Since beginning this pursuit of raising money for African famine relief, I've known that God wants me to go to businesses within walking distance of our home and ask them for donations. The last few days I felt like Holy Spirit was also encouraging me to come up with a donation jar system that could be placed by cash registers to make it easy for people to donate. Doing this is no small task. We live in a highly commercial area where there are 12 eating establishments alone...plus dozens of small businesses and if I go to the industrial parks...where talking an easy 30+ more!
Not to mention, I've also got a Single Moms' Night Out coming up for which I'll soon be taking reservations, need volunteers and donations, all without asking people to help because I believe God's way to provide for Boundless Ministries is through His Spirit calling people, not me.
Now, something you may or may not know about me is that I'm just a wee bit A.D.D....never diagnosed...but have many classic symptoms. So it is very easy to become overwhelmed when a task seems insurmountable. I strive to break it down into manageable pieces...but sometimes, especially with God's work, like these situations...I allow myself to listen to the enemy that there's just no way this can be done...or even if it can (in the case of the African famine), it's just a drop in the bucket so what difference will it make anyway?
Yesterday was that day.
Ugh! I wish God could just give you a vision for something and then you could just DO IT and not have to contend with an adversary attempting to thwart you at every step along the way. I know I don't resemble a pillar of faith by any stretch of the imagination...but I'm just trying to be very real. My honesty about this struggle isn't to convict anyone to step up and help me...it's so that someone else who comes along later can read and know that the doubt with which they struggle is normal. In fact, for many millennia satan has been using this tactic to stop the people of God dead in their tracks.
Beth Moore says, "At times, the evidence of what we can see stacks up so high against the assurance of what we can't that a lifelong faith crumbles in a moment." I don't claim to ever have had superhuman faith. But I know when my faith crumbles that God has told me to "take up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish the arrows of the evil one." (Ephesians 6:16) I even had a note in my workbook that's a quote from "How to Train Your Dragon". "When in doubt, ALWAYS go for the shield!"
"When we are convinced that God is believable and we respond to Him in faith, practically nothing can get through to us." (Beth Moore, Living Beyond Yourself) This morning, Holy Spirit asked me to name exactly what I was afraid of yesterday. Honestly, I don't think it was the fear of business owners telling me no or the embarrassment of asking. I think it was more likely that I was afraid of being disappointed that no one really cares about millions of people starving half a world away. I guess ultimately, the fear is that God will fail to provide for this calling/vision He has given me.
I'm not proud of this...I am just being honest.
Once I named the fear, He lovingly reminded me that He gave me this vision, He gave me this calling...and He will see it through. My only part is every single moment to keep asking Him if and what He wants me to do...and then do it! No fear...no shame...no holding back!
This morning, my Bible study was, as always perfectly timed! I was blessed to read about Elisha in 2 Kings 6:8-10 and how God opened the eyes of Elisha's servant to the thousands of unseen warriors of God ready to do battle on behalf of Elisha. Holy Spirit reminded me of Hebrews 12:1 "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."
So today, in fact as soon as I finish posting this, I'm getting dressed, getting my supplies ready and heading out with one or more of my kids and we are going to walk around spreading the word that there is a way to help one child at a time in the Horn of Africa. And as we do it, I'm sure the enemy will attempt to easily entangle me so that I can't run the race. But I'm equally as certain that with every step we take, there will be an innumerable cloud of witnesses cheering us on!
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