Financial Provision

I'm always a little hesitant to talk about money. I don't want anyone to mistake what I'm saying to mean that following God means that you will be rich and prosperous and be able to get whatever you want. Following Jesus does not in any way guarantee more money. It doesn't mean that God will rain down money from heaven and give you everything you want. Nor does it guarantee an easier life (Following Christ actually guarantees suffering and difficulties) However, I do feel that I should always praise God and give Him glory when he has made such a financial provision in my life. For the most part of our (my and Isaac's) marriage, we have struggled financially, however we have always made it through. Recently I noticed that the financial burden of our bills and expenses has seemed to lighten up. We both got new jobs and pay raises which was great, but wasn't until recently that I realized how much God had done. I am a hyper organized person. I do our family budget a few months in advance where I estimate our income and our expenses during each month. While doing this I wanted to estimate our annual income because we recently found out that we OWE taxes this year and I wanted to see if our income increase had anything to do with it. While calculating it, I decided to find out what we were making annually 3 years ago when we started working for CFNI. I discovered that because of gradual pay increases, we are now making significantly more combined that we did 3 years ago. (I don't want to write the exact amount cuz I'm just not quite sure if that's right to do or not.. but it was enough that we owe taxes this year) I was shocked because I didn't realize how much God had increased our income to lighten the burden we had. I noticed that when an emergency came up (car breaking down, medical bills, and the suprise taxes) we didn't really feel stressed because we had saved up enough to cover it, but I just never paid attention to how great the provision was. That's not really what amazed me though. While we can pay our pay our bills, save some and have a little spending money, we are no where near well off. We are paying our bills with a little extra to spare. What really amazed me was how in the world we survived 3 years ago. At that point between the two of us, what we made combined equaled to about 1 person's not so great salary, yet we made it. My husband and I sat down talking about it and we are utterly amazed at how we made it through. During that time we had the added expense of a school bill and 4 credit cards that needed to be paid off. I can't fathom how in the world we made it. The only way we survived. The only way we made it through and didn't end up having to leave CFNI and go back to the east coast is because of the financial provision from God. Somehow he helped us make it through. I have no idea how we survived, but we did. He is Jehovah Jireh. He is my provider and this is evidence of His grace in my life.