Thursday, March 6, 2014
Thanks to a world of modern technology, I am able to participate in a Bible Study that was pre-recorded, printed and put online, and all I have to do is download it to access it. I am currently in a study on James, participating with a missionary friend here in Gemena. A quote from today’s lesson really stuck with me.
“A word of deception hides behind every temptation and the word of truth behind every timely gift. Temptation attempts to tear open the package before its due date and, in so doing, disfigures what’s inside. Wait on the Lord!…this whole thing is going to work out.” Beth Moore.
Since beginning our fundraising process in 2009, we have never been “fully funded”, and yet, somehow we have been able to stay on the mission field without interruption to our work since our first assignment in 2010. We have found ourselves asking, how is God going to take what seems like a truly impossible situation and make it possible? And yet, each time, he has moved the heart of a few individuals and our funding has come through.
With the global financial crisis increasing, many people losing jobs, taking pay cuts, being asked to work part time, everyone is feeling the effects of the financial crisis. Unfortunately, too often, the first thing to be given up is charitable giving. Don’t get me wrong I would never ask someone to give up feeding their family, or give up a healthy living situation in order to add support to our ministry. But as everyone continues to feel the affects of the global financial crisis, so does our ministry.
I truly believe that the Lord has a plan (or if I am being perfectly honest, I wish that I TRUELY believed that the Lord has a plan), but being the type of person that has always been the one that safely plans out my everyday, its hard to not want to make a 6 month plan of all of the “what-ifs”, so that I am prepared with a plan for every scenario.
This is the first time that our support has been as low as it is and it’s scary! Especially with the baby on the way, and the additional traveling that we will have to do in order to go to a place where we can safely deliver, it makes every ounce of my “planning for the future” side of me just really wonder, what does it all mean? How will we possibly be able to stay on the mission field and continue to do our work here?
That’s when Beth’s quote really hit me. Democratic Republic of Congo has been a war-torn country for years; all around us we see polygamy, pre-marital relations, adultery, witchcraft, the occult: not to mention corruption, deception, hurt and pain. The devil has been working in overtime not just to keep DRC as a war-torn country on the outside, but also to keep fighting in spiritual warfare to keep it a spiritually broken and hurting country in need of a savior. I am mixing the deception of Satan’s voice telling us its time to leave the mission field, with the word of truth from the Lord saying, “wait on me, I have a plan that will make the wait perfect.”
Our work is to help get the Word of Truth into the hands of every Congolese, so that they can break free from the power of deception. Of course Satan isn’t going to let us complete this work without a fight. His plan is opposite of the Lord’s plan for DRC. The struggles we are facing financially, are because he is battling to keep DRC his country of darkness, and not release it into the Lord’s hands so it can be Our Savior’s country of freedom!
If I give into the temptation, allowing Satan to defeat us, I am going to miss out on the true gift that the Lord has for our family, serving overseas, in DRC, in a country that has been on our heart since 2008. Pray for us! Pray that we are listening to the correct voice. The voice that wants to see us succeed, not the voice that wants to see us defeated.