Ask and You Shall Receive

Chicken Soup for the Soul: A Book of Miracles

BY: Gene F. Giggleman, DVM

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
~Psalm 2:8


Several years ago my wife of fifteen years and I found ourselves struggling financially.


We had gone through college together, started careers and had two children.


As a veterinarian, I had followed what I thought was God's plan for my life. I'd sold my stock in a very successful multi-man practice to go into full-time teaching. The pay as a teacher is not nearly as good as a practitioner's and the cut was the major contributor to our financial worries. So I had three jobs. I was teaching full-time at a college in Dallas plus teaching night classes part-time for a local junior college. To supplement my teaching salaries I had started seeing patients in a back room of one of the college labs on Friday afternoons from 1:00 until 5:00. It was a modest practice at best, and most of the patients I saw belonged to students so I only charged enough to cover my overhead.


Money was extremely tight and we were not able to pay some of our bills. It was so stressful that my wife decided to take our children and go to her mother's house for a few days to try to decompress, leaving me with the house and my jobs.


I called her Thursday night and asked exactly how much money we needed to pay our bills and not be delinquent or have late charges. She told me we needed $311 to make it until my next paycheck. We agreed to pray that God would help us through this time. We said a short prayer on the phone, and then I did something I had never done before. I got down on my knees and asked God specifically for money. I asked Him if He would bring enough animals to me on the following afternoon so I could pay our bills. I told Him I needed $311.


After I prayed, I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning, I had forgotten about my prayer. I went to school, taught my classes, and went to the lab in the afternoon in case any patients might come to my makeshift clinic. It was an unusually busy day; I saw all of the animals and finished up around five. Since my practice was so small, I only had a student assistant helping me. We did business on a strictly cash basis. If the client had the cash, they paid me and if they did not, I told them they could pay me later. I kept the money I made that day in my shirt pocket. I had always focused on service and caring for the animals, not money, so I didn't even think to count it at the end of the day.


When I got home that night, I was extremely tired and fell asleep on the couch. The phone woke me. It was my wife asking if I had made any money at the practice that afternoon. I pulled the wad of bills out of my shirt pocket and counted it while I spoke to her on the phone. I counted out $310. She gasped and reminded me that was only one dollar short of the money we needed to pay our bills. I looked down and saw a dollar bill on the floor beside the couch. When I had pulled the money out of my shirt pocket, I guess a dollar had fallen to the floor.


That dollar added to the rest of the wad equaled the exact amount we had prayed for, $311.


That day marked a big turnaround in our lives. We have never been in that dire financial situation again.


I know this is but a small need, but it was a huge miracle when you realize God provided exactly what we had asked for, to the penny.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul/2011/01/Ask-and-You-Shall-Receive.aspx?source=NEWSLETTER&nlsource=49&ppc=&utm_campaign=DIBSoup&utm_source=NL&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=mail.ru