My Story to Encourage other Believers

Written by: Alexander Daniels, guest contributor

I wrote to encourage my fellow believers in their relationship with the Lord. Throughout my life, I have been amazed by the miracles that I have seen God do in my life and my family’s. I think it’s time for people to hear this story. My hope in writing this is that, by seeing the faithfulness of God in the lives of one family, others might be encouraged in their own relationship with the Lord. All credit goes to God for everything I describe here – none of it was earned or deserved by myself or my family. It was God.

I grew up in a small town outside of Orlando, Florida. My dad worked at the headquarters of a missionary organization called New Tribes Mission (which has since been renamed Ethnos360). Like everyone at NTM, my dad was a volunteer living on support. Because of this, our finances would consistently fall short by a considerable amount. The funny thing is, every year, just as money was getting really tight, something would happen to help us make it through the year. One year, just as our finances had run dry and we had no idea where our next meal was coming from, our church decided to give us a large financial gift – though we had mentioned our troubles to no one. Another year, just as we had decided that we weren’t going to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving that year, someone dropped off a Thanksgiving meal kit right outside our door. Every year for the seventeen years that my parents worked at NTM, God would do something miraculous, and a situation that looked hopeless, was suddenly manageable.

When I was fifteen years old, my family had to move to Tennessee for health reasons, and we needed to find place to live. For our budget, the only kind of rental homes we could find were tiny, trashy houses that would have been miserable. My parents had given up on finding anything better, but before they signed the contract, they found a huge house that was within our budget. It was perfect for our family of five, and we moved in. God blessed us with that house.

The fact that I was able to attend Bryan College was a huge miracle itself. One of the results of my parents working with NTM was that they were unable to put aside any money for their kids to attend college. I always knew I would have to work my way through college, and so a private Christian college like Bryan was off the table for me. However, when time came to look into colleges, I decided to apply to Bryan just because. When my scholarship letter came in, however, I was fully funded for my first year of college.

When the second year came around, I lost one of my biggest government scholarships and I owed a lot of money for that year. While I was barely able to raise enough money for the year over the summer, I knew I would go into serious debt in the next years. Over Fall Break, however, God worked a miracle for me. A program at my dad’s new job kicked in, which provided tuition for certain colleges. At first, we thought the scholarship might be a thousand dollars or so, but it ended up being nearly a full ride. This allowed me to turn my attention from paying off debt over the Summer, to investing in my future.

The story of my life isn’t my story; it’s the story of God’s faithfulness. When God calls his people to do his work, he will be faithful to take care of them. We are told in Matthew 6 how, if God cares for the sparrows, he will certainly care for his people. So, don’t worry about the details of the future. Whatever God has for you, remember that as long as you are in his will, he will take care of tomorrow.