Ephesians 3:20

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us...

A couple years ago our expenses were exceeding our income. We examined our budget and as we are not extravagant people, the only place we could see to cut back on was on our groceries. (We aren't the Starbucks type, we hardly eat out, we don't have cable, etc.) I was skeptical about being able to save at the grocery store, I felt I was a smart shopper already. And we are a meat loving family, we could not do rice and beans. We were then spending $125 per week on groceries for our family of four. I agreed with my husband to "try" to cut back to $100 per week. Well, it was absolutely amazing how many ideas starting coming to my mind. God's grace comes when we obey! With the ideas that God gave me, I was able to bring our weekly grocery expense down to $75 per week!

One year ago my husband asked if we could make a dent in our mortgage by paying extra. (Yes this is soon after our expenses were exceeding our income. We were able to get the spending under control and start saving a significant amount. We were also blessed with more income in the process, but I think it was important for us to discipline ourselves before God could bring the blessing.) I crunched some numbers, said that if we decided to live very disciplined (and we had practiced that for a while, so we were good at it), we could pay off our mortgage in 4 years. My husband said he really hoped for 3 years. I agreed that it was doable, since God always blessed us with extra anyway.

Every so often, I go back to that amortization schedule and see if we can get any more time knocked off of it. As of right now, we are set to pay off that mortgage in a year and a half, making the total 2 1/2 years, not 4!

We have decided, during this saving and paying off our house period we are in, to keep an old car that we have, rather than buying a new one. It's a '93 Mazda. It's been a good car, but we have had to put some money into it, this last year or so. It's always the big question, do you keep putting money into a car for repairs or do you ditch it.

Well, after two big expenses, my husband was driving home and it started grinding between gears. He just knew it was the transmission. We had to replace the transmission on a '91 Mazda we had in the past and 6 months later it went out again. So it was really important to us to take it in to someone trustworthy. We don't know cars, so we are at the mercy of the mechanics.

We took it to the dealer and they confirmed that we needed a new transmission. The ballpark was around the $2000 mark. They were going to search out a rebuilt transmission for us. We called another guy that friends had recommended, he quoted $2200. This did not make me happy, but we were thankful that we had the money in savings to pay for it.

Well, two days later the mechanics called and said they couldn't find a rebuilt transmission for us and we could save money by having someone else rebuild ours. So now I was getting excited. I called around, though, and apparently, the cost to rebuild is around the same as replacing one. :( So I kept calling around. I didn't want to have to take my car clear across town (the dealer had recommended someone 30 minutes away), so I started looking online for mechanics close to home. I called one a couple miles away and he was so helpful over the phone. He said that there was a good chance I didn't even need a new transmission. So I went and picked up my car and took it in to him.

The new mechanic called later that day and low and behold! we did NOT need a new transmission!!! It turned out we had a short in some cable. It only cost $97 to fix, NOT $2200!!! God is good!

These are my recent examples of times God has done exceedingly abundantly above what we could ask or think, there have been lots of others. Do you have a story to share?