ABUNDANTLY MORE

I am planning to move to Chicago soon, so over the last couple of months I have started preparing a great big list of things to do. As I started working my way through it, I felt I was accomplishing a lot.

A little while back though, I felt God give me a gentle nudge to get my tax done.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll get to it” was my response and then I went on my merry way again. Not doing it and not obeying.

A while later I felt God prompt me again. This time I knew I needed to do it. I also realised two things-

1. I had not done my tax for three years (not very adult like,) and

2. I had not been paying tax on my second job which I had been doing for two years (highly un-adult like)

“Oh no!” I thought. “I probably owe a heap of money!" And wondered if I was going to have enough saved for going away?

I will pause here to say a couple of things that were happening in the background:

1. God had been challenging me about tithing regularly and increasingly over the last 12 months or so I had been doing this and enjoying it but hadn’t really thought more of it. Interestingly, I did not expect anything to change.

2. My Dad has been talking about retiring sometime soon. I have been in an incredibly privileged position in my life where I have always known if things went wrong for me my parents would help me out. Although if my Dad was no longer working, that safety net would not be there anymore.

3. God had been prompting me to write my testimony and I had been having a hard time with this; getting wrapped up in the lie that “I didn’t have much of a testimony.”

Fast forward about a month and I finally got around to doing my tax with an agent.

I walked in bracing myself for the news of owing money and hoping I might get away with breaking even after paying back what I owed.

The tax agent went through the expenses with me, punched it all in and waited while the outcome was calculated.

“It looks like you will get about $9000 back.”

My jaw hit the ground. “What?!”

“Oh yes” he continued. “And that’s just the first year”.

“You’re joking?”

It turns out when I started my job, I had not claimed the tax-free threshold so I had been paying way too much tax!

Half an hour later we had finished filing my tax.

I was almost shaking as he tallied everything up.

“You should get back about $21,000.” I very almost cried. “Thank you, Jesus” was all I could say.

I did cry in the elevator on the way out of the building. I kept thinking “God this is too much! This blessing?! This is too huge. I don’t deserve this!” I felt God say, “I asked you to tithe and you did. You were obedient. No, you don’t deserve it but it is not about that. I choose to pour My blessing on you because this is who I am. Incredible grace and mercy is who I am. I am taking care of you.”

God knew I needed this money for the year ahead and that I needed encouragement, so He had orchestrated for this blessing bomb to be dropped at just the right time.

I knew God was good in my head but with this blessing in front of me it has challenged my heart to really believe how good He really is.

~ Bronte