When It All Goes Wrong—God Makes It Right

Rick and Debbie Francis have been married for over 30 years. They faithfully tithe to their church, give to missions and The Building Fund.

“I had good pastors that taught a Bible perspective on giving when I got my first job, Rick said. “I was in my teens, probably 15-years-old, and I just knew that was the thing to do.”

Over the years they enjoyed God’s faithfulness with good jobs and steady finances, however, within the span of 14 months that all changed when their son, Logan, started needing expensive care.

“Our son, Logan, began to develop some problems and he needed therapy,” Debbie said. “It was going on for months, so that just kept building and building, and it became quite the bill.”

In the midst of all this, Debbie became concerned with Rick’s health, too.

“I started to notice, of course I'm a nurse, that Rick is losing weight, and he's not sleeping,” Debbie said. He's more just weighted down a little bit.”

While the bills piled up and Rick’s health declined with no warning, they found out his job was in jeopardy.  

“I'd been with this company 14 years,” Rick said. “They called me in and said, ‘We're going to have to make some cuts for next year, and we're going to have to eliminate your salary and your position with the company.’ So, I was crushed. I was absolutely blindsided by that.”

Debbie said, “Within two weeks, our second business that we had on the side that was bringing in about a thousand dollars a month, we get a phone call, ‘Nope, you're done. We can't do that anymore with you. You're out of here.’"

Rick’s health decline resulted in a 15-day hospital stay. Though grateful for his recovery, they felt overwhelmed by the medical debt.

“After all of that, we had thousands and thousands of dollars worth of medical bills that we weren't counting on, weren't planning for,” Rick said.

The couple remained faithful with their giving and trusted God would provide for their needs.

“I don't know how we're going to do it,” Debbie said. “Rick's not working at this point.

I'm the only one working, and I'm not working as many days as I could because I'm having to help take care of him and help take care of Logan. ‘Okay, God, we're just going to do the right thing. We're going to pay our tithes. We're going to pay our offerings. We're going to chip away at this bill because it's ours to pay, and You're just going to help us out.’”

A Christian organization had been following Rick’s story on social media and reached out to him.

Rick said, “The gentleman that called me said, ‘I'll tell you what. I need you to send me an email with your two most pressing medical bills.’  And about a week later, he called me back and said, ‘The vote was unanimous, the board wants to take care of these bills for you.’ That was $8,000 worth of medical bills. I couldn't believe it, and I knew it was God.”

“God's way of doing things is so much better than ours,” Debbie said. “The same company calls him back and says, ‘We want to bring you back in.’ I'm like, ‘Okay. All right. We've had our respite period. God has paid the bills. Now we can go back to work.’ You can't figure that out yourself. God has got that under control.”

Today Rick and Debbie celebrate Logan’s recovery and are amazed at the faithfulness of God through their financial hardship.

“In 34 years of marriage, we've never had that amount of money come in just out of nowhere, but we've never needed it from out of nowhere before and God supplied that,” 

Rick said. “After I went back to work in July, we looked back at our finances and we looked back at money that had come in during that six-month period, and it was as if I was never out of work. That's how much God took care of us financially.”

“It was just a moment of totally being humbled, for sure, and being so grateful,” Debbie said. I can't even tell you how grateful. It was such a blessing.”
 

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and we invite you to join in blessing others with your giving to CBN! Your faithful giving brings hope to the hopeless and the truth of God’s Word to millions of homes through The 700 Club! Help bring the love of Christ to the world when you become a CBN partner today!