Stop Worrying About Money

CBN.com Don Spence loved to restore and paint cars. Because of his skill, he was able to make a pretty good living doing it, too. That is, until he got in over his head in debt.

“Men’s play toys, they always get you in trouble -- boats, racecars, Harley-Davidsons,” Don admitted. “When I turned around and looked, I got a big debt to pay. I just started working seven days a week, 12-14 hours a day, to try and keep us afloat. But it wasn’t enough to do it. My income was cut in half that year and every year since then.”

Don’s wife, Karen, realized the weight of their circumstances.

“It was just a pretty bad situation where the money just wasn’t there to pay all the bills,” she said.

Don revealed that for years he worried sick about everything from buying food to paying the bills to raising three children and financing their college educations.

But Karen understood an important principle.

“I just knew that if we didn’t give out of our need,” she said, ”then nothing was going to happen. It wasn’t going to get any better.”

When it came down to it, Don explained, “It would be either buy groceries or do my tithing.”

Karen knew that it was time to take a big step of faith. She decided to start giving to The 700 Club.

“I used to tithe when I was young to CBN,” she explained, “and then I started tithing after I noticed that there just wasn’t enough money to go around. It was just at The 700 Club level [$20 per month].”

Once she started giving to The 700 Club out of her grocery money, Karen says that she began to notice a difference when she shopped.

Noted Karen, “Before I would go into the grocery store, I would say, ‘Thank you, Lord, for letting this get me everything we need for the week.’ I would come out with everything that we needed.”

“Every time I would sit there at the table doing the bills and I would say, ‘Fifty dollars shy this week,’ she’d say, ‘You need to start tithing.’ Then she’d walk away,” Don recalled.

Karen prayed that Don would change his mind about giving.

“All I knew was I wanted him to get the message,” she said.

“She always watches The 700 Club, and I slowly started getting wrapped up in watching that when I’d get home early,” Don admitted. “It was like I got in the house just in time to hear what he had to say to me. I think that kind of helped me, kind of opened my ears to listen to my wife, who had been preaching me that for I don’t know how long.”

It wasn’t long before Don’s job prospects began to open up, too.

“It’s very hard to get a job in a good shop,” Don said. “This one just came along, and it was literally dropped in my lap. I went there, my boss is a fantastic guy, and my wages went up. She [Karen] had talked to me about tithing. I said, ‘I’m going to start doing that. I’m going to give it a shot.’

“The idea of being a member of The 700 Club, I know that all that money goes out to help everyone,” Don continued. “They are there at all catastrophes, so that’s the first thing we give.”

Now that Don is on board about giving, one of the biggest changes he is noticing is in himself.

“I don’t lie awake half the night anymore wondering about how am I going to pay this bill, how am I going pay that. That’s gone. We’ve been married 32 years, and I’ve had that feeling for 32 years. It is such a nice feeling to wake up in the morning and not have that on your mind. And it just keeps getting better and better. I wish I would have known this years ago. I wish I would have done it years ago.

Now another one of Karen’s prayers has been answered.

“My reason for starting to tithe was to one day be able to tithe more,” noted Karen. “It went from the 700 Club to the 1,000 Club level, so that prayer has been answered. You just do it because I think giving should just be a way of life.”

Discover God's secret of reciprocity by becoming a CBN partner today. Through your partnership with CBN, you will help feed hunger children here in America and around the world, give practical teaching and biblical answers through The 700 Club broadcast, and bring relief to those with physical and spiritual needs. Join today!