I was having coffee and catching up with Jason Chua when he blew my mind with a few stories.

6 years ago when he came back from Kansas City, he had only $250 left in his bank account. At that time he knew God had called him to establish a house of prayer, but back then no one in Singapore would pay you to make worship and prayer happen.

Besides, Jason’s brother is a pastor who doesn’t earn much either and has 4 kids to feed. His parents back then weren’t believers, and wouldn’t give him money because they wanted him to get a job. Their actions simply said: “If this is what your God has called you to do, He will feed you.”

So with little left in his bank account left, Jason prayed that God would give him the faith of George Müller.

George Müller was known as the apostle of orphans. He once sat all his orphans down at mealtime to give thanks to God for food – all while holding empty plates. The next moment, a milk truck broke down outside the orphanage. Because milk would spoil by the time the wheel was fixed, the milkman gave Muller all the milk for the orphans to drink.

Jason told me about a date he once had with Constance – then his girlfriend, now his wife. They were walking around Cathay when she turned to him and said, “Let’s watch a movie.”

Jason told me that he didn’t like the idea of having to ask Constance to pay for their movie tickets. But the reality was that there was no more money left in his bank account. So he said, “Well, we will see, let’s just put the card into the ATM.”

That was when he saw there was suddenly $500 in his bank account.

If God has a will, He will pay His bills.

Back then no one knew who Jason Chua was. So it wasn’t possible that anyone would have transferred money to him, because no one knew his bank account number apart from his brother and father. He rang them up to ask if they had transferred money to him – they both replied no. He exploded in faith from that moment on.

Jason told me about this other time a random teenager came up to him with an angbao with a few hundred dollars inside. He’d never even met the teenager before. Even more incredulous was Jason’s testimony of how his bank account kept “replenishing” itself to the amount it originally held, even after he drew money.

And there’s more: Jason once put his phone on top of his wallet, and when he picked up his phone some time later, he found new notes underneath it. And there was another occasion when he was walking on the street, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable in his feet. He took off his shoes and you guessed it – money inside.

Right before we parted, Jason left me with a word of conviction and encouragement: “If it’s God’s will, it’s God’s bill.”

As I sat listening to Jason, I realised I was meeting a person who has experienced God’s supernatural provision. And I was reminded: God put the stars in their place with His fingers, by His breath He separated light and darkness, by His thought He fashioned each of us uniquely yet in His image.

What miracle is beyond Him?

Read Elijah’s account in 1 Kings 17 – there are two kinds of provision in there. First, God calls Elijah to hide by the brook in Kerith, where he would drink from and where ravens would feed him. So Elijah drank from the brook, and the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and evening. Talk about Deliveroo from above!

How humbling it must have been to be fed by some random birds twice a day. Supernatural provision, in God’s amazing way for every unique situation.

I struggle to empty my wallet into the offering bag, fearing there won’t be enough to buy lunch after church, and yet Elijah asks this widow for her very last meal.

Next, the brook dries up and God instructs Elijah to find the widow of Zarephath – a foreign woman in a foreign land.

According to God, she was going to provide for Elijah. So he finds the widow (in what I’m sure is their first meeting) and asks for a cup of water and some bread. He asks her for these things in the middle of a drought!

She replies honestly, saying that he is free to join them for one last meal before she and her son die from starvation. Elijah assures her that she and her son will live, but insists she feeds him first. He promises that the God of Israel (a foreign god to this widow) would ensure there will always be food on the table until the rain falls once more.

That’s … ridiculous. The widow just told him she was going to eat her last meal, yet Elijah – possibly an imposter for all she knows – insists on eating her last meal first and that a foreign God would take care of her?

I struggle to empty my wallet into the offering bag, fearing there won’t be enough to buy lunch after church, and yet Elijah asks this widow for her very last meal. The beauty of this passage is that in Elijah’s need and the widow’s obedience – neither died from hunger.

But God in His amazing way, orchestrates miracles around such intersections, showing Himself to be the ultimate provider and conductor over our lives.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but I’ve been tempted to think things like, “Cool story, bro.” I’ve also found myself reasoning before, “This is a Bible story, I am not in the Bible, so God isn’t calling me to such things.”

But it isn’t about us. God used ordinary, flawed and imperfect humans for His purposes. I’m sure that if could speak with these biblical characters, we’d realise how ordinary they are.

The same God who’s working these miracles in the Bible, is the same God we worship today. So the miracles He performed in the Bible – He can do them today as well. The question is whether we have the faith to believe He can do likewise through us.

The same God who’s working these miracles in the Bible, is the same God we worship today.

As I listen to Jason’s testimonies, I am made to reframe the way I view money again and again. Money does have many uses, but the one thing I can’t let it do is trap me. And it’s easy to be trapped by our perception of money, forgetting we worship a God who is not restrained by financial limitations, who has infinite resources beyond what mere money will ever get us.

To us, money meets needs. But do we attribute more power to money than to God? We cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24) – one must take precedence over the other.

When we dare to say, “I can have nothing left in my bank account, I do not know what I will eat for my next meal, but I am sure He will provide, I am sure He hears my prayer,” that’s when we faithfully attest to His character and timely provision. That’s when the grip of financial security over us loosens.

Many workers live by such faith, not because they enjoy uncertainty, but because they rest in His provision.

I pray that as you finish reading this article, more room in your heart will be given to God, to let Him walk with you through financial uncertainty. He will certainly be faithful to provide no matter the circumstance, because we live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of our living God.

When we dare to live with little or none, we’ll realise how He is truly everything we need. When we have a renewed understanding of God and money, we’ll have a new perspective in the songs we sing about His provision.

Jesus is my inheritance, my reward.