Malachi 3:10-11
One of many experiences I've had that confirm Moroni's declaration that faith must precede miracles (Ether 12:6,12) occurred in October, 2022. At the time my family and I were just short of one year living in our newly bought house in Layton, Utah. I had a great job at Spiff and everything was going very well for us.
Our daily routine consisted of me working a few hours in my office, taking a lunch break around noon, and then working four more hours before dinner. After my lunch break it was time for Isaac's nap, and my wife Bethany certainly needed a nap as well due to being in the midst of pregnancy. So it was normal for Aaron to get a half hour or so to watch some toddler shows that we checked out from the library (so as to avoid the risk of inappropriate commercials and an unending flow of shows). In the middle of October, we discovered that Aaron was really interested in watching recordings of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. But since that was so old, the library didn't have any more than one episode of it.
After some very brief searching, I discovered that the Fred Rogers company had a website where they would post a set of five episodes every couple weeks. So the next day after my lunch break I went to hook up my personal laptop to our projector system and go to the website. Then I proceeded to go to the website by typing in the URL code for it. But after pressing 'Enter' on my keyboard, I realized that I must have mis-typed it because my computer immediately went into a lockdown-ish mode and a message started speaking from the laptop speakers saying that my laptop had been hacked. I tried typing some things on my keyboard to clear it up, but got no response. The voice message just kept repeating itself informing me to not attempt shutting down the laptop, but to call Apple Support using the provided number.
Being in complete shock with this unexpected incident, having never experienced or heard of something like this before, I proceeded to call the provided number and followed the given instructions. Well, long story short, I ended up 'buying' some firewall for our home internet network that cost $1,500. Almost immediately afterwards, by contacting some security coworkers at Spiff, I realized that the whole thing was a complete fraud! Along with so much guilt of how I could have done things much more wisely, the $1,500 that we lost weighed heavily on me. I contacted our bank immediately and filed a dispute with that charge, but honestly didn't have much hope for regaining the money as it had been purchased with our debit card. As far as I could tell, all that money was gone. Thankfully, we had a good emergency fund set aside that kept us from being in any dire circumstances. But to lose that much money was scarring.
Later that day, after being completely open about the situation with my wife, I was able to cool down and realize that whatever happened was in the past and that it would be better to focus on the future now. Then I remembered that the very next day we had an appointment with our bishop to declare whether or not we considered ourselves full tithe payers. I had just received my most recent paycheck from Spiff a day earlier and remembered that I still needed to pay tithing on it. But, because of the large portion of money that we had most likely lost, the temptation to not pay had never been greater. Nevertheless, I had a testimony of tithing and trusted that somehow the prophesy in Malachi would be fulfilled for us:
"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." ~ Malachi 3:10
In my mind, I couldn't help but hope that the Lord would bless us to regain all of our lost money. But at the same time, I knew I shouldn't condition the Lord's miracles to be exactly what I wanted them to be. Somehow I just trusted that whatever miracle did come our way, it would be what the Lord saw as best for our family.
Well, fast-forward two weeks to the end of October. While going about our daily routine as normal (having found the correct website for the Mr. Roger's episodes and saved the link) the distinct thought came to me that I should check our bank account to check on the status of the dispute we had filed for the fraudulent charge. Just wanting to get a definitive 'yes' or 'no' to whether we had permanently lost the money, I logged in to our account. To my complete surprise, I found that every penny of the fraudulent charge had been returned to us successfully no earlier than a couple hours before my logging in!
I was speechless. There was and is no doubt in my mind that this was a clear miracle from the Lord! The scriptural promise in Malachi of the windows of heaven opening up for us had been fulfilled in the most literal way I had ever experienced. And, to make it blatantly obvious that this miracle was due to our faithfulness of paying tithing, I was lead to the verse that immediately follows the above-quoted verse:
"And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground..." ~ Malachi 3:11
The people behind the fraud who had tried so tactfully to devour our money and indeed been stopped by the hand of the Lord. The bishop's promise of seeing the Lord's miracles in our life had been fulfilled to the letter. And, once again in my life, faith in the the Lord had born fruit in a way that was indescribable.
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