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Mar 09, 2025 06:00am

Superabundantly

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My husband lost his job the weekend before Christmas. Not fun. He is a very smart and talented man. God has not withheld great talent from him, and his work history is evidence of this. I just knew it would be a matter of days before he got snatched up for another great opportunity. I set my heart to praying, but I did not feel great urgency.

Well…we worked through our savings…and God had not provided that job yet. I still fretted not. I knew it was surely just moments away from happening. I continued to pray, but this time with more urgency. The savings were running out, bills looming in the near future. I still felt confident God had a plan, but I was starting to feel nervous that His plan might require a box on a corner or plasma donations….

We sold a car, and that gave us enough to keep going another month…a little breath of fresh air. It felt like God was just holding His hand on my back, reminding me that He had not forgotten us. I prayed with great urgency, asked my closest friends and family to pray with us, and I just knew the job would fall into my husband’s lap any day….

A month later, he had applied to over 40 jobs, all of which he met the requirements for and seemed a perfect candidate…but God still said, “not yet”. A friend asked if my husband would mind helping his cousin with a car audio install. He very quickly agreed, thanking God for another morsel of provision. While helping with the audio, the cousin asked my husband what he might know about an older car he was working on. What he didn’t realize is that my husband made money all throughout high school buying, fixing up, and selling hot rods.

So, my husband started helping the cousin with one car after another, proving himself with each job he was handed. Before long, my husband was putting in as many hours as he could, working on hot rods, a passion he had long laid down after starting a family. He continued to apply for jobs, do interviews, and wear himself out putting himself out there, in hopes of getting hired for the right job, while continuing to commit to working on hot rods in the evenings and on weekends when the big job came around.

We were praying beyond fervently…crying out for God to open the right door and to help us make it from one day to the next….the kind of praying that really doesn’t stop…but we truly felt peace that God would help the right people see my husband’s resume and snatch him up at any moment.

Throughout this entire season of difficulty in our family, our church had a focused study on prayer, a friend led a 30 day Bible study online on prayer, and my brother and his wife started doing a Facebook live book study about prayer. God was putting reinforcements all around us, keeping our hearts aligned with seeking closeness to Him through communication the whole time.

I was reminded through the online study to pray specifically. I wrote out each area I needed God’s wisdom and provision. I poured my heart out and prayed Scripture that reminded me that God would not forget us, that He had a plan for us, and that He wanted to walk through the hard stuff with us. I was reminded through the church study that we can share our hearts and our needs with the body of Christ. Some of the precious people praying with us shared our situation and our prayer requests with their small group and asked them to pray with us. This was especially humbling, as we faced these members of our church family every week, knowing they knew our story and we could not pretend we were fine. My brother and sister-in-law’s Facebook book study pointed out that God requires our hearts to admit and embrace our own utter helplessness and need for His provision.

God was using everything around us to point us to Him. We continued to pray with fervor, desiring God’s will above our own. We examined our hearts and motives in what we sought. We learned humility and dependence on God.

I started praying for specific needs to be met, writing them in my journal with a date beside the request. I prayed that God would meet these specific needs, as He knew they needed to be met, in His timing, in whatever way would bring Him the most glory. I really was covered in peace.

One by one, God started answering my requests-most more quickly (and often differently) than I could have imagined. My dad and my son were in a car wreck. They were both okay, Praise the Lord! My son’s glasses were broken in the crash. I wrote down: God, please help insurance to process the request for my son’s glasses quickly. He is having such terrible headaches going without them. Please let him get his new glasses swiftly and experience reprieve from the pain. I prayed with confidence, but I also knew that it can take weeks to get new glasses. He got his glasses 3 days later, without charge, and his headaches subsided! Praise God!

We needed to replace the wheelchair accessible van. It went on the list. Less than a week later, we had a wheelchair accessible van sold for the wholesale value!

I started praying about a specific amount of money we needed to get caught up on our bills and to have gas and food money. I prayed, knowing God may have a plan for us that was not comfortable. We might have needed to start selling other items or seek assistance from the local ministry center. I prayed, knowing however God answered those prayers would be better than my own plans anyway.

Out of the blue, a friend who lives out of state said she and her husband had been praying about a call from a pastor at their church to be radically generous, as God led them. They sent us a very generous, what I would categorize as a very radically generous, donation through Venmo when we were just not sure how we would pay our mortgage that month!

The next week, the small group who had been praying for us took up a collection and gave us another very radically generous donation! The two donations combined, along with a couple of side jobs my husband had been asked to do, tripled the amount I had been praying for!

Now, I am not a “name it, claim it” type of gal at all. I do believe that God desires us to make our hearts humbled to a place of helplessness, knowing He is the only One who knows what we really need and the only One who can really provide that, though…and He wants us to admit that to Him.

We continue to pray, with confidence-not confidence that God will just give us what we ask for, but that He will give us what we need. If He just did what I asked, I would have skipped the humbling part. I would have missed out on seeing Him use others. My husband would have just gotten a job, we, most likely, would have missed God’s hand in it at all, misconstruing the circumstances to be a product of our own ability.

This chapter of our story isn’t over. There are still several heart cries written out in my journal with a date beside them. We are excited to see how God continues to weave this part of our story. We are able to approach each day, in prayer, knowing that,as He tells us in Ephesians 3:20-21, “to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabudantly more than all we dare to ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (AMP)

That sounds way better than just getting what I think I need quickly….skipping over all of the parts that give glory to the Church and Jesus forever and ever! So, we will keep approaching each day prayerfully, seeking to walk in obedience to Him, however He leads us to do that!