Living Well With Little or Much: Lessons From Poverty and Plenty — Gary Shrock

Gary reflects on learning contentment and trust in God through poverty, serious illness, financial pressure, and later business growth. He explains that money can become a source of greed, pride, or power, but it can also be managed with humility, generosity, and accountability to God. Through stories of healing, provision, business, employees, and quiet giving, the conversation encourages listeners to live faithfully whether they have little or much.

Key Points: – A good name, godliness, and contentment matter more than the pursuit of wealth. – Hardship can teach dependence on God and compassion for people facing similar needs. – Greater resources bring greater responsibility, not permission to flaunt wealth or seek power. – Wise stewardship includes careful spending, avoiding unnecessary debt, saving, and teaching others how to manage money. – Business can become a ministry through prayer, mentoring, and helping employees rebuild their lives. – Generosity should address genuine needs, be guided by wisdom, and give glory to God rather than the giver.

Scripture References: – Proverbs 22 – Proverbs 19:17 – 2 Corinthians 5

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren life. Welcome to Hope for Wondering Amish. We’re so glad you’re here with us this morning. This morning we have Gary Schrock on from Athens, Tennessee. Gary Schrock is the father of Reagan Schrock from Anabaptist Perspectives. We’re really excited to have Gary on. This morning he’s going to be talking about being content with little or with much. And from my understanding, Gary Schrock is a man with a lot of stories, a lot of various kinds of experiences in life.

And so I think every one of us will no doubt enjoy the talk that Gary Schrock will have with us here this morning. Gary Schrock, he didn’t grow up Amish, but I guess his dad and mom did. And he was born after they left Amish. But Gary Schrock has memories of riding in his grandpa’s horse and buggy. So anyway, Gary, we’re really excited to have you on this morning. I’ll have a prayer for you and then the time will be yours. So let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this beautiful morning.

We thank you for blessing us so richly with life, with redemption, with hope. And thank you for this meeting here this morning. And Father, we just pray your blessing on this meeting. We pray with Gary as he shares and just bless him, give him wisdom as he shares with us here this morning. We pray this time could be upbuilding and encouraging and could strengthen your people for your honor and glory. Amen. All right. Time is yours, Gary.

Okay. Okay. Thanks for having me on, Elam. This is kind of new for me. I don’t have, I like learning. And so maybe people can learn on the other side too. Not that things need to be done the way I do it. There are ideas or things that have happened to me and it’s part of life.

And it depends on how we respond. The situations can make a big difference for ourselves and our family. There’s a few scriptures here that I want to read.

Proverbs 22

It says a good name is rather to be chosen than silver or gold. So most important thing, it doesn’t matter how you live, if you have a lot or if you have a little. You would like to choose between money is a good name. That has nothing to do with where you are on the scale of income or wealth.

And it says the rich and the poor, they meet together and the Lord is the maker of them all. So we need to really look at God and that he would get the glory through all of this. I don’t want to do that. Just want to check for sure, Elam, that you can hear me if you don’t mind responding. Oh, yeah, Gary, you’re coming through very clear. Okay. Okay. Very good.

Good job. Thank you. Thank you. And another scripture. It talks about godliness with contentment. That is something that we use quite a bit in talking about how we’re not going to take anything with us. And if we have food and clothing, and actually, I take that food and clothing, we can be content with food and clothing.

That is very important. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world. If you got food and if you got clothing, you can literally be content with that. Those that want to get rich, they fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is root of all evil. And some people eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. And that’s, I think we can probably think of people that that has happened to.

I remember hearing someone on here not too long ago, Elam, that said his goal was to get whatever he could and he was going to get it somehow. And that’s where he was headed. You can desire the biggest farm. You can have the nicest vehicles. But if that’s the purpose in life, it’s not very good. And I know a fellow that was, it just seemed like he was just striving for more and more and more. And I don’t think it matters if a person’s rich. I think there’s great people that have a lot of money, but it’s those that want to get rich is what the Bible says.

It’s when you fall into temptation and it’s a trap to people. Seem like this guy was looking and that’s where I’m headed and I’m going to get there and it doesn’t matter who I have to climb over. It’s sort of like hurt along the way, but that’s what I’m after. And that is not a very good thing. Well, it is not good. And it talks about it can bring ruin and destruction. But back to my life. Dad, he was Amish.

He grew up Amish. But before I was born, my oldest brother, he was Amish. But dad had changed and mom too. And they went to the Mennonites. Well, we went kind of extreme the other way. So I grew up in a very liberal Mennonite home. And then later on, we moved back to a little more conservative. And it wasn’t always good at home, which everybody can say that I’m sure.

There’s good times and bad times, but we did. We enjoyed life. We didn’t have much. Dad, again, I think what happens a lot with the Amish is they give their money home until they’re 21. And then when he got 21, I’m sure some people do well, some don’t. But he didn’t have the teaching on how to manage what he had. So he was just working for people. And dad was poor.

