“Robby it would take you $300,000 to file bankruptcy”, those were the words my friend and attorney Pete Brunstetter said to me shortly before Christmas 2007. $300,000 could have been 3 million I didn’t have $300. A short 8 months before our books at Westside Chrysler said we had more than $600,000, but that was before the Chrysler audit revealed the truth, that the money was not there. Our office manager would soon be going to jail but that didn’t change our situation.
We hadn’t taken a pay check the last few months trying to keep the dealership afloat months behind on all our personal bills including our mortgage, I asked Pete, “so what do I do if I have no money.”
He said, “You had better close the place, lock the door call the IRS and The State department of revenue, Chrysler, Chrysler Finical and the bank and tell them all you are closing down the first of the year. Then go hide under a rock because they are all coming after you. They have to leave you enough to live on but other than that you will lose everything and it will be at least seven years of tough going. The IRS and State will take precedence over all the other creditors missing payroll trust funds will scare off the others probably. Even bankruptcy won’t’ protect you from the tax folks.”
Here I am exactly seven years later its January 1st 2015 by no means was Pete exaggerating. We did lose everything financially perhaps but our Anchor held, our faith, our marriage our family all that was important. I got a big purging prior to the fire that will purge us all, “the lesson” was yet to be learned, however. Some bad fruit had sprung up, but perhaps I wasn’t ready or too scared to ask why or allow Jesus to show me my part in the catastrophe.
As we came into the spring of this past year 2014, the IRS starting sending registered mail again threats of bank levies and garnishments. So I wasn’t horribly surprised when our book keeper at truth broadcasting called me into her office in June and told me my check was being garnished by the treasury dept 20% of my wages. Terrified as we were barley getting by without losing that 20%, I called my agent at the IRS to plead my case only to be told the IRS wasn’t garnishing my wages. A little more investigation on the garnishment and I discovered that it was a collection on our SBA loan also a U.S. Treasury agency.
Years before I was sued by the Justice Dept for an SBA loan defaulted on Westside’s building and had settled to paying them $200 a month. Could they have missed my payments I wondered?
I turned to another good friend and the attorney who had helped me with the previous SBA issue, Adam Draper. Adam was a God send on so many levels he soon discovered the treasury was claiming there was another loan that I had defaulted on 6 years ago and they were just now coming after me. Coming after me with no warning at all and to complicate matters they wouldn’t release the information to him with a lot of red tape.
The red tape itself took two months and we still had no answers, they just told us we could file for a hearing and Adam completed all the paper work for our filing at no charge to me, which was so amazing. Yet we were under financial siege all this time constantly wondering how we would make it. I would also have to say it’s fascinating how God won’t let your shoes wear out while you are in the desert. Mathematically it didn’t work, but it did, we never went hungry or needed for medical help or medicine God made it work is all I can tell you.
By August we got our hearing paper work filed, within a week it came back rejected. They said we hadn’t filled out the required form, but it was the cover sheet. Adam was perplexed but filed again. Then we waited, August, September, October by November I felt shot at and hit desperate for a break through with no way of knowing what to do next.
THE BREAK THROUGH: Adam Draper our attorney also hosts a segment of a radio show I produce called, “Disciple Magazine” his segment is called “Teach Me To Pray”. Cameron Horner a 21 year old amazing saint who is in a wheel chair from a diving accident is the main host. Adam, Cameron, Cameron’s mom and I were doing another show to promote the “Disciple Magazine” show on Saturday November 15th and after the show Adam asked if we could lay hands on Cameron for healing for his legs. At that we all laid hands on Cameron and prayed for some time and the Holy Spirit was there you could just feel it.
It was a special time and Cameron had commented that he had felt a tingling in his legs which encouraged us all the more. As we were leaving, Adam looked me square in the eyes and said, “I am interceding for you!”
I said, “Yes you’re my attorney aren’t you”, half kidding.
He again looking serious said, “Robby you got some bad fruit you keep running up on here. You need to get to the cause of that. There is a spiritual DNA you know, and you may be dealing with a generational sin or the demon of poverty. You need to ask Jesus what is after you. Somewhere is an agreement a bitter root and that fruit is not of God. That is what I am interceding for you with.”
I was blown away, wow that made all kinds of sense why had I never thought of that. God would not want this kind of fruit, and this can’t be of God. So what an opportunity to ask Jesus what is it that I have been dealing with all this time. “Thank you Adam, I understand I am going to work on that…WOW, thank you.” I told him and went off to pray.
I prayed some that afternoon and didn’t really get anything and reasoned that I feel so much closer to God in the mornings and set aside the next morning to that process. So Sunday morning November 16th I began to pray. I didn’t know what the symptoms were of the spirit of poverty so I googled that and after a short study reasoned I had none of those symptoms, so what was it? I simply just asked Jesus and waited for the response, I heard, “Robby you’re a thief and I can’t bless a thief.”
WOW, really, show me God did I make an agreement with Satan that I was a thief. So Jesus and I went back down through the memories of stealing looking back for that agreement. I had bunches and bunches from stolen computer paper to a rifle I had used for a truck purchase premium I never gave away and took for myself, yep there was plenty of evidence to convict me, so I kept asking Jesus where was the agreement.
Then I could see it plain as day, a ceramic giant monkey bank that sat on my parent’s dresser when I was a child. They threw all their spare change in it calling it our vacation fund. Somewhere in 1966 I found myself thinking I should just help myself to that money rather than ask. No doubt had I really needed it my father would have provided but I fell and took it knowing it was wrong and agreed with Satan that I was a thief.
Jesus then asked me if I wanted a, “God Debit Card”. You see about a year ago we had a similar healing and chain breaking with my sexuality where I got my “Innocence Card”.
That process was Jesus offering it and me complaining I was guilty until finally Jesus told me, “Robby, didn’t I pay enough?” The hard gut wrenching place I found myself both times was, “do you really want to get well?”
Yes, Jesus I need your blood to break this agreement to pull out this bitter root, yes I want to get well, yes I want my “God Debit Card”. What a relief what freedom. I knew I had been set free. I wrote it in my journal I told my wife that we could start a new page God had set me free from chains I had no idea I was carrying.
Thursday the 20th again my book keeper at Truth Broadcasting called me into the office and said, “Robby, I am going to make your day.” And she handed me a letter from the Treasury dept. telling her to stop the garnishment effective immediately with no other explanation. The letter was dated November 17th the day after Jesus gave me my card. I called Adam and we praised God together. Adam told me that as of the previous week they were still not talking to him.
The way I look at my “God Debit Card” is similar to the shield of faith in Ephesians 6. If I really need it, my Father’s card has all the credit in the world; I just have to have the courage to ask.
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