Lessons from a Yard Sale, Part 1

It still amazes me to see what God will use to stretch us, teach us and mold us into the image of Christ.  Over the last few weeks He chosen tool was a yard sale of all things.  Who would have thought?

For those who may not know, we have felt God leading us to adopt another child from Ethiopia.  This time: a girl!  What?!  I asked God about this many, many times.  Let’s just say that we were perfectly content with boys and never planned to have girls.  And did I mention I was okay with that?  This has nothing to do with me “needing” a girl.  Everything to do with the way God is leading.  I am sure that once we know her, we are going to love her.  And we won’t be able to imagine our lives without her.  And I hope God prepares her for the craziness she will forever endure.

Back to the yard sale.

So we wanted to have a yard sale to raise money for our adoption.  We did this last time and were able to raise about $1,000.  We were hoping we would do the same, raising enough to send in our USCIS paperwork.  (This is an application we will send to the government, in which they will determine if we are fit to parent an orphaned child from another country). 

The idea of the yard sale sounded really good until I realized that when we moved to Alabama I gave a lot of our stuff away.  Almost everything has been purged.  Meaning we have about 0 to contribute to our own yard sale!  We put it out there that we were having a yard sale, and wow!  I wish I could have taken a picture that would capture the amount of stuff people donated to us!  We put big pieces of furniture on Craigslist and ended up making over $300 before the yard sale even began.  It has been a very humbling experience to see the generosity of people.  People unloaded truck loads (I’m talkin’ truck loads, y’all)!  Our garage, and a good portion of our friends’ garage were filled, top to bottom.  Talk about a blessing.  We felt the love of God, through people, so strongly.  To go from having nothing, to having more than we have ever had at a yard sale…

In the midst of this, I felt God leading us to do a yard sale by donation only.  Again, what?!  The inner dialogue usually goes something like this, “You need to do this by donation.”  Me, “But God.  Really?  Don’t you think people will take advantage of us and just take a bunch of stuff?  We won’t make anything!  Don’t you think it would be better to price stuff and be willing to take less?  That makes sense.”  God, “Kristy.  Have we not been through this a million times?  Do you trust me?”  Me, “Okay.  You are right.”  Sigh… God, “I have always made this work.  When have I not met all your needs according to my riches in Christ?  Watch me.”

So that is what happened.

And can I just testify that not only did He teach me a few valuable lessons (in another post to follow) but He proved Himself ever faithful (like we could ever doubt that)!  We made more than enough to cover the cost of our USCIS fees.  We raised twice as much as I thought we would! 

And then….God began nudging Kenneth.  “I want you to tithe this.”  Kenneth, “Um.  Am I making this up?  God, I thought you wanted us to use this for the adoption.”  God, “Yes.  Bring your tithe to the local storehouse (Westwood).  Trust me.”

So that is what happened.

And once again…God proves Himself faithful.  Do you know that that Sunday morning someone handed us a check for $100 to put toward the adoption?  And another person, who had a yard sale the day before to help her pay for an upcoming mission trip, told Kenneth that she felt God leading her to tithe the money she made from her yard sale and give it to us for our adoption.  Of course, the combined amount was almost the exact amount we had tithed.

And then… On Monday I was driving to get our boys from the grandparents when I got a random call from someone at our home study agency.  She said, “Kristy, I just want to tell you that I got a phone call from some of your friends at church.  They have written a check to cover the entire cost of your home study.”  I have no idea who did such a precious thing for us (I hope they read this at some point so they know what a blessing they are, and how thankful I am for their obedience to the Lord and for their generosity).  TEARS were flowing.  And if I were not driving, I would have dropped down to my knees, face to the ground, prostrated in full surrender to the Faithful and True Lord of Hosts.  So I did that in my heart.  I could not even find the words.  The Spirit was groaning on my behalf, for sure. 

“Give and it will be given to you.  Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.”  Luke 6:38

God always gives us good things.  Always.  God is always faithful.  Always.  He is not going to ask you to give something or risk something that He will not bless a million times over.  He LAVISHES His blessing upon us. 

So often He asks us to do things because He wants to gives us something even greater than what we have.  I cannot begin to imagine the blessings we would have missed had we insisted that we keep “our” money.  If we had hoarded every cent we made, or thought we would make, I doubt that we would have experienced His blessing “running over” into our lap!  He took our small 10% and gave us back more than we made at the whole yard sale!  Isn’t that just like our loving, heavenly Father?

When I see the cost of this adoption, and the cost of raising five children, I can easily feel overwhelmed.  It makes no logical sense.  NONE.  It actually looks very foolish.  But how can I not trust the One who has called when He continually does things like this?!  O my soul, praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord, o my soul!