And so I grew up that we didn’t have much money. But we did. We had a lot of fun together. There is cousins and brothers and sisters. But there’s a time back when our family just didn’t have much. And it wasn’t by choice. Now, sometimes people don’t have much because of choices they make and they can fall into ruin. There’s a lot of things about money.

And it is a fact of life. And sometimes we don’t like to talk about it. But money surrounds our whole life. I wrote down a list of what pertains to money. And it can be helpful. It can hurt. It’s a blessing. It can be greed, pride, desire, generous, be useful.

You can flaunt it. You can be humble, share it, save it, waste it. Impress with it and use it for power. There’s a lot of things that pertain to money. And we really need to have God direct us on how we’re going to do it. Now, for myself, I did some voluntary service ahead of time. So I didn’t have a lot of money when we got married. And I decided that I can get established before I get married or I can have a wife with me and we can spend the same time.

And still start back to life. Like I said, I did some voluntary service and didn’t really make any money that way. But I was healthy. I was moving forward. But then little by little, I started feeling bad and started getting a sickness. And they talked to me. I couldn’t understand what they’re saying. It almost sounded like a foreign language.

I could keep on working. There was nothing, no problem. But with time, it got worse. And then I would have seizures. Sometimes I’d black out. It wasn’t a good time of life. I actually quit driving. And that makes life a lot harder when you can’t work and function like that.

And we didn’t go eat out. We didn’t buy coke. Just a lot of those things because income just went down. And then I’d be better. And things were a lot better. I got on some medicine. And after years, you know, it’s just this is how life is. And you don’t realize how it could be as far as your health.

So you just accept it and you keep moving forward. I decided I’m going to quit taking my medicine. I wasn’t driving. Life can’t get much worse. So let me just do it. And I did. And I just, oh my, I got hammered so hard. It was, it was bad.

My wife thought I was dying. She had called a neighbor down the road, Leroy Yoder. He came up to help her. I remember the ambulance coming just kind of faintly. Lights were flashing. It was dark and I didn’t want to get in the ambulance. Cause I had enough presence to know that I’d have to pay for that somehow. And we just couldn’t take any extra.

So I still, I just, that was in my mind. They, they, I had enough presence that they said, okay. And I said, I’m okay. I’m okay. So I went back and then I got hit again. And the ambulance come out again. I told my wife, I remember it. And she said, no, you don’t remember.

She said, you were, you were gone. And so went to the hospital. And I guess it happened again there. It was seizures. And Leroy Yoder, he was there at the time. And I don’t know if you know about the REACH conference, but it’s up in Pennsylvania where a lot of ministries come together. And Leroy was at, he had moved away. And then I did see him again.

He was at the Choice Books booth. And Leroy asked how I’m doing. I told him I’m doing well. Been fixed up. Problems have been pretty well taken care of. And he said, I was there that night. And he said, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He said, I’ve never seen anything like I saw that night.

That’s the first time I heard that. So it must have been pretty bad. Well, life went on and things got hard. And here’s something that happened one time. We enjoyed together as a family. We did things together. But one time, my son, he liked riding bike. I’ll just tell you a quick story here.

And as he was riding, we had a blacktop driveway at that location. And he wrecked his bike. And he went down and he messed his arm up. The bone was kind of sticking out of the back by his elbow. The skin wasn’t punctured, but you could see the bone sticking out. And I picked him up. And my wife, she went inside to call Carmen Yoder from church to come watch the children while we go to the hospital. And so I held him in my arms and I thought, Lord, this is something.

And what goes through your mind is, you know, any extra cost we had to. I had six children. That seemed like something that just didn’t want to take on. I held him and I prayed to the Lord and I just asked the Lord that he would he would heal my son. There was no doubt in my mind just talking to the Lord and asking and knowing that he has the power to do this. So that’s no problem at all for the Lord. And I had enough faith. This doesn’t always happen, but I had faith that the Lord would heal him.

Not pray for you will provide for us to be able to pay for this, but he would heal him. When I got done praying, I looked down. His arm was fine. Everything was okay. The Lord had healed him. I think he was looking up at my face like wondering what’s wrong. And so Carmen shows up. Carmen Yoder shows up and we’re inside.

Well, she doesn’t have to be there because he’s okay. And so I started telling her, you know, what his arm looked like. And then I fainted. I got to tell the story and I was explaining how his arm looked. And all of a sudden I got lightheaded and I fainted. That’s kind of how that ended. But the Lord, that’s the way that the Lord provided. He provided healing there.

Like I said, life goes on. After a while, it got harder to do things. It was harder to work. So the income goes down more. But we would still do some things together and we enjoyed life. It was a weekly thing that I would black out. So I’ve landed on concrete. I fell.

