A year's journey … continues

Fun to revisit these thoughts from this time last year …

the beginning of a journey.

I don’t even know where to start; God is SO amazing.  Of course this story doesn’t start with me, it starts with God, but how fun is it when He decides to write us into His story in just a tiny little way. As you know, God has been rocking my world through several things–mostly through reading The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns the president of World Vision (now available on paperback here). And also, in a related way, through a couple documentaries which revolutionized the way I see food production, genetic engineering, and its impact on developing countries. It’s amazing how everything is related. Now, I certainly do not claim to be an expert on poverty, food production, or on anything for that matter (other than my own selfishness–-I’m pretty much the expert on that), but I feel like God has opened my eyes to a world of hurt and need and pain and sorrow that, I am ashamed to admit, I simply did not see.

Tonight at church we watched a video, and in the background played Brooke Fraser’s song about Rwanda: “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.”  And here is the cool thing about God–-He only reveals to us what graces us to handle, and He only calls us to what we’re capable of doing.  He doesn’t ask us to give what we don’t have, just what we do have. He doesn’t call us to change the world, He just calls us to obey when we hear His voice.

Just to obey when we hear His voice.

So we heard His voice.

All week, for whatever reason, Jeff and I just felt discouraged.  The kids were both sick, Jeff was swamped with work to do, I had a 3-day migraine that just wouldn’t leave me alone–it was just one of those weeks. Friday came and it rained, so Jeff and Dutch spent the afternoon playing trains, and I ignored the dirty house and curled up with The Hole in our Gospel. Well, thankfully I have a wonderful husband who took the initiative to bathe our children and put them to bed, because I didn’t put it down until 8pm that night when I read the final page.  Jeff came into our room. “Have you been crying?” He asked.  ”Of course I have,” I responded.  I held up the book, closed my eyes and shook my head.  Of course I had been crying.  How can we read the horrors of poverty, disease, exploitation, and not weep? I know you all have been there. When the reality of the sorrow in this world is revealed, for what it really is, all we can do sometimes is grieve.

“What are we doing?”

I took some time to pray and think and Jeff went ahead (he wasn’t quite finished with the book), and read some more.  Then we met back up to talk about what we would do.

Now that we have seen we are responsible.

Here’s what shook me. Really shook me.   I’ve always thought of myself as a faithful giver.  I mean, I’ve been tithing since I was old enough to hold a quarter in my hand (thanks to my parents who put the quarter there!).  We do sponsor children, we do support missionaries, we do make special gifts for different causes.  But what Richard Stearns points out from Scripture, from David’s example and the widow’s two mites, is that it doesn’t matter how much we give, what matters is what it costs.  What matters is our faith.

Our current giving costs us nothing.  The bottom line is our current giving does not require us to live by faith. Now, please hear me that God calls all of us to different things.  This is why we CANNOT COMPARE our giving with someone else’s. All we can do is look at ourselves and ask, Does my current giving cost me anything? Does my current giving require me to life by faith? And, it’s worth noting, that this is true of all giving–our time, our talents, and our treasure.  It’s so much bigger than money, but where our treasure is there our heart will be too.

So here I am, sitting in bed, praying, thinking of our budget and our life and I just don’t know what to do.  I’ve laid everything out before the Lord and basically said, “Take it, whatever you want, show us what needs to go. We’ll move to Zambia, we’ll sell our house, we’ll sell a car.  Just show us your will.”

Ok, so, we’re talking and I just keep saying how hard it is to live within this specific culture that God has called us to, without it costing so much that there’s nothing left to give!  We can’t just not have utilities and not buy car insurance–that’s just life in the United States!  And I kept thinking what’s the biggest expense/priority in our life.  By a landslide it’s our house.  In comparison to the rest of our spending, we spend a large portion on our house. More than any other single item.  In fact, it’s 41% of our take home pay (30% of our gross income).  So we’re sitting there and in a moment of silence Jeff says, “What if we determined to give away the same amount we spend on our home? You know, if giving was, even by a penny, the single largest portion of our income.” For a moment I felt like everything stood still.  Then I laughed, “Yeah, that would cost us! That would require faith.  We’d basically be living on less than 18% of a single income.” I calculated the number and laughed some more. It was impossible.  Then shrugged my shoulders, “Well we can work toward it. That really would be cool.”   Jeff rolled over and went to sleep.

