Easy Come; Easy Go
By Phil Scovell
After setting up a website relative to the ministry to which
the Lord had called me, and experiencing some results, it seemed
prudent to expand. I briefly prayed about advertising
commercially on a local Christian radio station. It seemed to me
that it was a logical way to progress and the best way to appeal
to a wide audience. After checking on the advertising rates, I
called friends and family and asked them to pray that the Lord
would provide the money. I needed 3,000 dollars.
One day, some friends called, let's call them Sam and
Gloria, and said they were coming over. When they got here, I
was handed a check for 3,000 dollars which was the exact amount I
needed. Praise God! What a blessing this was and what a
wonderful answer to prayer. Especially since my wife and I were
so financially broke at the time, too. I called friends and
family and told them the good news and they rejoiced with me.
After all, this had to be of the Lord. Right? Immediately, the
next day, things began to happen to make me reconsider.
The money was given to me on a Friday. Over the weekend, a
number of things occurred to bring discouragement to my life. I
found them all quite puzzling and spiritually mysterious but
bless God, He had answered prayer and things were about to
change; weren't they? Yet, I felt something was wrong. As the
week progressed, things actually grew worse in several different
ways. I do not want to belabor all the things which occurred
which attempted to confuse me because that part of this testimony
is not important. Besides, most people probably wouldn't believe
it even if I did explain it in detail. It is what happened to
the money itself that is nothing short of amazing.
When Sam and his Wife, Gloria, came and gave me a check for
the money, Gloria said she had a vision during her time in prayer
two weeks earlier. She saw packets of sealed seeds with paper
money attached to each packet raining down from the sky. The
packets had no writing on them. She knew what these items were,
of course, because the Holy Spirit explained it during the
vision. Since the packets of seed had no writing, she asked the
Lord who it all was for. The Lord said, "Phil." She was then
instructed to give the money to me.
Gloria set this, as it were, on the back burner and waited
for further confirmation. She decided, after a period of time,
to ask her husband's opinion. He already felt they should give
the money to me. Since they were in agreement, therefore, they
did what the Lord had led them to do.
The first time I recognized something was wrong, was the
moment they handed me the check. I even stood with the check in
my hand, thanking them for what they had done, but in my spirit,
I felt something wasn't right. Each day following the day I
received the financial gift, different events occurred one by one
which caused me to focus on the money.
As I walked through the kitchen the following Thursday, just
six days after receiving the gift, I stopped dead in my tracks,
turned, and placing both my hands on the counter top, I prayed.
"Lord? I need to know what is wrong and I need to know right
now." Suddenly, I knew.
The Lord said, "It's the money."
I said, "What about the money?" He made it very clear He
wanted me to return it. No, He didn't explain why at first but I
soon learned.
As I continued questioning the Lord about the whole
situation, I asked Him how to best go about returning the money
without offending the people that had given it to me. The Lord
showed me several things. First, He reminded me of at least
three things which were checks in my spirit, or notifications, if
you will, of something that was wrong or that He wanted me to
consider. After identifying those three things that caused me to
reconsider keeping the gift, the Lord revealed what was really
happening.
The Lord said that I was attempting to market, as it were,
my own ministry. You see, I am no longer in business but in
ministry and it isn't even mine; its His. Since 1973, I have
been self employed. I have done radio commercials to market my
business, printed fliers, mass mailed, set up websites, and used
other marketing tools to advertise. Now the Lord was telling me
that I was trying to get the word out about what He had called me
to do as if I were still in business. He wanted me to return the
money and let Him promote what He alone had started. In this
way, the Holy Spirit explained, I would not have to work at
marketing the ministry, worry about people finding me, or even be
concerned about the money needed for support. His message was
simple: I was attempting to advertise the ministry on my terms
instead of His. Understanding what He was telling me, I made
contact with Sam and his wife and made arrangements to return the
money. Now, here is the amazing part.
When I explained to them why I was returning their money and
explained all the details which when along with it, Gloria said,
"This is amazing. Last night the Lord spoke to me when I was
praying and said, "The Money is coming back." She questioned how
this could be but the Lord just confirmed what He had said. She
wrote down what the Lord said in a computer file and saved it,
because He said some other things related to the whole picture
and she wanted to make note of it.
