June 4, 2023
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Recently, my children gave me an early Father’s Day gift that simply blew me away. They presented me with a Lucite acrylic embedment commemorating the 20-year anniversary of the founding of my consulting business. The beautiful embedment, designed by my children, features the Giuliani Consulting Company logo with my name listed as Founder, President, all set over the City of Pittsburgh skyline.
However, what grabbed me and sparked the water works was the scripture they had printed on the embedment:
Psalms 37:
25 …I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. (NIV)
Instantly, the Lord took me back to the day I received the phone call offering me a temporary financial consulting assignment that led to the establishment of Giuliani Consulting Company. It was a day of great uncertainty for me and our family. A few months earlier, I had lost my job at Enron due to the company’s infamous bankruptcy. I really had no job prospects at the time, which was problematic as we had two college-age children and two high schoolers, and not a lot of savings. I had learned to trust the Lord for provision but I’m not going to lie – I was starting to worry.
The day before the phone call came, Nancy and I attended a high school track meet that my son, Jon, was participating in at nearby Canonsburg, PA. Track meets are notorious for being exciting for a few minutes while your child competes and then boring for hours while other events are going on. We were in the stands, and I was reading a Christian book while we waited, and out of nowhere, a woman in front of us turned around and began singing heavenly praises to God over me. These were angelic praises, and the anointing of the Lord was very strong. And that was it…she sang those praises in a heavenly voice, we thanked her and praised God, then she turned around and we all went back to watching the track events.
We did not know the woman, never got her name, and haven’t seen her since, but we did learn that Jon finished second in the race to her son.
The next day, the phone call came, and the children of the Lord’s righteous did not have to beg bread. It was my daughter Laura’s birthday, so the phone call allowed us to go to a restaurant that night to celebrate. I will never forget that moment when I realized my weakening faith was strengthened by the faithfulness of our God to His word.
Why Do We Worry?
So why is it that we worry about our futures when the word of God promises clearly that He will not forsake us, and our children will never beg bread? Let me give you some history that makes that question even more poignant in my case.
If you have read prior House of Hope Online blogs or listened to previous podcasts, then you know that my dad died young, when I was only two years old, and we faced poverty and home insecurity when I was a child. My brother, Nick, was our surrogate father, who worked in the Aliquippa Works of Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill to support me, my mother, and my older sister Livia. When the economy contracted, he would get laid off, and we would have to get by on less. We had a bill at the food market, and they would threaten to cut us off. Fear of lack was a regular occurrence, and unfortunately that poverty spirit followed me into adulthood. The devil knows which buttons to push for each of us.
The one advantage to being poor was that I qualified for government financial aid to go to college. I graduated with good grades and landed a job in the accounting department of a good-sized coal company in Indiana, PA. The energy crises of the early 1970s had just struck our country, and it produced a golden age for the coal producing industry. I did well in that job, and eventually was promoted to Assistant Treasurer, which was a Board appointed position. But the Lord spoke to me one day and told me to resign that job.
Nancy and I got on our knees and prayed a lot about that decision. Did we really hear correctly that God wanted us to give up our source of income? We had four young children, aged six to 15. We didn’t want them begging bread. But God gave me a scripture that sealed the decision:
Ephesians 5:
7 Therefore do not be partakers with them;
8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light
9 (for the fruit of the light [consists] in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
11 And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them;
12 for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.
13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light.
14 For this reason it says, “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.”
And so, I resigned from a good paying job. Now, let me make clear, I am not accusing anyone at the company of wrongdoing. When God tells you to leave a situation, it doesn’t necessarily mean wrong has occurred. The potential for wrongdoing is always present but perhaps your leaving a situation prevents it. Verse 13 says all things become visible when exposed by the light, because everything that becomes visible is light. I will never know if wrongdoing occurred, and I don’t need to know, because God told me to leave and that’s what I did.
And so, I thought since I was so obedient, that God would provide a new, better job quickly. I resigned in November 1996, but I was still out of work in early March 1997. I was sending out resumes and covers letters seemingly every day, but no prospects were on the horizon. I became frustrated.
At the time, Nancy was walking every morning with other moms in the neighborhood. She took the opportunity to speak faith and the word of God as they walked. One day, Nancy came home, filled with the Holy Spirit, and she said to me that God said I was to shut down my job search, and pray and fast for three days. I was looking at the Jobs section of the Wall Street Journal when she told me that, and I became so angry that I slammed the newspaper down and said: “Fine I’ll quit looking for work!”
It was very similar to the day I gave my life to Jesus. I was angry and frustrated that day, and basically dared Him to solve my problems. Well, the day I slammed the newspaper down was three days before my son Anthony’s birthday. I began a fast, and three days later, on Anthony’s birthday, I received a call that offered me a temporary, but full-time job with a coal company in Somerset, PA. That job lasted three months during which time God arranged for me to be offered a job as Chief Financial Officer of a coal joint venture in Birmingham, AL.
