Miracles of Provision

The Bible doesn’t promise wealth, but it contains lots of stories of miraculous provision, not least in Matthew 17:24-27, where Jesus knew to find his tax money in the mouth of an as-yet-uncaught fish!

While, for the majority of us, most of our needs are met through earning and spending regular wages or business income or a pension, the adventure of following Jesus often leads beyond those routines and causes us to cry to God with urgency for our daily bread.

It has been said that “where God guides, he also provides,” and I have found that to be true. I’ve had the privilege of seeing many needs met in wonderful and extraordinary ways. Here are a few, and I’ll tell more over the coming months.

1. Provision of a family home

Bev and I knew early on that we were called to serve in the city of Oxford, despite it being a rather expensive place to live. My pastor’s wage was never going to allow us to buy a house here, and Bev’s income as an artist wasn’t going to get us much further. As a newly married couple, we could barely rent a small flat, and we could neither afford to rent a larger property nor to buy a home of our own.

Then, one week in spring 2002, we discovered that Bev was pregnant. We’d been married for five years, but were still young and had not been planning to start a family. However, in the New Year, J.B. Masinde (a Kenyan bishop) had seen fit to pray we would have a child soon, and so there we were: a positive pregnancy test and no idea how to gain a family home in Oxford.

Then, in that same week, two more things happened. First, we received news of a totally unexpected inheritance. Then, a couple in our church, who knew nothing of the pregnancym approached us and said, “We have some money that we’d like to invest in the Oxford property market, and our first choice would be to invest in buying a property with you.” And so, from having no savings, we found ourselves – at just the right time – with a deposit of £85,000, and bought our first family home in Florence Park.

The way that the money came to us, together with the timing, was a great encouragement to believe that it was God’s will for us to stay in the city.

2. Provision for a new school

When I took on leading Oxford Community Church in 2005, I inherited with it the expectation that we should start a new Christian school in the city. A few years later, we began to lean onto what that might look like, and a group began to meet and pray every two weeks and continued for some years.

Then, in 2010, the Tory-LibDem coalition government agreed to support the Tories’ policy of ‘free schools,’ providing a route to gain funding for a new school. Not only that, but Oxford was then faced an absolute lack of primary school places, and so was ripe for a bid to open a school here. Our excitement began to grow, until we realised that, despite our charity already running a school in Witney, we lacked much of the knowledge and skills to start a needed to open a publicly-funded school.

In the months that followed, there were many joyful moments of provision, but let me tell you about just three.

Firstly, one of our team attended a conference at which he met Russell Rook, a former Salvation Army leader, who was in the process of setting up a new organisation to support new school bids. He’d pulled together a highly experienced team, who even had a comprehensive Gantt chart that showed every detail of the process, from curriculum development to ensuring the broadband got installed on time! We marvelled at the provision of such ideal partners, but it quickly led to another need.

Even working with Russ’s team, the bid was going to cost about £60,000. We agreed that the two organisations would split this 50:50, meaning that our church needed to raise £30,000. That was a big stretch for us, given other financial commitments, but we could imagine raising it over some months. (Maybe, I thought, I could run a half marathon.) Then, in November 2011, just as we agreed that figure, the government brought forward the bid deadline from the following July to February, bringing our time down from seven months to just three.

Our Oxford team thought that was it. We said to each other, “Well, that was a good idea. What a shame it’s not going to work.”

However, Aredi, one of Russ’s team, told us off for being so defeatist. Like Caleb and Joshua of old, she said, “Surely we can do this!” (Number 13:30). So, that Sunday, we went to the church with the news that we now had one week to raise £30,000, and that we would simply receive donations the next Sunday and see what happened. And, wouldn’t you know, dozens of people gave generously to that Sunday offering and – without anyone conferring about how much to give – those donations added up to £30,000. Amazing!

The third gift that stands out in my memory was the provision of an enthusiastic salesman! I had agreed that, as part of my work on the project, I would organise consultations with local people, to check whether our vision had support from families, professionals and politicians. I then learnt that this would include getting parents actually to sign their children up for the school, even though the school did not yet exist, nor did we even know where the government would decide to site it.

Now, I am not a salesperson. I hated (and still hate) this kind of thing. I had very little idea what to do, and no desire to act on the few ideas I had. I didn’t feel I could ask anyone to help, except that I turned to God in prayer.

Soon enough, a colleague called Rich paused his work one day and noticed how stressed I was. He asked what was bothering me, and I explained my difficulty. He responded by offering to take on that whole aspect of the consultation, and he succeeded in getting 34 families to sign up their precious children to a non-existent establishment! This third gift may perhaps seem less incredible than the others, but the world is littered with worthwhile ventures that failed for lack of capable volunteers. If you’ve ever tried to lead a community project of any kind, I’m sure you will understand when I say that Rich’s help was not only invaluable but a much-needed tonic for my soul.

The school we once dreamed about has now been open for more than a decade. I pray that it would enjoy marvellous provision every year of its existence.

3. Provision of operations staff

Five years ago, I had a few responsibilities beyond being a pastor. I was also chairing the board of our church’s charity, which included another nine churches, a conference centre, a housing ministry and a school, employing about 120 people; and the charity had no one serving as a chief executive or operations director, so I was covering that role too.

That mix of different activities (churches, housing, hospitality, education) makes our charity quite unusual. Not only that, after some years without senior operational staff, there was a major backlog of tasks and a need to overhaul structures. We really needed people with experience of larger operations, who could guide us forward with wisdom. We prayed, and were blessed with two excellent new appointments: an operations director who came to us from a larger church, and a finance director who had led an audit department at Deloitte and also overseen a £10M+ building project for her previous church. Both of them had moved from London to Oxford because God had spoken to them and their husbands, saying that he had things for them to do here. Together, they have brought health to our complex organisation.

Then, in 2025, we were faced with a similar challenge in the local church. We have long been a congregation of about 400 people, but our leaders had begun to believe that God would have us gather 1000 people in life-giving community. We saw the need to appoint an operational leader who had direct experience of systems that support growth, but we knew no one suitable, even after months of searching.

In the end, out of desperation, I began to fast like I never had before. I said to God, “You’ve spoken to us about growth, now please provide what we need for that. It grieves me that we lack what’s needed to fulfil the vision you’ve given us for 1000 people, so I’m going to refrain from food until we hear from a suitable candidate.” On the ninth day, one of our church members had a sudden inspiration that a friend of hers might be well-suited. She put us in touch, and today that man, Yeukai, is part of our team.

On his first day of work, I explained our growing vision to gather and serve 1000 church members and he said, “That’s amazing. I knew I should take this job, but I didn’t know why. As I’ve been praying recently, I have kept hearing the number ‘one thousand.’ In the end, I wrote it on my board at home.” He showed me a photo of it, and went on, “I didn’t know what it meant. Now, I do.”

God provides for families and schools and churches. Indeed, everywhere that he guides, he then provides.

Jesus said, “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ … Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:31-33)