“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”
Well known verses. In our lives we talked about them, knew them, but we seldom lived them. God has made them come alive to us. As we now hope to minute by minute listen for God’s direction in our lives we have seen some amazing things happen. We are support based missionaries. There are entire ministries to people like us, developed to help educate support-based missionaries raise funds and develop prayer support teams, etc. There are entire denominational mission organizations, like the Southern Baptist’s IMB, that pay their missionaries as employees so that they can spend all their time “ministering” rather than spending time raising funds. There is nothing wrong with planning and working to raise funds and gain prayer support, but God has shown us time and time again that He can make those things happen without any effort on our part but obedience to His call.
Here is a small, and I mean small, sample of the things God has done for us in spite of our attempts to raise support for our ministry:
1. When we sought God’s will about whether to go at all, I counseled with Wade Burleson, of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Oklahoma. I was seeking counsel and advice and did not ask for money; frankly, I might have asked for money but the thought hadn’t crossed my mind at that time. I wasn’t even sure if we were supposed to go. During that conversation he gave me godly advice about seeking God’s will. And, as we closed our conversation, God led him to say this: “I cannot tell you what God’s will in this is, but if you do decide to go, I have your plane tickets for you and your family.” That was just a $4000 gift, out of the blue, before we had even surrendered to the call! That enabled our work at the University of the Nations last fall.
2. Friends of ours who left Fayetteville about a year ago, Cale and Catherine Whittington, were preparing to take a number of items to the Salvation Army (or some such place). Catherine heard God tell her that instead they should have a garage sale and dedicate all the proceeds to us. We never talked to them about this at all. We had never even thought of such a thing. God did it. And, they excitedly told us about how it changed the entire process. Not only did they have fun having a garage sale (yes, really, it was fun!), but also their children enthusiastically picked out personal toys and items to sell, rather than crying about what was theirs and how they didn’t want to give any of it up. We received a financial blessing complete with pictures of their children, smiling, holding lots of dollars in their hands!
3. A good friend of mine from childhood, John Parker, received a vision from God of things he could develop in the form of a website to help support our ministry. Given the fact that I am computer illiterate and that he is a computer programmer by trade, it was a Godsend. Through his work, www.fjministries.com was born.
4. As we have been making plans to leave for England, one of the things we needed to do was to find a place for our three year old during the days in England, while Tara and I would be in class or doing ministry work. We discovered that in England a three-year old can attend public schools or that we could hire a nanny. We didn’t like either option. Without any effort on our part, one of the moms already at the YWAM base in England, Sue Joyce, felt led to ask her youngest daughter, Abbey, who is 13 and homeschooled, to pray about taking care of Regan. She prayed about the decision for 11 days. She was still nervous about it, but felt that God was telling her to do it. Because of this, again all through God’s leading, not our own, we now have a place for Regan.
5. I recently received emails from Alyce Faulkner, a fellow blogger, and Meredith Olmstead, a friend of Alyce’s, both of whom go to the same church, Friendship Baptist Church, in Sherwood, Arkansas, (http://www.familyofhis.com) in which they asked for pictures and information about us. They felt God lead them to adopt us as missionaries for the month of February 2007 and they were developing prayer cards for everyone in their church.
These are just a few of the things that have been done on our behalf without anything other than God’s leading. Again, it isn’t that we shouldn’t ask for things or work toward accomplishing His purpose, but we can also rest assured that God is working on His purpose. We will ask for things and will do things that “market” the ministry He has given us, but we hope that we will only do so as He directs and not as we think is necessary.
There are also some observations from these works of God. First, as said above, God is working and His purpose will prevail. Proverbs 19:21. Second, each of the above people are working as missionaries when they do these things. They facilitated our going and are “on mission” when they obey His call for their lives. Third, as they obeyed His voice and leading, they were ministered to! We are amazed as individuals who have heard God’s voice and followed it with regard to supporting us tell us how it impacted their Christian walk. Whereas some may say that “support raising” takes too much time and takes ministries away from ministry, we have learned that support raising and support giving/facilitating is a ministry in and of itself. Finally, we must always trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. We never dreamed we could do any of this and that kept us from making the leap for many years. We were trusting our understanding, not Him, and it led us down many dark paths.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us in prayer, service, and financially. It is to God’s glory alone because we have done so little. We pray that God will continue to give us the grace to hear and obey rather than work in our own strength. We pray that for you as well and plead that you will return that prayer on our behalf to the Father. We also are excited, knowing that as you pray, God may well lead you to do things such as these and we will have many more such blessings to praise God for in the future.
If you feel that God is calling you to something different, something hard, something that seems impossible, even to something like what we are doing, please don’t doubt for one minute that you can do it. He will stand behind whatever He calls you to do. Let Him face your giants and simply rest in His call. May this abbreviated testimony (I can add so many other things) encourage you that in Him all things are possible!