Of course I could not sleep. Of course I couldn’t get Jeff’s words out of my head.  Of course I could not get Scripture out of my head, images of children out of my head, stories of people who had given up everything they owned to help people in the name of Christ–of course none of that would get out of my head! I flipped on the light and started writing numbers.  To my amazement I realized that if we only spent on life’s absolute essentials–food, gas (significantly limited amount), insurance, utilities (with some conservation), prescriptions and co-pays, and Jeff’s monthly haircut (please do not laugh, this is a necessity if you know how hard it is to cut his hair), then, to my astonishment, it actually was possible.  It would require some cost, and some faith, but I got that unmistakable feeling when you know God is up to something that will change your life.  Then, I crunched a few numbers to see what we could actually do with that money. If we continued to give the exact same amount to our church, without taking a dime away from the work God’s doing there, we’d be able to (are you ready?), sponsor THIRTY-FIVE children. THIRTY FIVE!!!  Through some programs, that’s two whole orphanages!  I about fell out of bed.  Now I don’t know for sure if that’s how God’s leading us, but that helped me to understand the amazing potential!  That is so exciting to me!  Seeing faces–real individual lives made in the image of God, helped me get this all in perspective.

So, then I wrote out a list of the things that didn’t make the cut–savings, house repairs, vacations, retirement, car repairs.  Obviously these things are truly wise and we would consider necessary expenditures.  However, this is so cool.  IF we gave in this way, and because of tax laws for clergy’s housing expenses, we would literally, at the end of the year have ZERO taxable income.  That means that, Lord willing, we would get a sizable tax refund. We could simply commit to tucking that  away for retirement and use for the year’s house repairs, car repairs, emergencies, etc.  Thankfully we already have a Dave Ramsey-inspired emergency savings account, so it’s not as if we were being foolish, failing to have a back-up plan in case of emergency. I don’t believe that’s faith as much as poor planning.

But here is where the story gets fun because it gets personal. We have such a personal God!  Three items I wrote down with question marks were–kids clothes (I certainly don’t need clothes but my kids actually grow out of theirs), toys (yes, I still want my children to have fun things to play with!), and learning/homeschooling materials/books for the kids.  Bottom line? God loves our children more than we do, right?  Well…

So today we talk about this plan, and though we’re 99% sure we want to do it, we commit to pray about it.  We’d start on the 15th, so we have a few weeks to really pray and find out for sure God’s will in this.  So today there’s a clean-up day scheduled and church so Jeff goes to that.  Just as he’s leaving, some people pull in from church and say, “Hey! We have something for you.” They hand him a big bin FULL of kids toy Geotrax (train set), and another FULL of hot wheels cars, trucks, race ramps.  Jeff and I are just laughing, “Um…there’s Christmas!”  Guess I don’t have to worry about toys for my kids.  God knows their favorite kind. Then, I got to church tonight, and as I’m leaving a friend says, “Hey, can you wait? I have something for you.” So I follow her out to the car and she hands me 2 HUGE boxes full of hand-me-down girl clothes from her daughter who is a year older than Heidi.  We’re talking a ton of clothes. So much that I had to call a friend and ask if she wanted to take half because there’s more than I can use.  Guess I don’t have to worry about clothes for my kids.   Then, this girl hands me a brand new set of books, shrink wrapped, and she says that they are the reading curriculum that her son uses at his Montessori school.  She knew I was “homeschooling” for preschool and bought me a set for Dutch.  WHAT?!!  Um, I guess I don’t have to worry about books and educational materials for my kids. God knows the best kind out there.

So that was tonight.  I am now sitting in bed, overwhelmed at God’s goodness.  Tonight at church Joel preached the good news of the Gospel:

¹As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ²in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. ⁴But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Phil 2:1-10)

God. Has. Been. So. Good.  God’s grace is astounding. We who were dead in our transgressions He has made alive. He has saved us by grace, and that not of ourselves.  We have done nothing to deserve His kindness, but He lavishes it on us be His kindness.  And He we are His, created for good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. That is the good news! We are loved beyond comprehension. And God has marvelous things in store for us.

I do not know all that God has in store, and I don’t share this story to claim to have the answers on giving or to say that anyone else needs to do the same, etc. etc. I am simply sharing one God story, of a gracious God and how He’s leading us right now.  I know that your lives are full of the adventures of following a missional God who is out to share the world His power and glory.  And, if this is all new to you, I invite you to embrace the truth of God’s grace, His finished work on the cross. We can add nothing to it. It is done. Now we simply can slip our hand in His and ask Him what He wants us to do.  I don’t know exactly what that will be, but we’ll do our best, by grace, to obey.

90 house-showings later, we still walk by faith.

Still on the journey, still learning, still overwhelmed by extravagant GRACE.

{What journey are you on, and how can you trust Him for your specific steps today? Thanks for reading…}