A few months ago, I was contacted by the chef at a new restaurant for a meeting. They had just fired their manager and their bartenders and she was wondering if I would be willing to come over and clean things up. With just a few months left on my debt goal the last thing I needed was to take a pay cut – and from the sound of it, the customer base at this club was a fraction of the restaurant I currently worked at.

The next morning I was having breakfast with my roommate and we were mapping out my decision. (This is one of the things I love about community – more minds!). I tried to calculate just how much I would need to make and by when – how many shifts per week and such. B listened quietly, and when I asked for her opinion she simply said, “Rachel it doesn’t matter.”

[Mental insert: it matters more than anything, B.]

“The promise was never yours – it was His. Unless you’re being intentionally disobedient, I don’t think you can stop Him from fulfilling His promise – no matter where you work.”

She had a point, but I still wasn’t sure. Even though it seemed like a foolish decision, I couldn’t get it off my mind. After breakfast, I nestled in my “Jesus chair” and opened up my Bible. I’m not a fan of the “8-ball Bible” (opening to a random page for an answer), but I was hoping my scheduled reading would shed some light on my decision.

That morning I found myself in 1 Kings, chapter 18. In this passage, Elijah is going head-to-head with the prophets of Baal – each side claiming their god is ultimate. If you know the story, they each build an altar to their god and proceed to ask said deity to consume it with fire. The prophets of Baal go first, and after hours of chanting the record indicates “there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.”

Before Elijah calls out to his God, he asks a few volunteers to fill four large jars with water to dump on the altar. They do this 3 times – using so much water they fill the trench dug around the base and soak the altar. He calls out to God:

“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

I love what happens next.

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”

As I read these words, it seemed as if God was saying – “Rach, you can dump all the water in Lake Sakakawea on this altar and I’m still going to consume it.”

I made the decision the next day to switch over, trusting God had a plan.

Over the next several weeks I took a massive pay cut. I was making about 25% of my previous income and there were many nights we had no customers at all. Not to mention I learned that I owed  $1200 in taxes! At this point, being debt free by June 15th was no longer humanly possible.

Yet my roommate’s words echoed in my mind, “It doesn’t matter, Rachel.” I stopped counting dollars and setting goals and started focusing on Jesus. I was serving a God who not only burns wet wood, but evaporates stones and swallows ponds of water.

He’d been doing it all along.

God knew when he made this promise that I had lost a $5,000 scholarship my freshman year because of bad grades. He knew that I had stolen money from my dad when I was 19 that was intended to go towards tuition. He knew that when I first moved to Williston I would be obsessed with material things – spending thousands of dollars of his provision on myself. He knew that I would need a new car halfway through the journey (RIP La Maz).

Yet the fire has not stopped consuming. As winter turned to spring, my income doubled. Then it doubled again. The less I worried, the more money poured in. One night a guy gave me a $700 tip for a few beers!

As I think about the next few days (9 to be exact) – I still have a significant balance, one that won’t hit zero in my own strength. It will need to be a divine conflagration. But I’m not looking at that – it doesn’t matter. I’m looking at a 22-year-old girl on a park bench who just heard God say, “You will be debt free by your 25th birthday.

My dripping altar does not phase the Guy who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. So why should it phase me?

Luke 1:46
“Blessed is she who believed there would be a performance of those things promised to her from the Lord.”