I was baptised in the spirit in 1995, catching up with my wife who had received the same blessings a few years earlier. I spent the next year or more devouring the scriptures, papal encyclicals, books, tapes, days of renewal, conferences, prayer group meetings, parish initiatives. You name it and my wife and I were there. However, there was one “difficult” area which we hadn’t tackled during this early period in our new life in faith….tithing… yes we’d heard a talk and read about it and noted figures like 10% as a guide and I had sat with my spreadsheets and budgets and forecasts (and I’m not even an accountant !), and figured out that there was simply no way we could afford to give as we felt we should. We had significant post-student overdrafts, a “stretching” mortgage and had to be careful to account for each pound we spent. We felt we had enough but just enough…

And yet, as time progressed, we became increasingly troubled about our lack of giving… We learned that one of the principles of tithing is about surrendering any income we have as the Lord’s own in the first place. From this we use the amount we need and share the rest – a principle hard to argue with!

But….the logic, the spreadsheets, the bank account balances and the credit card bills told us that we needed all we were earning !!!And so, no matter how we tried to work it out, rationalise, think about ways to save on spending, it seemed un-doable… Until through prayer we finally accepted God’s grace and received the strength to, if you like, throw caution to the wind. We prayed about a number of opportunities to give regularly and completed some direct debits which blew the spreadsheets and the logic to pieces but, we felt, brought us into obedience with the Lord on finances.

And guess what happened….

The following month, I received a bonus from work, higher than I’d expected… The overdraft was no-more – However, I rationalised this and whilst grateful to God, felt deep down that this was a bit of luck. I was sure that in the following months we would be in the red again. Such a lack of faith !

The next month, no bonus, but no overdraft… we must have spent less? But we couldn’t really figure it out….

The following month… still in the black.

And so it continued…

Later in the year I received news that an aunt of mine had died suddenly in Ireland. I felt strongly that I needed to be at the (hastily arranged) funeral, but the air fare was just over £212 (Due to the short notice of booking the flight). The money simply wasn’t there but our “financial faith” was stronger and after some discussion and prayer I booked the trip (on my credit card) and off I went, resigned to the fact that the overdraft would return at the end of the month, but fairly confident that the Lord would sort things out in the fullness of time.

We didn’t have to wait long …. At the end of that month, my pay slip arrived as usual and, as usual I opened it to double check the net figure (which was almost always the same each month). But as I checked the detailed figures I noticed a new line – “back pay”, I’d completely forgotten I was due this. When I looked at my total net pay and compared it with the previous months, it was exactly £212 (and some pennies) higher than the regular monthly figure we were used to !! Not £200 or £300 or £250… but £212 !!! Can you imagine how we felt? What a wonderful and powerful affirmation from the Lord and a great gift to strengthen our faith.

And by the way, the Lord continues to bless us and keep us – despite further ups and downs over the years, the overdraft hasn’t returned to this day, praise God !!

Frank Mason, who is married with 2 children, is a member of the music ministry at the Birmingham conference.