I’ve hurt myself. But I kept going because you need to provide for your family. And that was still in my mind. And I got to do this. And so I kept going. And another time we went on a trip. I don’t know. We thought we’ll just go together down the Stone Mountain about three hours away.

And so we headed down there. We’re going to do some camping. And I was actually driving then. I was still back to where I just wasn’t feeling good. I still was driving. But you never knew. Sometimes I would feel bad and I knew something was wrong. And so it was best not to do something like that.

But I had my license in and I was driving. As we’re heading down, we had a minivan then. All of a sudden, it quit going. And so I just went off the side of the road to the shoulder and put it in gear. It wouldn’t go forward. The transmission gave out. It did go backwards. But I tried to go forward again.

And that was it. So we’re out here somewhere in Georgia, stranded. And I just told the family, I said, I turned the vehicle off of what I remember. And I said, what we’re going to do? I said, we’re going to pray and ask the Lord to give us a safe trip. And then we’re going to continue on going. We’re going to start the van again and complete our trip. So we did.

We prayed. The Lord again, just Lord, you know, we’re doing this trip again. This is no problem at all for you to take care of us here. And so we just asked you, Lord, to to fix the van, to make it to make it run or to make it be able to drive. And I got done praying and I started it and put it in gear and drove on again. That was this doesn’t always happen. But there’s times when I had no doubt in my mind that we would continue our trip. Which we did.

Like I said, I got done praying, started it, put it in gear and we went on. And so for that weekend, we had a good time together. I think we did some camping too. And then we drove it home. We got home, pulled it into the carport and I put it in gear and the van wouldn’t move. It wouldn’t go forward. It wouldn’t go backwards. It was done.

I drove it all the way home and parked it in the carport. Well, we had a rollback come and pick it up because it wouldn’t move. We took care of that. So there’s a man over towards the mountains, had a transmission shop. They picked it up with a rollback, took it over. He fixed it, brought it back. And I said, I need to pay you. Well, he didn’t have to bill with him.

So he’ll catch up with me later. Didn’t hear nothing from him. And sometime later I saw him. Oh, this was maybe six months later. I saw him. I don’t know where he lived. So I didn’t know where to go to even pay my bill. I saw him in a gas station.

I said, you know, You fixed that van, and I need to get with you sometime. Well, he didn’t have nothing. He said, we’ll catch up sometime. And I have never paid for the transmission. We continued our trip. I don’t know who the man is. If I’d even see him again now, I wouldn’t know who he is.

I don’t know where he lived. I don’t know nothing about it. So our van was fixed and we have never, we never paid for it. And that happens, I guess. So, that’s the way the Lord can take care of us. He can supply for us. We learn how to make it with little, but we need to continue on trusting in the Lord that shouldn’t leave.

Now that can happen. There can be bitterness. There can be different things, but we were going to try to live a life of still glorifying God. Well, it got bad enough. Sure. Health was getting worse and it was getting harder to, work because I never knew I might try to put siding on and fall off the ladder, which happened. And when that happened, the night before I fell over on a trailer and busted my head or hit my head on a steel trailer.

So I just never knew when this would happen that I would black out. So that’s the time when I wasn’t driving. And yeah, it just, it got worse. And then one day I caught myself saying right foot, left foot, right. And I was talking to myself, and I stopped and I said, Gary, what are you doing? And then I said, you know what? There’s people that are in a wheelchair that can’t even walk.

I’m okay because I can at least walk. And so I picked up my step and got going. But there’s some stories how I ended up getting my health back at Vanderbilt. They ended up finding I was on the wrong medicine. Just taking me down and down. The doctor that prescribed this had been giving me the wrong medicine. But back to where I was sitting in my chair, I was just asking, Lord, what am I going to do? I need to find something at home where I can walk.

And it hit me that trusses. I was trying to think of different jobs, but trusses hit me. And so I got up off my chair and called my father-in-law. He had a small truss shop up in Virginia and I’d go out there and help him when we’re visiting. And he said, yes, he thinks that would work. So somehow I got the money. I’m not even sure now. And we built a building, got some wood, plates, had everything ready, getting ready to go.

And then it crashed. It was 07. And now we had done this and there’s no work. And so it’s just like, Lord, what more can a man take? You know, and but we we made it somehow. I don’t know how. I think we decided we can live on possibly twenty five thousand a year and we’ll just be very careful. And I guess we did.

I go back and look and try to think, how could that be possible with six children and all? And somebody told me, well, there’s something else that’s not possible. I just my answer is you’re going to talk to the Lord about that. I’ll leave that up to him because it happened and I can’t explain it. Well, life went on and after a while, we worked maybe 20 hours a week, but we made it. Me and my two sons, they were 16, 17. They were delivering trusses. So they were thrown into it young and maybe working 20 hours a week.

