Sorting the Instructions 4
Once upon a time I was debt-free. I had been in debt, having borrowed money for a home and a car, but I made sacrifices and wise choices for a while, eliminating the debt.
I was in the process of shopping for my first keyboard at that time. I had looked at a few, tried a few, and considered how much to spend. A friend who sold electronic equipment came to me and offered to sell me a keyboard at his cost if I let him borrow it for a three-day conference at which he was contracted to provide sound system and recording services.
I told him I was not done shopping, and he gave me a deadline by which to decide. He did not want to have to buy a keyboard that he would then never use again, but would have to if he didn’t come up with an alternate plan. I added that I also needed a sound system and mics and stands and cables and cetera. He promise his cost to me for whatever I bought by the deadline.
I asked the Spirit. I knew that I would have to borrow the money to get the stuff, which added up to nearly $3,000. Even though I was out of debt, I was recently out of debt, and had no saved money. I didn’t seem to get an answer.
The night before the day of the deadline, at 3 am I woke suddenly and felt that I should kneel by my bed and read Galatians. I got to the first words of chapter 5, which in the NIV, which I used at the time, read, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again with a yoke of slavery.”
As soon as I finished reading verse 1, I felt that the Spirit said, “That is your answer. Buy the equipment.”
I thought, I just got out of a yoke of slavery to debt, and will have to resubmit myself to that yoke if I buy this stuff. The instruction in the Scripture seemed to say the opposite of what I believed I had heard the Spirit say. I started reading verse 2, and forced myself through verse 7, but kept hearing the Spirit in my heart say that the answer was in verse 1, and that the answer was: buy the equipment.
I bought it, and borrowed the money to do so, because I was pretty sure the Spirit had spoken to me, but it took a few years for my mind to catch up with my spirit and have the instruction make sense. I was looking one day at the several hundred vinyl music albums I possessed. I recalled having sold three times as many as I still had to a guy one day for 25¢ each. The Spirit, in that context of thoughts, reminded me of His instruction from Galatians 5:1 about the keyboard. His instruction that day included the warning not to be yoked again with the bondage of music being idolatry in my life, not with the bondage of financial debt.
Sometimes your spirit will understand what your mind cannot yet perceive. Trust His Spirit to lead you. Ask Him what to do. Ask Him for understanding and wisdom. He wants you to have them, but on days you have to ask… (Matthew 7:7).