As I write this I have just come from a powerful time of praise and prayer in my own home. In recent weeks I have started to preach a series to our youth that covers 57 of Jesus’ parables, and today I will preach the third parable, the bread of life from John 6:31-38. I have been pleading with God to give me fresh revelation and messages for these young people to see the God I serve is bigger than they had ever imagined. Do you notice when you pray that the answer or the given path is often not quite what you expect or thought could result in an answer.
My wife and i are expecting our fourth, and had great plans and were being good stewards financially with the knowledge we had of the costs of having our first and only son. We prayed so hard for a baby boy for years, and thought it could never happen but here we are at the closing of week 35. My wife is contracting and on moderate bed rest at this point and comes off bed rest next week. We had already paid the doctor $4,000 because our insurance does not cover maternity in Texas, and we were planning on paying $5,600 to MCA in Arlington for the C-Section and couple nights stay at the hospital according to their admitting department.
Yesterday I received a phone call from someone in our body who is expecting their first child, and were using the same medical staff and facilities because of the pricing. They went to go and be induced and the hospital turned them away becuase they did not have full cash for the hospital bill. Immediately I called the hospital only to find out that our bill will be $15,400 if we do not have $5,600 in cash the day of the surgery. Oh man, was I in distress! My plans, they were falling apart before my very eyes, and I had no control over my finances, or the medical care my wife would receive.
Today as I was finalizing the sermon I was weeping over the points I am about to teach to young people. I came home form the coffee shop and turned on Tommy Walker’s Breakthrough album, and just began to call out to God. God is so good. We would not have made the decision to have a baby had we known that the real price is triple the quoted price, and God knows that. He blessed us with an answer to prayer, and the God I serve will bless us with a solution to this issue as well. I am not ignorant to proper planning and being responsible, but I also know that God is bigger than my circumstances. It seems that my desperation has produced a stronger reliance on Jesus.
