COURTNEY AIKEN
WEEKLY BLOG
I PRAYED FOR CASH FLOW BUT RECEIVED GOD'S FLOW
August 9, 2025
Have you ever been in a place or season where you couldn’t find a word to properly describe it? Typically, we can pinpoint when we’re struggling or thriving. But then there are seasons where you face trouble on every side, when everything that could go wrong goes the absolute worst way possible. You’re even hesitant to complain because you don’t want to linger there longer than God intended, like the Children of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years when the journey should have taken only 11 days. Yet, at the same time, it feels like the season will never end.
One week after my birthday in June, I was driving home, tears streaming down my face. It was the nine-month mark since my mother’s passing. I had just celebrated my first birthday without her and was approaching her first birthday not here on Earth. From September to that moment, it felt as if everything in my life had gone wrong.
As I sat at a red light, I noticed the license plate on the car in front of me: “Psalm35.” Immediately, I opened the Bible app on my phone and played the audio. Verses 9 and 10 stood out:
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“Then I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be glad because he rescues me. With every bone in my body I will praise him: Lord, who can compare with you? Who else rescues the helpless from the strong? Who else protects the helpless and poor from those who rob them?”
In that moment, God assured me that He was going to rescue me. The energy I was spending trying to get out of the situation was wasted because He was going to do it His way. I needed to be still and align myself with the flow of God.
The Bible is filled with examples of loss followed by seasons of hardship. After Naomi and Ruth’s deep loss, they survived on scraps. In 2 Kings 4, a widow inherited a massive debt after her husband’s death and faced the possibility of her sons being taken as slaves.
I’ve had my own decade of loss, losing my father, grandmother, and most recently my mother. It left me in a place where no word seemed to fully capture what I was feeling.
Over the past few months, I began asking God what was next for my life. I prayed for wisdom, direction, and financial increase. Yet, it felt like nothing was changing. God seemed silent. But one day, I prayed differently—I asked Him to break the CYCLE in my life. And that’s when things began to shift.
It started with a decision.
God wasn’t going to give me the direction I prayed for if I wasn’t mentally and emotionally strong enough to stay the course. He wasn’t going to bless me with more finances if I didn’t have the mindset to manage them. I had been stuck in a heavy, unending cycle of grief—like laundry left in the washing machine too long. Eventually, it starts to smell and needs to be rewashed.
The day after I prayed for the cycle to be broken, I experienced nine days of supernatural favor: the plan for my ministry relaunch, unexpected seeds sown into my life, new business contracts, one contract that doubled in pay, divine connections, and even an opportunity to work with one of the largest investment firms in the world. God’s flow is greater than the cash flow I had been asking for.
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So often, we pray for a quick fix such as a bill to be paid when God wants to give us streams that never run dry. Instead of asking Him to simply pay your light bill, ask Him to enLIGHTen you about the cycles in your life that need to end. Otherwise, you may find yourself just like clothes in a washing machine: going in circles instead of stepping into His flow.
GOING BACK TO GO FORWARD: A NECESSARY RETURN
August 2, 2025
Happy Month of New Beginnings!
Have you ever found the perfect dress online? The color, the cut—everything was just right. You even studied the size chart trying to make sure it would fit. But when it arrived… it didn’t. It looked beautiful on the website, but when you put it on, it just didn’t work. So now you're disappointed, returning what didn’t fit and hoping to find something else that will. That scenario has played out in my life more than once—and not just with clothes. Sometimes we try to step into a new season, a new space, or a new version of ourselves, and we expect it to fit perfectly. We’ve done the research, we prayed, we planned, we thought we were ready... and yet somehow, it still doesn’t work out.
I’ve been thinking about Naomi’s story in Ruth 1, and I can’t stop seeing myself in her. Maybe you can too. Naomi followed her husband Elimelech from Judah (which means praise) to Moab—a land that didn’t honor God—because they were trying to escape a famine. It was supposed to be a temporary fix. A smart move. A way to survive. But in Moab, she lost everything: her husband, her sons, her sense of security. By the time she returned to Judah, she came back empty… or so she thought.
Have you ever had to return to a place you thought you’d left behind for good? A dream, a city, a calling, a relationship, a version of yourself? Sometimes we run from places marked by pain, shame, or disappointment—but God, in His grace, calls us to go back. Not to punish us, but to restore what we thought was lost.
What moves me most about Naomi’s story is that her return came with grief, but it also came with harvest. She left Judah during famine, but when she came back, the harvest had just begun. She didn’t come back with what she left with—her husband and sons were gone—but she wasn’t without hope. Ruth, her daughter-in-law, stuck by her side. Ruth gleaned in the fields. And that’s where God’s favor found them. God placed Ruth in the exact field she needed to be in. It “just so happened” to belong to Boaz, their family redeemer. (But we know with God, nothing just happens.) Ruth eventually married Boaz, and they had a son. Naomi’s legacy—the one she thought was lost forever—was restored in the very land she thought had nothing left to offer.
There’s something powerful about going back.
Just like we return clothes that don’t fit and receive a refund, sometimes God asks us to return to something we’ve avoided—and when we do, He returns what we didn’t even know we lost. I imagine Naomi felt embarrassed and ashamed, going back to Judah with nothing to show for the years away. But her return was part of the redemption.
Maybe God is calling you to go back. Not backward—but back, to a place, a dream, a version of you that you’ve buried. It may feel uncomfortable. You may feel like you’re showing up empty. But if God is calling you to return, you won’t leave empty-handed.
He still writes stories that we thought were over. And sometimes, the field you once feared is where favor is waiting.