Thursday afternoon, when I had decided to return the money,
due to all the Lord had shown me, I felt the Lord telling me
other things concerning the actual money itself. I asked the
Lord, "What about the vision? You even told them the money was
for me and used my name in the vision." The Holy Spirit then
revealed to me that this was true; He, in fact, had told them to
give me the money and confirmed it with a vision. So, I said,
"Then why did you tell them to give me the money if I am supposed
to give it back?"
The Lord said, "It was a test for them and for you. They
obeyed by giving you the money as I told them so they passed the
test. Now it is your turn to see if you will obey."
It was at that moment in time I knew I was going to do exactly
what He had said. No, it wasn't hard to tell them I was giving
their money back. Instead, I felt a sense a feeling of honor
that the God of the universe would go to such elaborate means to
test me. First, he gave me the money. Secondly, He allowed all
sorts of things to happen which were things designed to distract
me from hearing His voice. Third, I stopped, in the midst of all
the clutter going on around me, and prayed and heard His voice.
Finally, I obeyed.
Once the decision was made, and the donors were told, I felt
something else in my spirit that was amazingly unusual to me. I
felt that the Lord had just given me money to plant as seeds into
the ministry He had called me to serve Him in. Gloria then told
me that the Lord told her that they had obeyed and given the
money. I had obeyed and the money was returned. Now the seeds
were planted. Somehow, the Lord wanted me to plant financial
seed while at the same time I had no money to do so. He gave me
money, which belonged to someone else, to use as seed money to
plant for a future harvest. By returning the money, He became
responsible to make those seeds grow and I had to do nothing but
obey. Additionally, the donors were blessed in a similar manner.
This is not the end of this story for two reasons. First,
when the Lord expands the ministry I am in now, I will have to
add to this story to report on God's greatness. Secondly, on
Thursday afternoon, when I prayed in my kitchen and heard the
Lord telling me what to do about returning the money, I had
forgotten that our tax preparer was coming over that evening for
us to sign the papers concerning our income tax return. Three
hours after the Lord revealed His truth to me about the money, we
were seated at our dining room table listening to the CPA explain
all he had done. When he said, "between your state and federal
taxes, therefore, you are getting back 5,000 dollars," I nearly
fell off my chair. If Sam and Gloria had not given me the 3,000
the week before, and if I had not heard the voice of the Lord
about returning it, I would have taken my own money, spent it,
and never once realized why my investment in radio commercials
proved fruitless.
Finally, Gloria told me the next day something else the Lord
told her concerning the money. She just was asking the Lord in
the thoughts of her prayer time, why I gave the money back when
He, the Lord, had not only given her a vision but also even said
they were to give the money to me. The Lord told her that the
money was seed. She and her husband, therefore, had planted the
seed but gotten the money back. He then asked her where the
money was now and she said, "being returned." He then told her,
the seed is now planted.
I don't know if you really followed all of this but if not,
go back and read it all again. The bottom line is this. God
wanted to test me as well as Sam and Gloria. God knew I needed
money that I did not have. He knew, if I got my income tax back,
I would think, with that much money, I could spend 3,000 dollars
on radio commercials. He did not want me to do that so He
devised an intricate test to see if I could hear him through an
onslaught of clutter. A vision was given in order to confirm Sam
and Gloria would do the will of the Lord. They gave. Then I was
tested to see if I would obey by giving it back. I did. When I
did, the Lord confirmed the return of the money before I returned
it. He also told me, and Gloria, that the money was seed and the
seed was now planted. So, as I sat in my living room considering
all this, I suddenly realized, I am going to reap a harvest which
was the outcome of using somebody else's money for a brief period
of time. Why the exchange you ask? As I have said, first, it
was a test but there is more to it than that. There was a
harvest the Lord wanted some people to experience. He made a way
so both parties could receive confirmation of the will of the
Lord and then promised a blessing as a result. As they say,
"Easy Come; easy go," but with God, "All things are possible."
End Of Document
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