And so as life goes on, the economy started getting better. We started getting busier, and the truss company has grown from three employees or whatever to 25 to 30. And it’s just amazing how the Lord has blessed and we just keep growing. Now I’m on the other side. I remember back when we were poor and had the truss shop. And I remember telling the Lord, I said, you know, if I could get more money, I could give more away. And then I thought of, you know what? God owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

He doesn’t need my money. I thought, oh, okay, that’s not going to work there. But he has. He has blessed us. And it is, I mean, you about can’t explain it. Because I told my sons, I was looking and I said, here’s how much money we made. Here’s how much we did. How much wood we used.

We could kind of tell by board footage what’s going on. I said, how is this possible? I don’t know. Did the wood stretch further like the oil? I don’t know. So I thought, you know what? I can’t explain this either. And so the one back when, how did we make it?

I can’t explain that. And now how the blessings are coming in. I can’t explain that one either. But now what do you do? You’re on the other side. There’s so many things that can enter in. It’s not that I will to be rich. The Bible says that’s wrong.

I was content wherever we were and wanted to be accountable, responsible. I paid myself a regular wage through here. I just wanted to live a normal life. But now we did have money available if we needed it. So I’ll enter that in there. We wanted to keep it in check. So we did. And it was more than twenty five thousand a year, but we tried to be careful with it.

And it just kept coming and kept going more. And it’s like, how do you what do you do? And I remember one night I went outside and I just sat down and it was asking the Lord. I said, what am I going to do? I said the same thing when I didn’t have much. And I said, what am I going to do? And it was sort of like a heaviness because I have to be accountable for what I have. What am I going to do with this?

You’re going to have to help me because I don’t know. And so it continued on growing. And we would find ways then to how are we going to use the money wisely? And what are we going to do with it? And so we run into all those things. I look at bank account as it’s growing. I told my wife, I said, this isn’t even right. But we’re here now.

What do you do? And I heard somebody you had on recently and the things that they wanted. And you can buy new vehicles, the shiniest ones, the best ones. And you can do many things to flaunt your money. You can be greedy, still be greedy, have bad attitudes and try to use it for power. And there’s so many things that I had no interest in that. Not that, like I said, I’m a special person, but no, I didn’t. And I think what happened is I lived back there where it was poor.

And you’re going to learn wherever you are in life. If anyone’s listening here and wherever you are in stage of life, you’re going to learn and you’re going to gain a talent or a gift to where you can look and see. And that’s what it did for me. I could look and I would see and I would go ask that person, how is this going in your life? And it hit me one day. And I think that’s because I went through it. I was aware of it.

Now, if I’d have been thinking of myself, I wouldn’t have seen that. It’s amazing. It was amazing how the Lord used that. Like I said, it’s not me that I have a special gift, it was how the Lord used that because I had been there. And I’ll share a few things, what has happened along the way and how I still need to be accountable. And I don’t look at it as I’m wealthy. And my son Reagan told me, dad, you have to accept the fact.

And I’m thinking, no, I’m not. But then, yeah, I do have more than I need to live. People say we’re all rich. That’s not true. I don’t think it is. We are rich compared to some people in another country, maybe. But here, not everybody is wealthy. But my thing is living well when you have little or when you have much.

All of it is we have to be accountable to how we live and what we do. But I will say that it does make a little more tempting as you get more to change your lifestyle. And I think that’s okay. You know, vehicles. Some people don’t owe on vehicles. Some do. And I did for years. And I’m going to break that cycle, which I did because I thought that’s not good stewardship.

But I was able to. Some people aren’t. So I don’t look down at people that can’t because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. I’ve been there with borrowing. This is what hit me one day. I need to do that. Just out of stewardship.

Not saying everyone else has to. What made me think about it, too, is I have someone in my family at 60 years old talking about they just got a vehicle. And it’s this and this much per month. Now, if you owe on a vehicle, I’m not being judgmental. I’m saying what happened to me. And it hit me. And I thought, you know what? He’s been paying 40 years on a vehicle.

And still doesn’t have it paid for. How long does it take to pay for a vehicle? He’s been paying 40 years. And then think of the interest for 40 years. And I thought it shouldn’t take that long. But when you when you just don’t have it, by the time you get it paid for, it’s wore out and then you do it again. So I told my children, I said, don’t make the mistakes I did. Whenever you buy a vehicle, you pay for it.

If it gets a piece of I shouldn’t say a piece of junk, but if it isn’t much to look at, at least it’s paid for. If your friends don’t like it, get new friends, which that wasn’t an issue, but pay for it. And then you can plan on your next vehicle. As far as I know, none of my children have ever borrowed on a vehicle. So these are things that I didn’t learn from my father. He didn’t manage money well, but I would start seeing it. And then I by making decisions on it, I learned a lot.

And now I can help other people that’s at work, helping people there. It’s an awesome ministry. We have maybe one person from the Mennonite. All the rest are just community people. And it’s amazing how an employee will come down and lay the papers out and say, help me, because they don’t know. And it’s just hard for me to think, you know, adults that just don’t know how to manage their money. What do I need to do?

