How to Prosper in Difficult Economic Times

Then and Now

I am writing this book in the hopes that my experience will be helpful to you. Currently, we live in a very nice waterfront house, with 4 cars in the driveway, a motorcycle, a jet ski and a boat. We go out to dinner once a month or so, we are comfortably making our bills, and even life’s little extras are not a big deal. However, it wasn’t always this way.
Ray and I lived a life that was anything but prosperous. I am writing this to you, in the hopes that as you read through our journey, you will see yourself in some of our mistakes and therefore, also see yourself in the path we took to overcome lack in our life.
We are still growing in the Lord. Every year, we learn a little more and our relationship with Him grows a little deeper. I am convinced that our walk in prosperity has only just begun. As we continue to learn God’s ways, God continues to bless us.
We are living in a time of recession. Millions of people are out of work and I am turning down job offers because of God’s blessings. God is giving me the choice of which job I prefer. Not just any job offers, but really good ones. These jobs are the type of jobs that people would be dying to take. High-quality pay, work you own hours, work from home, etc.
This is just further confirmation to me that we are on the right path. In writing this I have been able to re-examine all God has done where finances are concerned as well as other areas of my life. As you read on, I hope that you will use this as a road map to your own prosperity in difficult times.

Chapter 1
Living in Lack

Ten short years ago, my husband and I were living in a small 70 foot trailer with two small children. We had one used, beat up car between us, and we were always struggling to have enough gas money to get back and forth to work. I can remember gathering pennies and rolling them, just to have a few dollars to buy a gallon or two of gas. Sometimes I didn’t even have that. On more than one occasion, we even had to pray for enough gas to get the car to the gas station. Not to mention we had to worry about anything going wrong out of the ordinary because we wouldn’t have enough money to fix it.
We rarely ever ate meals out. I was always struggling to have enough groceries. Clipping coupons and being creative to try to make every meal stretch. I am the queen of the double-meal and stretching meals with extra noodles, adding potatoes, or making soups out of what most would just throw away, etc. I was working 60+ hours a week and still barely making ends meet. Carry out Pizza was a big treat. If we told the kids we were stopping at McDonald’s, that was a big blessing that brought them a great deal of excitement.
I loved God dearly, and was trying to figure out why my life was so difficult. I thought, this is just the way it is. I was trying to live right and do the right things, according to my knowledge at the time, but things stayed about the same. We tried to make great experiences for our family that would make life enjoyable even if we couldn’t gain finances the way we had hoped.
Our entertainment, generally was watching TV together. We even put up volleyball net in our back yard to be able to make a fun activity that the whole family could enjoy (even if my husband did always win). Sometimes we would try to scrape enough money together, when the weather was nice, to go to the beach, which was only 30 miles away, or take the kids fishing.
We were quite a sight, with our aluminum boat, which was 3 times the size of the car, tied to the top of our little red Ford Festiva. It was like a toy clown car hauling a ship across the road, which we found many people didn’t see everyday from their shocked stares and pointed fingers. Oars, life jackets, fishing rods and tackle boxes in the back hatch, leaving barely enough room for the four of us to sit. Our packed lunch and a few sodas, or a gallon of ice tea that I had made, stuffed in our little cooler. I went as far as diligently checking the ice trays several times a day when we had an outing planned so that I could store up enough ice for us to fill the cooler.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Even then, it definitely didn’t sound like prosperity. I went to church regularly and often heard the promises that were supposed to belong to the children of God, but I just assumed that I was not “righteous” enough for that to happen to me. I grew up just barely surviving. My husband grew up the same way. We did not consider ourselves poor. We didn’t go hungry; we had a home, and clothes.
Somehow, someway, the Lord always provided. When school clothes were needed, one of us would get the opportunity to work overtime, or some regular bill would be less than normal. I was always blessed with wonderful sales. Even though, the Lord always provided, I worried all the time as most people do.
I would pray for God to help us, but I never really prayed in faith. I prayed in hope. I was hoping He would come through for us yet again, but somewhere in the back of my mind I was always afraid that this time, He would not. Not because I didn’t think He could. It was because, I just didn’t think God bothered with such trivial things. Maybe I thought I wasn’t really that important to God. Part of me also felt like I had not lived a life that was deserving of God’s help. Whenever I would begin to pray for help, I would remember all of the things I had done wrong in my life.
I would also remember things my mother had said growing up like, “I pray that one day I will have enough money to pay the bills on time.” She would say, “I am not praying to be rich. I just want to be able to not worry where the money is coming from to pay the next bill that is due.” This gave me the sense that it was wrong to ask God for more than that. That it was somehow wrong to ask God for anything more than what we needed. Growing up with this philosophy created a very strong mind set for me. I would feel guilty to ask God for more that the essentials and even then I shouldn’t ask to often. Like I was bothering God somehow.
It always seemed as though if we would get just a little bit ahead, something would go wrong, I would get a flat tire, or one of the kids would need extra money for some school supply, or they would get holes in their shoes. It seemed like we were always barely making ends meet.
We continued in this lifestyle for some time until one day something happened that changed the course of our lives forever…