Lessons Learned From Raising Support: Lesson 1

Our family just returned from visiting another church, presenting to them the work God is doing in the Philippines and the specific ministry we will, Lord willing, be doing.  This trip came right after returning from a week in Ohio doing the same.  I began to get a little weary towards the end of this recent trip and starting thinking, “what if we didn’t go to the Philippines and just stayed here?”  On the five-hour drive home, Allan and I talked about our weariness and the temptation to give up.

After talking with him, a good night’s sleep, and time in the Word and prayer, my focus is renewed and encouraged.  Here are five lessons that I have learned thus far from our efforts in raising support:

1.     Feelings change after obedience

2.     A good marriage is more important than you think. 

3.     Unbelief is allowing your circumstances to interpret your view of God AND belief is allowing God to interpret your circumstances

4.     Rest, safety and refuge is not found in a location or building but in a person

5.     There is blessing in the toil

LESSON 1

Feelings change after obedience.  I just started reading a book called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, by Rosaria Champange Butterfield.  It is the salvation testimony of a former college professor, feminist and lesbian.  During the repentance process of turning from her former identity to identity in Jesus Christ she makes this statement, “feelings change after obedience.” 

Instead of merely just sitting and wallowing in self-pity while contemplating the green grass on the other side of the support raising fence…I need to realize that my feelings won’t change on their own.  Rather feelings are the end product of my mind.  I have been allowing my mind to run wild in it’s imagination, wandering into the land of “what if….” and “if only….”.  When I get lost in this land of self-pity I feel like a shrub in the desert, parched and alone, just like Jeremiah 17:5-6 says:

Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
    and makes flesh his strength,
    whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
    and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salt land.

But look at the promises of changed feelings that result if I obey and plant myself in God’s Word, the text continues in Jeremiah 17:7-8:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
    whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
    that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
    for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
    for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

We have the privilege of raising support the same time as two other families from our team raise support.  While sharing my struggle and asking for prayer one friend, who is also raising support, exhorted me to “talk less and pray more”.  The fastest way to get from here to the land of self-pity is to talk.  What I mean is when I allow my mind to talk to itself and rehash all of my worries, hardships, expectations I find that all I can think about is “what if….” or “if only….”  Instead to repent of this wrong behavior I need to talk less and pray more.  Time in the Word reveals God’s will and provides a guide for prayer.

I will share the additional 4 lessons I have learned in separate posts.  I am thankful for this blog as a form of accountability to reflect, meditate and record the lessons God teaches me.