One fellow says, I’m going to buy another truck. Can you help me to decide? Said, I didn’t have a father. And he pointed towards my son. I didn’t have a father like these. And my son said, it’s his goal that every one of them will eventually own their own house. They have fines they got to pay. They got to get their license back.

And then they get more fines because they don’t have them. They get their license back. And then another one thinks, this is possible. They say, it’s just not possible because I’m living week to week. Then another one does it. And he gets his license back. I think six of them now have got their license back, paid back their fines, got their license back. They high five each other.

The one has now bought a brand new home. And he said that he just, it hit him one day. My son was sharing with him too about smoking and said, you know, if you put even that money away and then you can get interest on your interest. And he said, I never knew all that. And he quit smoking right there. And that doesn’t always work with everybody. But he did.

He stopped right there. And he had married the wife that he was living with. And he said they were sitting on the porch the other night and said, you know, where could I be? And he said, where could I be if there wasn’t some change? He said it was just a spiritual awakening. And I told him he didn’t have license. He saved his money, paid his fines, bought my son’s truck. And now he’s got a newer one.

He has actually bought a brand new house now. He came right out of jail. Those are success stories. That doesn’t always happen. But he was a strong man and he got his CDLs eventually and he drives. And I told him, Travis, I said, you’ve got your CDLs. You can go somewhere else, I’m sure, and make more money. Don’t want to go over the road because he wants to be with his wife.

And I said, you can do that. He looked at me and he said, why would I do that? And I said, well, it doesn’t hurt to better a person’s self and I understand. He said, why would I do that? And he said, you all gave me a chance and allowed me to try. And he said, why would I go anywhere else? And that felt good. So I can now use this.

And we have a, we just, we do. We like working with our men, seeing them change. We have a devotional Monday mornings with them. They all get to hear scriptures. They can talk about anything they want in that meeting. It can even be about us office people. And they all feel a part of it now. We have a prayer time and go to work.

So that was my son’s idea. That wasn’t my idea. But now we can use towards our employees. There’s things that I learned. There’s things I learned about money. And I feel like what I have, I try to, I think, what did I do? It just came to me. I really didn’t do anything, but I probably did something.

But I don’t, I feel like it’s just given to me and now I have to manage it. Well, one of the things that I had on this list, there can be blessings. There can be greed. There can be pride. There can be, you can be generous. Like I said, you can flaunt it. Yes. So my wife and I, we decided that we need to share with other people.

Now, when I talk about this, I don’t want to draw attention to myself. And I want y’all to understand the only thing I got two stories I’ll tell. The only reason I’m saying this is because it’s something that I felt the Lord wanted. And I think this is good for everybody is now you’re at this area. It doesn’t hurt to talk about it. You need to share with other people. And here’s something you could do just as a suggestion. We built a house now.

We built a new house. But as we built, we decided we’re given 10% away. I should say I did. So if you put $100,000 in your house, give $10,000 away. If you’ve got $200,000 built in your house, give $20,000 away. $30,000. You got the idea. However much you put in it,

give 10% of it away to somebody. If you’re a farmer and you want to buy a new tractor, go ahead and give 10% away or whatever that tractor costs. Do that. And it’s very interesting how you look at your money then and your tractor or your house. But just do that and give that away. Find a place that you would like to help, a place that you trust. Do research and find a place that I would like to give to this ministry.

And then, yeah, just do that. Take some time and just look at how can I help? How can I help someone? Maybe I’ll throw one more quick one in here. There’s a widow lady that had been coming to church some from town, a black lady. And she came up to me one day and she said, I would like to pay you back. I can’t very much. I just do it in pieces.

If you would let me just pay you back. And I said, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. She said, well, yeah, don’t you remember? And I said, I don’t remember nothing. And she said, yeah, do you remember when you helped me? She said my car was down. I think it was something with her house. And then little by little, it started coming to me.

Oh, she’s right. And see, I totally forgot about that because we shared it with her. I apparently didn’t want to remember it because I had no clue what she was talking about. She said, I asked different people, numerous people, and no one would help me. So we need to be aware of that. And if someone does legitimately need help, we need to be willing to help them. I don’t even remember what it was with her car or something like that. And I told her, you don’t need to pay me back.

I don’t know exactly how much it was, but I said, you don’t owe me anything. But it was saddening to me when she said, I asked people if they would help me, no one helped me. So be willing to be generous, be willing to help a person. And there’s some verses, and I’ve used this towards ministries. I will read a couple here that I keep in my phone. And this is a verse that surprised me when I saw it one day. I was reading, and it says, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay them. He will repay him for his deed.

And I just wondered, is this why we’re getting blessings now? Because I need to take care of managing this money. No easier than when I didn’t have much. Because both ways I have to be accountable to the Lord. And I hope people can learn from this. But when I saw that verse, I didn’t know about this when, like I said, when I gave this to this lady. But it says, whoever is generous to the poor, you’re lending it to the Lord. And let the Lord use that.

