our invisible God. We miss out on seeing tangible answers to our prayers and we miss out on the incredible awe and pure joy of spinning and dancing with our savior, laughing like a child because we just KNEW that he was going to take care of our every need, one way or another, and it makes us giggle...like a child.