BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Click and Learn: Top 10 Debt-Freedom Strategies Even so, it took every penny we could believe God for to pay our bills and buy groceries. There wasn’t anything extra for a luxury as small as a tube of lipstick.” One morning while Cindy was in the shower someone knocked on the front door and one of the children answered it. “Please give this to your mother,” the woman said. It was a brand new tube of lipstick—Cindy’s favorite brand and color. Holding it in her hand, Cindy wept at the goodness of God. On another occasion a woman said to Bill, “The Lord told me to pay your gas bill.” “Did He tell you that we’re two months behind?” “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Let’s get it paid.” By 1983, during Bill’s second year at Rhema, Cindy had had enough. One of the pastors at their church was very vocal about students working and providing for their families. She made an appointment with him and took Bill. As soon as they were seated the pastor said, “At least 99.9 percent of the time, it’s God’s will for people to work. But God is telling me that you, Bill, aren’t supposed to work.” “That wasn’t what I wanted to hear!” Cindy admits. “But it did make sense why Bill couldn’t get a job. McDonald’s wouldn’t even hire him!” Learning to Trust The pain of living without an income was relentless. Many times they had to kneel and pray for food to put on the table for dinner that day. On one occasion they asked the Lord for $1,000 that they needed to make it through the end of the month. Back home in Michigan, a man from their Catholic Church said to his wife, “Honey, we’ve got $1,000 left over after buying our new furnace. I think we’re supposed to send it to Bill Krause.” As a student at Rhema, Bill couldn’t attend class unless his tuition of $180 was paid each month. One day he left class and found a piece of wrapped paper in the seat of his car. Inside were nine $20 bills. In 1984, with only two months left until graduation, Bill was exhausted and told the Lord he would drop out if both months weren’t paid in full. “Hey Bill,” someone said, “the Lord told me to pay your tuition. He said for me to pay your last two months.” “I graduated in 1984, and spent the next year working three jobs to earn enough money to move on to the next phase of God’s plan for our lives,” Bill remembers. “He told us to move to Sacramento, Calif., and plant a church. I realized that learning to live by faith and trust God for provision was the training ground for the kind of faith we’d need to start a church. You can pay now or pay later, but to succeed at God’s plan, you have to learn to live by faith. “While I do think the Lord wanted us to learn to trust Him for provision, I made a mistake that caused it to be harder than it should have been. When I was out of work, I stopped giving offerings over and above the tithe. Giving that money away didn’t seem like being a good steward, but I know now that had I done it we would have enjoyed a bigger harvest.” Obeying the Call In July 1985, Bill and Cindy started Family Community Church in a rented space. In 1989, they purchased property on a main road for their permanent location. Later, when the opportunity arose to purchase the adjoining auto-parts store and a liquor store, they jumped at the chance. The auto-parts store moved, but the liquor store had a lease. “What will it take to buy you out of your lease?” Bill asked. The answer: $50,000. “I went to the church and told them we could buy out that lease for $50,000,” Bill remembers. “They pledged $88,000, but when the money came in there was $113,000! We received more than 200 percent of the amount we needed!” In May 2012, Cindy was in prayer when she heard specific instructions from God. “I want you to pray in enough money to pay off all the church debt by December 31. If you’re one day late, you won’t be positioned to move into your future, either individually or as a church.” The total amount owed was $400,000. “For a while it didn’t look like we were going to make that date,” Cindy explains. “But at three minutes before 5 p.m. on December 31, I walked into the bank and paid off all that debt.” In the early years of their church, Bill had pledged $1,000 to a particular ministry but was unable to pay it. He repented to the man and asked for forgiveness. As he learned to put the biblical principles of prosperity into effect, he was able to honor his pledge. But instead of giving $1,000, he gave $100,000. A few years later, he gave $300,000. Today, Bill and Cindy Krause enjoy the fruit of all their labor both in a growing church and a growing family. They delight in all 22 of their grandchildren. And they’re still Partners with KCM. “Kenneth Copeland has changed the perception of Christianity and broken barriers,” Bill says. “They represent God on the earth today, and we know that the money we sow into their ministry is reaping results worldwide. They pray for their Partners daily and while they must have finances to preach all over the world, we believe it’s crucial that we also sow back into them with our prayers. We pray for Kenneth and Gloria and the ministry every day and challenge all their Partners to do the same.” Twice a year Bill Krause leads week-long financial freedom seminars, teaching 10 sessions on the biblical perspective on finances. In October 2014, almost 37 years after asking Kenneth Copeland to preach in their basement, he spoke at Family Community Church. “I finally made it,” Brother Copeland said. That’s the thing about faith: It never gives up. V BVOV : 14

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