(Photo from our Sunday meeting)
PLANE TICKETS ALL AROUND
My last update was on December 10th, and at that point I had received $900 for the trip. In the last four days, another $100 has come in, and to date I have received $1,022.73! The Lord provided just in time, because we needed to purchase our tickets this week.
And then just this afternoon, I purchased my plane ticket! Hurley, our worship leader, found plane tickets for only $800! This is my first international trip, so I don’t know how much tickets usually cost, but that seems like a ridiculously good price to me. After taxes the tickets were only $960; estimates before today had said the tickets would be around $1200. There’s no backing out now. I’m really going to South Africa!
My passport came in two weeks, and we found plane tickets for under $1,000. Hallelujah.
On Sunday the team met briefly, and it was encouraging to hear how the Lord is providing for people. Here are a few snippets of the testimonies:
- Matt: Matt didn’t think his dad, who is an unbeliever, would consider giving to his trip. But when Matt called him to discuss some money owed from previous events, his dad offered to buy Matt’s ticket to South Africa!
- Michelle: Michelle found out about the trip five days before our meeting on Sunday. She sent out a letter, and soon a mother of five kids donated $50. Later that day she received an email from someone she didn’t even know. The person had recently returned from South Africa and found out about Michelle, and wanted to sow into her trip. A few other people are praying about how much to give.
- Destiny: Just three weeks before hearing about the trip, Destiny wrote down her life dreams. One of them was to go to South Africa and minister. She then heard about the trip and within four days had raised $900.
- Chandler: Chandler sent out a letter about the trip but didn’t receive any responses. Last week she thought she had better make some phone calls, and even practiced what to say. But before she could make any calls, someone from South Africa donated $50 to her PayPal account. She received a check in the mail for $500, and by the end of the day she had over $800! To date she has raised around $2,000.
- Terri: Terri really wanted to go on the trip, but had immediate needs that totalled about $3,000. She brought them before the Lord, saying that those needs had to be met before she could go on the trip. She asked a few others to pray with her and didn’t ask anyone for money. In the last three weeks all of the money has come in. And after providing $3,000, what is another $1,500 to the Lord?
GOD DOESN’T HAVE A BUDGET
As I drove away from the meeting, I thought of all the money I still needed to raise for the trip. Though I had just heard multiple testimonies of the Lord providing, I suddenly was afraid he wouldn’t provide the rest of the money that I need. For all of the stories of provision, there are still some people who don’t have any money, and after God finishes giving to them, maybe there won’t be enough left for me.
But then the Lord dropped this into my heart: He doesn’t have a budget.
Now hang on! That sounds so… fiscally irresponsible! My dad was a certified counselor for Crown Financial Ministries, the Christian financial company founded by the late Larry Burkett; I grew up listening to Money Matters and hearing about the dangers of credit cards and the importance of a good budget. A good portion of my adult life has been spent trying to hold to a budget. Isn’t it foolish for God not to have one?
But think about it: you need a budget because there is only so much to go around. You have to pay this bill and that, and a budget helps you make sure you don’t overspend in one area and run out of funds for the other area. And in our corrupted world, we absolutely need budgets.
But the Lord has no lack. He does not operate by our rules or with our mindsets. He isn’t thinking, “Gee, Brandon needs money for the trip, so I think I’ll give him $1,500. That means there’s none left you, Jesse, because I have to save some for next month, in case anyone has a medical emergency they need help paying for.”
It’s another one of the lies of support raising that Satan tries to get us to believe. First he tries to get us to agree that the Lord doesn’t care enough about us to provide. When we recognize that lie and tell him to hit the road, he comes at us with the lie that, okay, maybe God cares, but he doesn’t have enough to go around, so you’ll probably have to wait your turn.
Wow. That sounds a bit like Jesus in the desert. Satan came to him and first questioned Jesus’ identity; second, whether or not Jesus could trust the Father to protect him; and lastly, if the Father would actually fulfill his promise of giving Jesus the nations.
But like Jesus, we respond to Satan’s lies with the Word. “I am an adopted son of God, chosen and precious. My daddy owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and he loves to give good gifts to his children and provide their daily bread. The Lord’s promises are yes and amen!”
God is fiscally irresponsible. He gives the checkbook to the son who wasted his inheritance. He pours perfume worth a year’s wages over the head of a man destined to die. He lavishly supplies abundance to a homeless, heirless nomad.
Such actions by anyone, from a teenager to a CEO, would be condemned as foolish. But that mindset is based on limited supply, and the Lord is not a man that he should be bound by man’s limitations.
There’s more than enough to go around.
THE WEEKS TO COME
One of the things we’ll be focusing on as a team in the six weeks before we leave is meditating on verses together. Kirk has put together a workbook on how to meditate on the Word, and so as a team we’re going to pick different passages and, in the words of Jenn, the team administrator, “mine it out and pray it out and see what the Lord says.” I’m excited to dig deeper into the Word with a community of people. As I’m able, I’ll post sections from the workbook and the verses we’re meditating on. (The first one is Ephesians 3:16-19.)
I’m also going to try and read a few books about South Africa, and as I read them I’ll try and post small portions on the Johannesburg, South Africa page.
One last thing: I work for IHOP-KC as a video editor, and onething 2010, our biggest conference of the year, is coming up at the end of December. We’re in go-mode trying to get all of the videos that we need done, so the updates to the blog might be irregular. I’ll try my best though to keep you posted on the latest. In the meantime, you can watch the Prayer Room for free, and you’ll also be able to watch all four days of onething 2010 for free. You might even see some videos that I made!
Thank you for your prayers and support. I personally still need about $500, and there are others on the team still raising support, so any extra funds will go to them. Pray and see if the Lord would have you give.
Merry Christmas!
January 18th, 2011 → 8:40 pm
[...] I could spend all day telling you stories of provision and open doors for our entire team. Our whole worship team is coming on the trip, even those who seriously doubted they wouldn’t be able to come. And there are another fifteen people coming on the team who could add even more stories. (Read just a few of them in God Is Fiscally Irresponsible.) [...]