And what Paul said one time too, I think about this with different missions. Departed from Macedonia. No church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but you only. For even in Thessalonica, you sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. And here he’s saying that no one helped him. It’s not that he was asking or wanted it. Not just once—they gave again. It says, "You sent once and again unto my necessity."

So it wasn’t that they were just sharing it with him, but it was a necessity. And so they shared with that. And there’s another scripture in Romans. Distributing to the necessity of the saints; given to hospitality. I read that one day and it just jumped out to me. It says distributing to the necessity of the saints. Sometimes we can give lavishly. Maybe you want a person can want attention.

But these verses told me that I need to give to the necessity of the saints. Now, who is that? I had to think about. And so that’s where I’m saying, do your research. There’s people that really need it. Not advancing, say, new buildings or things like that. I think missionaries need to be paid. It’s a necessity for some of them.

They have to raise a family. But yeah, do your research. Think about different missions. I’ll tell you one more story before we go back to you, Elam. And this one here. I had some money. We were going to give some money away and wasn’t sure where. And so it’s just in my desk.

And time went on. I don’t know how long it was in there, but I didn’t know where it’s going. And I wanted to go to help someone. But who is it? And so it just stayed in my desk and it didn’t move on. A friend of mine from Africa was here. He had been saved way back when he was younger. I think a [unclear surname] or somebody like that was over in Africa, back at a village.

And he was instrumental in him becoming a Christian. I think it was a [unclear surname]. And later on, he started an orphanage, was ministry helping men as far as being leaders. Back in the bush, he went and he started churches. He was on fire for the Lord, but he gives credit back to the person that he met when he was younger. And I don’t remember his name for sure, but I think it was a [unclear surname]. And I’ve known him now [unclear] years. It’s in Liberia.

Been over there some, been around him. He’s stateside now because during the war, there was a price on his head and he had to flee. So he lives in the states, but he goes back and forth to Liberia. He wanted to come and visit me. Asked me in person and it didn’t involve, it didn’t involve money. I’ll just put it there. So he came, we visited and he went to bed. I was still sitting in my chair.

He got back up and came back and he said, you know, he can’t really sleep. And so we just sat up and we visited some. And I said, Ed, I said, you’re going back to Liberia, aren’t you? He said, yeah. He said, yeah, I am. He said, I’m going. Next week. It might have been a week and a half.

He’s heading back to Liberia. I said, what does a ticket cost now to go to Liberia and back? Well, he’s not sure. He’s a man that lives by faith. He said, I don’t have a ticket yet. But the Lord always provides. I’m thinking this is a week, week and a half and you don’t have a ticket yet. No, no, he doesn’t.

And usually God provides that for him whenever the time comes. And then it hit me. I went to my desk and and I put his name. On that check and brought it back. It was I was I was waiting for some reason and it’s just sat there. Because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. So here came right to my door and he didn’t ask for it. I was just asking him.

And and that’s it hit me. So it got him on his plane, and I don’t know. It may have taken care of him while he was [unclear]. I don’t really remember the amount. But to be open to the Lord like that and maybe you don’t know who you’re going to help or when you’re going to help that. And that was a lesson to me because I just didn’t know what I was going to do with that amount. We had chose to give it away. And I told him.

I said, now I want you to understand this money is not from Carol and I said it’s not our money. It was money that we were supposed to give away. And so don’t have to thank us. This is God’s. Don’t look at us because. I don’t want to use that as power to get anything. Well, I’m going to stop there. Those are a couple of stories.

I know people don’t like to talk about themselves and money, but I just wanted to share something that happened to me. And as I started, I said, it’s to glorify God and I want to leave it that way. I’m going to read this thing one more time. As far as money, it’s a fact of life. And sometimes we don’t talk about it. Once in a while. And here’s the list I wrote down. It can help.

It can hurt. Money is you can look at it as a blessing. It can be greed. It can be pride. You might have some desires. It can be useful. It can be generous. You can flaunt it.

Try to impress. Be humble. Power. Share. You save it. You can waste it. And I know that’s a long list, but I was just trying to think about it surrounds our life so much. So how do we live well when you have just a little bit of it?

How do you live when you have more of it? And so right now we’re in the stage of more. So how do we live? And so I need to just remember that and try to be careful. And I don’t want to be greedy. I don’t want to strive for more and more, but I’ll take care of what the Lord gives me. Back to you, Elam. Well, thanks.

Thanks a lot, Gary. That was very encouraging, very inspiring. And yeah, you definitely got pushed out of your comfort zone in life. Being a father, being a husband, all the challenges with your health and finances and stuff. Very encouraging. The encouraging thing is that God took care of you through all those deep trials, those challenges.

