by Veronica Barnes

Two words: God math.

God has been teaching me a lot of lessons over the past few years. Most of them have been hard and painful lessons to learn, but one overarching theme I’ve noticed is that God tends to work upside down and backwards from the way my logical self solves problems.

When my income was significantly cut five years ago, my logical brain said, “Alright, time to cut out unnecessary expenses and you definitely can’t afford to give any money away and you will probably have to give up ballroom dancing; it’s just too expensive.” And technically, my logical brain should have been right. 

Then I had this conversation with God:

God : “Ignore your logical brain and trust me.” 

Me: “Are you sure? Because this math really doesn’t add up?”

God: “Oh and you should start tithing.”

Me: “You’re crazy.”

God: “…”

Me: “Alright, fine.”

Ok, so it wasn’t an out loud kind of conversation, but it definitely happened in my heart after a message at my previous church about Malachi 3:10, the only time God says to test him. So, reluctantly, I set up automatic giving (so I couldn’t back out) and proceeded to stress out about how in the world I was going to eat after all my bills were paid.

And then a couple months went by and I didn’t starve. I even had money left over; enough to be able to continue dancing and traveling for competitions. In fact, other than not having cable anymore and being careful about impulse buys, I didn’t really even notice the missing income in my daily life. Occasionally, I would sit down and try to see how things were adding up… they never did. I should have been broke, but I wasn’t. 

That is God Math. 

Even though I had been a Christian for awhile, that was the first time I truly believed that God has my back- the first time I realized I could really trust him, not just with the small stuff, but with the big, messy, hard things too.

I’d like to say that now when I feel a nudge from God to give towards something, I instantly obey. But I don’t. I’ve had that same conversation with God more times than I can count. And I don’t always say, "okay" in the end. But every time I do, He is faithful. The giving is never a hardship and often leads to blessings I could not have imagined.