Feburary, 2002

God has taught Theresa and I a great lesson about faith hope and trust, and I want to share it with you.
 
As most of you know the past 12 years have been very difficult for us financially.  We have had four business failures including BCS Engineering, our most recent company that shut down at the end of January of 2001.  This has left us over $200,000 in debt with very little hope, broke but not broken, "For I know in whom I have believed and that He is able to keep me."
 
Through these trials the Lord has blessed and grown our family in incredible ways, maybe not financially but certainly spiritually.  Theresa and I want to share the story of what we found in an old abandoned safe.  It is my prayer that the Lord might bless and encourage you through it as He has us.
 
Three years ago we were able to purchase a home, quite a fixer upper that appeared to be used as a dumping ground for the last twenty years.  During the cleanup and demolition process, we have found nothing of value, only junk.
 
The kids have turned one of the old storage sheds on the property into a "band room" used for practice and by our church's worship team.  In the shed was an old military safe, about three feet high and very heavy, tucked into a corner that the previous owners had left.  They assured us that it was empty and that the combination was lost.  We removed it from the room and left it outside next to the shed where it sat as an eyesore for three years.
 
Last weekend while feeling quite blue, we decided to make our traditional trash removal rounds.  It seems that after each rain, nails and other trash grow out of the ground, literally, it comes up everywhere, in the cow pen, the roads, the field, everywhere.
 
During our forage I decided it was time to dump the old safe, but you know, I have always day dreamed that it was full of treasure and so I wanted to see if it would be possible to open it, just like safe crackers do in the movies.  After quite an ordeal, I was able to move it from the shed to the shop.  Using a blowtorch we cut off the hinges, it is still not clear to me how we could have busted the pins on the hinge side as Mike Jr. and I beat and pried on the door.  Inside was nothing but a small brown shipping box. Inside the box were three one-hundred-dollar bills.
 
Now to some, three hundred dollars is not a lot of money, but right now it is a fortune and we are so grateful for it. But the money is not the wonderful part of the story, this story ends with an incredible message that God Himself planned before the foundation of the world, a message He has for all of us as we work our way to our final destination as joint heirs with Jesus.
 
After celebrating our find, we continued our forage in the area around the safe, all the time praising the Lord for His faithfulness.  You see over the course of the last year, our tithing has been very light, the logic being that we were loosing money and therefore had no earnings to tithe.  A few weeks ago I was reading in the book of Malachi where the Lord admonishes us to "test me now in this."  So Theresa and I decided to tithe on the first fruits of everything we put in our account.  It is difficult but we are doing it.
 
Now back to our forage for trash.  As we pulled the junk out of the ground I found what I thought was a piece of wire insulation and started working on getting it out of the ground.  As I cleared the dirt from around it, I discovered that it was a piece of PVC, or so it seemed.  When I finally got it out of the ground I discovered it was a small trinket and it had an inscription in large bold letters on the bottom, only two words, “Trust Me”