What would you do if your house was suddenly on fire? Imagine enjoying the Christmas season, watching a movie with your wife and three kids and suddenly there is smoke everywhere! A recent family member experienced this and as they came down the stairs, they saw the fire was already out of control. They only had enough time to escape. They spent the next seven hours watching their beautiful home and everything they owned turn to ashes. You may never experience a devastating house fire, but many of you can experience a devastating financial fire.

What does a financial fire look like? In my life I went through an unwanted divorce that left me with $80,000 of debt, no assets and in a state of utter hopelessness and despair. Other financial fires can be the loss of your job or business, lose a loved one, a debilitating illness or some other tragic event that sets you back in your finances. There is an ancient story found in the Bible of a Widow who lost her husband and his creditors came pounding on the door, demanding repayment and threatening to take her two young boys as payment. There are four lessons we can learn from how the Widow handled her financial fire that each of us can apply in our own life.

1. Faith – The Widow had faith in God and prayed for help. She sought out the help of the man of God, a prophet named Elisha.
2. Trust – Elisha asked her, “What do you have”. At first she said “Nothing, I have nothing”, but then she remembered, “I have a little oil”. Elisha directs her to go out and ask for jars from her neighbors.
3. Community – The Widow and her two sons go out and ask everyone in the community to borrow any jars they can spare. They had to ask for help and the community had to be willing to share with someone in need.
4. Action – The Widow followed Elisha’s direction to pour the little oil she had into the empty jars and to her amazement the jars were filled one by one until there were no more empty jars. Further action was taken by the Widow to sell all the oil in the marketplace.

The Widow made more than enough money to pay off the debt and live off the rest. How can you apply these four keys to your own finances?

1. Faith – When you seek God, the Bible says in Isaiah 61:3 that he will give you beauty for ashes. You have the choice to stay living in ashes and despair or you can choose to believe that God will give you beauty and a garment of praise.
2. Trust – No matter how difficult your situation God can make miracles, but you must trust Him to guide you and direct your steps. Too often we try to create our own solution when really just need to stop and listen to God’s direction.
3. Community – God works through everything, sometimes it’s people, animals or even the wind. God created us for relationship and we need to be humble enough to ask for help and help those that are in need of help.
4. Action – Once we have direction from God, it is up to us to put into action. The instructions may not always be clear and it takes courage to follow His guidance.

If you are currently facing a financial fire and you’ve reached a point of despair, stop and think about how to apply these four keys to your situation. Pray for direction, trust God to give you wisdom, find a community that can help you and take action that aligns with God’s direction.

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