Today we have a story from Carisbrooke Priory on the Isle of Wight, of trusting God’s timing and provision.
When we were younger, we used to go to the Isle of Wight for holidays and we often visited a couple who ran a house church down there.
Norman and Joan Vesey ran it and they took us to visit a priory on the island, which had been turned into a centre for Christian therapy.
They told us the following story of how it came to be.
They told us the story of how they had prayed about buying the property and the journey God took them through.
Carisbrooke Priory, used to be a convent, but all the nuns were either elderly or had died and it was no longer feasible for it to continue as a Priory.
There was covenant on the building saying that it should continue as a building for Christian purposes, so the people who bought it decide that it should be used as a Christian Centre.
So, when they bought it they put a small deposit down, with a condition that the rest of the money had to be paid by a certain date, the money came in at the last hour before the deadline was due.
Every day that they went over the next payment deadline, there was a high interest charge on the remaining money they owed and they could lose their deposit and the building itself.
They took this as confirmation from God that this was in God’s will for them to buy the property and so they moved ahead with confidence.
They held many different fund-raising events to raise the money, but when the next payment was due they were still a long way short of what was needed.
The deadline passed and they were still short, unable to make the final payment and some of the committee began to question God and some resigned from their positions.
They had tried so hard to raise the money, and asked why God would want them to pay more interest, when they needed the money to restore the building?
A few weeks later, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, made a new tax exemption for charities on buying properties.
When this law was passed, it meant they saved 25,000 pounds on the purchase of the building!
This meant that they saved money for the renovation of the building and the rest of the money they needed came in straight away!
God knew what they didn’t know!
We need to trust God’s wisdom in all our circumstances and wait for His timing!
Our timing is not always God’s timing, His is perfect!