Happy Monday Morning! Today I want to talk to you about Jehovah Jireh, the Lord our Provider, that David writes about in Psalm 23 when he states in v.1 “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not be in want.”
Specifically I want to share about an instance where God was already providing for a specific need before I even knew to ask Him for it. This has happened many times through my ministry and walk with The Lord but this just the most recent and it has to do with the photo at the top of this post. This is a pic of me mowing on my trusty old John Deere mower that, shortly after this was taken, proved not to be so trustworthy.
Now I have had my share of mower fails over the past 18 yrs. that we have lived here in Albion. Broken blades, broken belts, broken cylinders, you name it. Thankfully though I have always had a group of friends much more mechanically inclined than I am who have helped me in the past. Knowing that might not always be the case though, when my mower suddenly stopped at the bottom corner of our property and I found the culprit to be a broken spring, I decided that it was time to do something I had wanted/needed to do for a while now… I was going to buy a new mower.
I asked my buddy Dave how much HP I needed and what size deck I should get because my current 17.5 HP and 42” deck just wasn’t cutting it (pun intended). He told me I should be looking for a minimum of 20 HP and 50” deck. After researching online I went to a local dealer the next town over started to look through their inventory. I immediately realized that mowers had gone up in price since the last time I had to by a new one, I found my John Deere used on Craigslist about a decade ago, and so I would be spending more than anticipated.
As I looked at the fancy zero-turns and imagined whipping around my yard on one I couldn’t justify the extra expense so I narrowed in on a Troy-Bilt which was 24 HP with a 54” deck. It was still more than I was planning to spend but the thought of not always having my yard get out of control while I waited for yet another repair was very appealing.
After going home and talking it over with Sheryl I made the call and became the proud new owner of a lawn tractor. All there was left was to have it delivered and then pay for it. Oh yeah, and figure out what we were going to do with my broke down John Deere that was still stuck at the bottom of the hill.
This is where Jehovah Jireh comes in. Apparently God knew that we would need to purchase a new mower because the final price with tax was almost exactly what we would be able to pay without dipping into other savings. And, just to remind me that He excels in the details, less than 1 min. after my new mower was delivered a neighbor came over and asked me what I was going to do with the other one. I said I didn’t know but explained what was wrong with it and said he could take a look if he wanted. I then had to take off to get to my kids baseball and softball games.
That was yesterday. This there was a knock on my back door and a man handed me a bank envelope of cash before proceeding to pull the mower out of my yard. Now you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal? I was expecting bigger than that. That kind of stuff happens all the time.” And that my friends is the point. I do believe that things like this happen all the time but God doesn’t get the credit or we don’t think it is something as spectacular as if I had woken up and found a brand new zero-turn in my driveway with a bow on it.
The reality is that thanks to God giving Sheryl and I the ability to work and save we were able to get what we needed when we needed it most without going into debt AND not only did I not have to worry about going through the process of listing the old mower on Marketplace, let alone breaking my back trying to push it up the hill, but both things happened immediately with zero effort on my part. Oh yeah, and the cash given to me was the exact amount we had gone over what we had originally want to spend on the new mower.
In the end the reality was this… The Lord is my Shepherd and because of that I am not in want. Thank you to The One Who Provides.
What are some ways that God has provided for you lately?
Refill with Randy 