God was faithful to me regarding the promises in His word. Ephesians 5:14 said to me: “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.”
These were challenging times for our family. The devil kept getting into my head, laughing at me for resigning my job. I was second guessing myself and beginning to doubt that I had heard from God.
But God was telling me: “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.” You know sometimes we can get so involved in our jobs and the world’s ways that we fall asleep to what God is saying, and He needs to wake us up! If we strive in our own abilities and trust ourselves instead of Jesus, when the challenges come to our job security, we can forget that God’s word says: “the righteous will not be forsaken, their children will not beg bread, and Christ’s light will shine on them!”
The job in Birmingham lasted only a couple years, but the move produced great fruit. I gained tremendous experience that helps me today in my consulting work. But more importantly, I grew in the Lord and the Lord began speaking regularly into my spirit. I began giving words in church. I witnessed to a fellow vice president at work about how the word of God requires us to forgive others, lest the Father not forgive us. In addition, my oldest son, Will, met our daughter-in-law, Emily, and that of course led to our first two grandchildren, Liam and Aiden.
So, God took the darkness of those days of work insecurity and produced fruit. He produced spiritual fruit and family joy that is lasting and permanent. Looking back today, I repent for not trusting God more. He has been so faithful.
God moved us back to Indiana, PA after the Birmingham job ended. I held a financial position with a natural gas drilling company for a while before a job opened with Enron in their coal group. I learned a great deal more about coal mining in the short time before Enron’s implosion – things that help me in consulting today. I was also able to witness to fellow workers about the calm that the Lord had given me as the company’s stock price fell and bankruptcy became inevitable.
All of that brings us full circle to the birth of Giuliani Consulting Company. The lesson for me is recurring – God has a higher purpose for all these things that happen in our lives. Let me repeat from Ephesians 5:
Ephesians 5:
7 Therefore do not be partakers with them;
8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light
9 (for the fruit of the light [consists] in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
He is telling us to walk as children of the light, whose fruit is goodness, righteousness, and truth. Our fruit comes by trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. We praise God for the light that led us as we trained our children in the way they should go, in all goodness and righteousness and truth. That training came back as a great blessing as they presented me with the embedment commemorating my business. The Lord showed me they are living their lives and trying to learn what is pleasing to Him.
Here are a few other scriptures that have encouraged me, and that God has proven to me repeatedly.
Malachi 3:
10 “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.
11 “Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it may not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast [its grapes],” says the LORD of hosts. (NASB)
The title is 10% of all income. The Lord says give 10% into His work, and He will open the windows of heaven and pour out an overflowing blessing. He will rebuke the devil, the one who devours, so he will no longer destroy the fruits of the ground (our financial provision). The devil steals from us, but if we tithe, God will bless us and rebuke the devil.
2nd Corinthians 9:
6 ¶ Now this [I say,] he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully.
7 Let each one [do] just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.
8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed;
9 as it is written, “HE SCATTERED ABROAD, HE GAVE TO THE POOR, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS ABIDES FOREVER.”
10 Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness;
11 you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God.
12 For the ministry of this service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing through many thanksgivings to God.
Verses 6 and 7 teach us the joy of giving. There is no better feeling than to bless God and to bless others. Don’t look at it as an expense. God calls it “sowing.” You are investing in, or planting in, the kingdom of God when you bless. When you bless others, you are imitating your Father in Heaven because that’s what He likes to do. That’s what Jesus did and does. Verse 10 and 11 are significant: He gives us the seed to sow, and He will increase our harvest!
2nd Corinthians 8:
1 ¶ Now, brethren, we [wish to] make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia,
2 that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality.
3 For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability [they gave] of their own accord,
4 begging us with much entreaty for the favor of participation in the support of the saints,
5 and [this,] not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God.
The Macedonians are the model for us in giving to God’s work. In the middle of affliction, they had an abundance of joy as they gave out of their poverty (verse 2), which overflowed into a wealth of liberality. They gave beyond their ability (verse 3). And I love verse 4 – they begged for the favor of participating in supporting God’s work. It is a privilege to give into the work of God and the Macedonians got that. Verse 5 is an important lesson – they first gave themselves to the Lord and then to the ministry by the will of God. Only give what the Lord is telling you to give and to whom He is telling you to give. Remember, it is His work you are supporting. You must release the tithe to Him and let Him direct you.
Philippians 4:
19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
20 ¶ Now to our God and Father [be] the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Finally, trust this word – that God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Jesus. You don’t want to supply your needs according to what you think you need. God’s riches in glory are so much greater than what you can imagine, but you must believe that through Jesus He will provide more than you could ever need.
3rd John 1:
2 Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.
As my children reminded me: You will never be forsaken, nor will your children beg bread.
Father God, thank You for loving us so. Thank you for the promises of Your word and Your faithfulness to fulfill those promises. Help us to seek Your wisdom and guidance by the Holy Spirit, and to remember Your promises to prosper us in all things. All glory to You forever and ever. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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