2 Corinthians 5 It says we walk by faith, not by sight.

So I guess the thought that you shared with us didn’t make logical sense how you were able to survive financially through those many challenges. And then also you mentioned the truss factory that you put in. The volume you were putting through, the amount of money you were making on your trusses—I guess that didn’t make sense either. It just doesn’t. No, it doesn’t. Yeah. No, thanks for sharing. And I believe you did a good job giving the glory to God and not drawing attention to yourself.

You’re a servant of God, like all of us. And God gets the glory. He’s the one that gives us life. And we’re blessed with so much. The air we breathe and everything we have, it’s a gift from God. And we need to remember that and not try to take any of the glory for ourselves. And we need to remember how smart we are, how well organized we are, whatever the case may be. But I felt like I could identify with you in some of the things you shared.

When I got married, I didn’t have much money at all either. And I didn’t want much money before I got married. Well, maybe a couple of years before I got married, I said, if I have $20 in my bank account, I’ll be fine. I want to live for the Lord, not for this world. Well, the day came when I got married and I didn’t have a lot of money. And then, of course, 07 was the economic downturn. And I was working for a fellow building houses and everything stopped. Like the housing development stopped.

There’s foundations in, you know, houses being built on it. Just various stages. It’s just like everything just came to a stop. And about that time, there was a small business that started up just right up the road. Actually, a brother-in-law of mine. And I decided, well, I’m going to work for him. I found a couple little jobs here and there for helping farmers with projects on their farm. But I was making $8 an hour and I had two children.

And it was tight. I got [unclear], and just—we’re not eating out. We’re not doing anything. I actually really enjoyed the challenge of really seeing how far I can make my $8 an hour job go. I enjoyed it. But we had a minivan, a little Dodge minivan, and the reverse gave out of it. And we didn’t have any money to fix the minivan. So we only had one vehicle.

My wife said, well, when she goes shopping, sometimes she needs to be super careful. I think maybe she had to have somebody push the van in reverse for her to get out of a parking lot one time. And it’s like, that’s not very nice. And then my wife goes to town shopping and there’s no reverse. So eventually I started talking to a local garage and they said, well, we can put you on a payment plan and stuff. And we had to go into debt for the minivan. But my little daughter, Rebecca, she’s 20 years old now. She was probably about three back then.

Yeah, our driveway, every time we came home, we had to go like up the hill. We left on the side of the hill and then we let the van roll backwards into the driveway. So when we pull out, we’re good to go. Well, one evening we got home from a prayer meeting and Rebecca said, God can heal the van. And we had actually done that before we prayed and put it in reverse and it wouldn’t go. We’ll try it again. Do you think God will heal the van, Rebecca? And she said, yes.

So we put it in reverse and it worked fine. And it worked fine for a while like that. And I ended up calling the garage and I said, hey, I really don’t want to be in debt to you. Could we just for the time cancel the appointment? They did. And every time we’re able to save up and eventually the rest of the transmission started giving out. And even your health crisis, I got hit with Lyme’s like 10 years ago. I didn’t know what was wrong.

I was so bad where I could hardly function. My spine was swollen. All my joints were swollen. So much pain I could hardly sleep at night. And it was bad. I eventually felt like, wow, if something doesn’t change, I’m probably going to die. But I got the right kind of help. I was on antibiotics.

I don’t think the antibiotics did anything for me. But God is good. He takes care of us. And he wants us to learn through the challenges. There’s so much we can learn through these challenges. We can learn to trust God and that he cares for. So thanks so much for sharing. It was a real blessing.

And yeah, that’s great. And I think that can happen to anyone and just trust God that just take care of us wherever we’re at. He can provide the money. He can fix the vehicle. But we’re looking to you, God, and we want to give you the glory for the way you do take care of us. He’s the creator of all things. He’s created all of us. He doesn’t put us here on this planet to look out for ourselves.

He’s there to care for us. It’s a matter of us. One real quick story, real quick. I felt like one time I needed to give to a ministry. OK, so I did just send it, but it went through another route. The ministry doesn’t know where it came from. And later on, the person from that ministry, I don’t know what state this was in where I met up with that person. And they were saying, you know, I went to the post office and I sat in my car.

And just asked the Lord because we don’t have money. And I didn’t know what to do. And the person was sharing that. Went into the post office and there was money there and just went out into the car. And the person said they just cried. And I thought, this is so interesting. This person is telling me this. And it just brought glory to the Lord.

They didn’t know when this, I mean, when it happened. I knew that the Lord had asked me to send it there. And I didn’t know. But that, again, was a necessity. And it just blessed me so much. And I could praise the Lord that I sent that to the right place. Had no idea. And this person telling me this story probably had no idea because I don’t want attention on it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever told anybody this. But it was just a blessing to hear how it went to a necessity. And so, yeah, they never need to know. But it came from the Lord. It came from the Lord. Like I said, I have to be a manager of it and try to bring in glory. Anyway, I’ll let you continue on. Yeah.

