Speaker: Debbie Gutierrez, church member (not Pastor Ryan Rench)
My name is Debbie Gutierrez. My husband, Ruben Gutierrez, and I came here on August 29th, 2004. It was a Wednesday night service, and we were looking for a good Bible-based church where we would get meat and not just fluff. We walked in that Wednesday night, opened the door, and they were singing “Power in the Blood,” and my husband and I looked at each other and said, “This is our church.” We got baptized October 10th and joined the church, so we have been here for twenty-one and a half years. My husband got saved November 29th, 1997, and we found a church. My husband lost his job the following May, and I was thinking, “Why, Lord? You got him saved, and now he lost his job?” I told him, “Well, the Lord will take care of us.” My husband talked to his dad, and by faith he enrolled in contractor school in Temecula. It just so happened that he knew a contractor, so he called him and told him the situation, and the contractor told him, “You can work under my license,” because my husband would not do anything wrong. He would not break the law, especially after he got saved; he wanted to do it the right way. So he studied at night, and we were fortunate that he was able to get jobs. People called him, and he got side jobs. The Lord took care of us. As a new Christian, you will get these trials. So by faith we both trusted the Lord. I was working in San Diego at the time, so I still had a job, and I worked and my husband worked, and the Lord provided for our needs every single month while he was going to school.
A Business in the Lord’s Hands
In October of 1998, my husband took the test and passed. He wanted to know his score, how many he missed, and they said, “No, it does not work that way. You either pass or you fail.” So he got his business license, and by faith once again we started our business. Every month the Lord provided. He had a helper, and he would go out and work, go to construction sites, give them his card, and give them his background. Our business was in the Lord’s hands. At the time it was called A to Z Deck Coatings. My husband built our business, and that first year we did pretty well. Every time we got money, of course, we put it back into the business for more tools and equipment he needed. But again, every month the Lord provided and took care of us, and every year he doubled our business, until within four or five years we were making a little under a million dollars a year in our business. In 2004 we went to Brother Rogers and told him we wanted a better church. We had just gone to the Rock of Ages conference in Portland, Oregon, and we were looking for a church like that. He called, and they gave Brother Napper two churches, and he got hold of Pastor Bill Rench and said, “I really think you should check this one out first.” So we did. We came down that Wednesday night, opened the door, and said, “This is home.”
Every time my husband heard a sermon or a message, he took it to heart and did what it said. He heard a message on tithing. Before, he would just give twenty or forty bucks, but then he heard about the ten percent tithe, read it in the Bible, prayed about it, and said, “Okay, we need to do this.” So that is what we did. Even though our business was still new, we trusted in the Lord and did our tithing. Then at the first missions conference the church had, I think in 2005, we listened, and my husband said, “Debbie, we need to do missions.” So we tithed and did missions, and we were very blessed; as the church grew, we grew. In 2008, when the housing market got really bad and people were losing their houses and construction kind of stopped, again we were looking around: “What are we going to do?” Ruben and I would talk, and he would say, “Well, Debbie, you always tell me to trust in the Lord.” I said, “The Lord will take care of us. No matter what happens, the Lord will take care of us.” My husband said, “The Lord gave us this business. This business is the Lord’s.” So he went by faith and trust, and he said, “The Lord spoke to me, Debbie. He told me to start calling my customers for maintenance.” So he started calling all the customers, and we started getting jobs, and after a few months we started getting calls from contractors, and the business came back. Every time we had a scary moment, we continued to tithe and continued to do our missions, and God was faithful and took care of us every single month.
When the Rubber Meets the Road
To this day it has been that way. When my husband got sick, again, we just trusted in the Lord, and He took care of everything, all my needs. When it came time to sell the home, I trusted the Lord, and the first person who came to look at my house not only bought it but gave me a cash offer. That was unheard of, because that was in 2023, and they were telling me it might take a year or so to sell the house. I said, “Well, I do not care; whatever it takes.” Again, I put it in God’s hands, and He took care of whatever I needed. It was the same when my husband was in the hospital, and when it came time for the tough decisions, I trusted the Lord. We say we walk by faith and not by sight, and that is hard, because everyone says, “I have faith. I am a good Christian. I love the Lord. God is faithful.” But when the rubber meets the road, when it is really time, like when Ruben got sick and the ambulance came… My husband had never been sick. He was my rock. He was strong as an ox, always healthy, took good care of himself, a strong man. And I saw him get put in the ambulance and driven away. That is where your faith comes in. Now what do you do? I was a woman who had learned to trust, rely, and lean on my husband. I trusted the Lord and had faith in the Lord, but my husband was my rock. In our marriage he was the leader, and now he was gone. So I told myself, “Okay, Debbie, this is where you either have faith or you have just been talking.” I called Pastor Bill, and he gave me words of encouragement. He told me, “All those years your husband has been the strong one, the one to rely on. It is your turn now. It is your turn to pick up the reins and be strong for him.” When my husband called me and told me, “I have a tumor,” I told him, “Ruben, whatever it is, we are going to get through this. God is going to take care of us. We are going to find out what the doctors say, then find out the next thing to do, and we are going to trust God to take care of it. Whatever it is, just pray and ask the Lord to help us get through this.” It was like night and day; it snapped him back, and he said, “Yes, you are right, Debbie. You are right. God will take care of us.” And He did. That is what we did. We just met each day. People would say, “Well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?” And I would tell them, “I do not know. I am going to trust the Lord today, and I am going to pray tonight, and when I get up tomorrow, I am going to trust Him.”
After the Testing Comes a Blessing
That was one of the things we learned to do: just live by faith and trust the Lord, and He will build your faith. Every time the Lord takes you through the fire, so to speak, through the testing, after the testing comes a blessing. I would say, “Thank You, Lord, for that lesson.” But you do not say, “Thank You, Lord,” while you are going through it, because you are wondering why you are going through it. You just keep trusting the Lord and taking it one day at a time, and afterward you will say, “Okay, I get what You were trying to teach me.” That is how you build your faith, one testing at a time. When we were going through the tough times in 2008, I remembered what Paul said: “I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound.” That always comes to my mind when I think things are getting tricky. But the Lord will take care of it, no matter what it is. If I need something, He will provide it, and if I do not need it, then I do not need it. That takes an adjustment, because we live in a lifestyle of “I want it; I should have it.” But the Lord has provided for me every single month; He takes care of me. My life verse is Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” And He has.
