… things keep happening that show God’s involvement as He weaves our paths in and around others. Graham and I changed churches last year. We’d been receiving words and prophecies for about a 2 year period that God wants us to connect with business people because that is where our ministry is. We visited Bayside Church April 2005 and printed on their new bookmark was a list of goals for the year – one of them being plans to develop a business ministry. I knew we’d come to the right place!

Today I get an email welcoming me to the Business Ministry team as it starts to take shape this year and the man leading it has a really unusual name – not one that you’d forget easily. A man with the same name was a client of mine in my first year of business nearly 12 years ago. I feel sure it’s the same man, and if so, can’t help thinking another God-incidence is about to happen. I’ll keep you posted. KMT

When I was 32 years of age, a single mum with 3 small daughters, having escaped a difficult marriage that was threatening to become violent, I was working in a govt position and attending church regularly. One day a woman at the church came up to me and told me I should be ashamed of myself – throwing my marriage away. Turned out she’d been praying for a husband and desperately wanted to be married. I spoke with the Pastor who, in turn told me I was a woman who should be married and needed to pray about it – me, I’d had enough and wanted to stay single and bring my girls up on my own. I’d made a mess of things in that area and didn’t feel like trying again. About a week later a girlfriend at work told me of the criteria she had for meeting guys – 5 points. I told her I thought that was a rather cold way of approaching things and she said it was her life and she wanted to make sure when she met ‘him’ he was the right guy. Why waste time on anything less? I began to wonder if God had a message for me and taking Sue’s 5 points I increased them to 12 and prayed over them, at first somewhat cynically, but over time, more in earnest.

During this period of time one of my associates at our work prayer group told me about a man whose marriage had recently broken up and there were two little girls involved. He asked if we could pray for this man and his family and that God would enter into the situation. At that time I’d been learning about how, if we concentrate on other people and their needs, that God would also look after our needs. So, for a couple of months I was praying over my situation and praying for this man and his situation.

I won’t make this a long story but suffice for you to know the man I was praying for ended up asking me out and within one month of getting to know him, he met 11 out of the 12 criteria I’d set – think God had plans for me! Graham soon met that 12th point as well and in 1991 we married and combined our family of 5 girls. A co-incidence? I don’t think so!

Some years later, I was working in a wonderful position, with a Christian boss. I’d had more children and they were growing up and I’d returned to work to help pay the bills. I was going through great growth at that time, learning much from my discussions with my boss, and I’d even joined his church. The children and I went to his family’s place for meals, I enjoyed being with him and his wife as much as possible. I still attended my church too (one in the morning, one at night) and during that time I’d become friendly with a lady named Betty, who was my ‘elder’. One Sunday morning, Betty took ill during the church service and was rushed to hospital. She appeared to have had a stroke. She returned home around ten days later. At my work for several days, the words ‘Be Still and Know that I am God’ kept running around in my head, plus ‘ring Betty’. I dismissed it as fanciful thinking for a few days, until it started to drive me crazy. I couldn’t shake the words from my head. Finally, shaking, I gave in to it and decided to give Betty a ring and see how she was. I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach the subject but knew I had to tell her. I plucked up the courage after about five minutes of conversation and told her that I had to say something to her, but didn’t know if it were relevant to her. I quoted the verse and stopped. She was silent at the other end and I wasn’t sure if she was still there. I waited. Then she spoke. ‘It’s funny’, she said, ‘but that’s what they were telling us about on the Friday night at the elder’s meeting before the Sunday I took ill. I dismissed it as not being for me. Whilst I was in hospital they did lots of tests but they could find nothing wrong. They let me come back home but I was still very tired and needing rest. I started to spend time with the Lord and reading His Word. You are right, it’s what I needed to hear.’ I said my goodbyes to her, my heart gladdened because I’d listened and obeyed. But boy, was I shaking!

I had a beautiful son who stayed with us for six months. One night, I went to see why he hadn’t woken for his meal. My son had died. I was later to find out it was cot death. I couldn’t understand why it happened – he was my first child, what had I done wrong? Those questions were answered some years later, but the point to my story at this time is that we were broke, we had little money and we didn’t know how we were going to pay for his funeral. We didn’t tell anyone, not even our family, but we did wonder how. I prayed about it, as I do anytime I’m in need. Some family members gave us money to help us (remember though, we hadn’t told them). Unknown to us, our neighbours took up a collection throughout the whole street. The sums of money given us equalled exactly the quotation we’d been given for the cost of the funeral. When we arrived at the parlour to pay the bill, it seemed that the quotation was slightly out – by $5.00. That was the exact amount I had in my purse! God had provided for us to the exact dollar!