I really appreciate your also an aspect of you building a new house, giving 10 percent of whatever the house costs to a ministry or someone else. I’m actually quite cautious when it comes to wealth. I mean, Jesus, anytime he talks about wealth, it’s warning us, you know, the wealth. And in the parable of the sower, he said he warned about the deceitfulness of riches is the wording. Yes. They’re like so riches has a way of being deceitful. And so I think we need to take all precautions, you know, when it comes to excessive wealth and living beyond our means and having wealth that’s beyond our means. Appreciate it.

But I just mentioned that. There’s definitely scripture against that. Definitely. Very good. So we always like to hear from our audience. So Atlee, is everybody able to unmute themselves if they want to talk? So if anybody has any questions or comments for Gary, please bring it on. I’m sure everybody was super blessed here this morning.

So I’m sure you all have something to share. Yeah. So the people on this phone, I’m assuming they’ll have to call back in to get themselves unmuted. I just muted them so they don’t keep popping up on the screen. You can actually go down through and just click on ask to unmute. And if you do that, they should be able to unmute themselves. Okay.

There’s only two of them on. And it’s, it’s up to them if they want, if they can’t do it, they’ll just have to call back in. Yeah. Hey, appreciated the talk this morning. I just had a question on where that, that verse is found something like whoever lend us to the poor is generous to the Lord. So I don’t know if I heard a reference on that. Yes.

Let me get that for you. This interesting verse. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your talk. I appreciated it. Yeah. It’s Proverbs 19:17, is what I’ve got down here.

Proverbs 19:17

Very good. Thank you for that talk. It’s definitely something that I think about a lot is money and how to handle it. Especially what we’ve got coming up here on our own life. Selling the farm and, you know, making choices in life and what do you buy next? How do you live next? You know, when your life hasn’t been easy for us either. Getting married and starting a business.

It was financially stressful for many years. It’s going to be less stressful in the future, but I don’t know for sure. But just asking the Lord to help me make wise decisions and use my money wisely for the future. It’s been very heavy on my heart. Something I think about all the time and I appreciated the talk this morning. I appreciate how you handle money. And that’s just a treasure to me. And I want to continue asking the Lord to help me handle my money wisely because I don’t want to live here in this world just building my own kingdom.

That’s not really what I want to do. I want to use it for His glory. Yeah, it was just an encouraging talk to hear someone else walk it out and someone older than me to learn to trust the Lord in those things. I appreciate everything you said. Thank you. Thank you. I noticed something you had said here about wisdom. You’d like to have wisdom.

Here’s the verse: "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth liberally to all men." But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers like the wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord. I memorized those because I wanted to have wisdom. And I appreciate what you said there. You said you’d like to have wisdom. I think that is a secret right there.

And the Lord says to ask for wisdom. And it sounds like that’s what you’re that’s what you’re wanting to do. Definitely helps making a decision. Yeah, I guess I’ve been on two sides of the spectrum. It feels like sometimes when you see a need, you can just pour money into a hole and it goes nowhere. And just money, you can just throw money at it and it just disappears and it doesn’t really help them. So I’ve tried to navigate that a little better after watching some things I’ve done in the past. So, yeah, it’s just it takes wisdom.

And I’ve asked for that. I don’t know how to walk this life without the Lord helping me decide those little minute things even. You know, not that money is small, but it’s it’s it’s something that’s going to be it’s it’s judged. It’s part of the world. It’s it’s passing, but we need to handle it while we’re here. Absolutely. Yeah.

Thanks. Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate that, Jerry, and appreciate your response there, Gary. Yeah, we’re almost to seven o’clock, but I’ll give just a little more time here if there’s anyone else that would like to say something. Yeah, it’s been a rich morning here, Gary. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing things you’ve learned. And I didn’t really know that much about your past, but. Yeah, you’ve definitely been through a lot and learned to trust the Lord.

That’s that’s very beautiful. So there’s always a lot we can learn from people that that are older than us and have gone through. You know, a lot more things. You’ve gone through a lot more things than I have. And I don’t know what your age. I’m I’m 42 almost. Sixty three. Sixty three.

Sixty three. [Unclear]. I’ll be your age before I know it. OK. OK. Yeah. Very good. Well, would you like to like to close us in prayer and then we can be dismissed?

Sure. Absolutely. Lord, just grateful for how you do care for every one of us. Every one of us. Lord, so thankful for that. And we do ask for wisdom in what you’ve blessed us with. Decisions that need to be made, whether it’s our physical abilities. Here we talked about finances.

But anything that we have, give us wisdom if we need to share it with someone else. And but again, just grateful. We just can’t say how grateful we are for the way you bless and take care of us. So bless this ministry here too. Let it go far and wide and help other people. Help us to learn from it. And we just want to praise your name, Lord. Give you glory.