I’m in love with God and His Kingdom. I just want to start by saying that. The one that reigns on Earth until Jesus’ second coming does everything he can to keep us ignorant and oblivious of the vastness of the inheritance that was purchased and given to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He will do everything in his power, which is limited and incomparable from the power of the One who saved us, to keep us from reaching out, accessing, and actively engaging with the reality of the Kingdom. He confuses us so that we live our lives submitted to the lesser realities he presents to the world.
One of my favorite parts of experiencing God is through Kingdom Finances. Sadly I think it is one area most commonly overlooked by believers. We live under the same impression the rest of the world lives by, which is that we have to financially fend for ourselves and God does not involve Himself in supporting and supernaturally providing for us. Not only for our needs but also for the accomplishment of our dreams. This gives way to so much worry that distracts us from God and keeps us from growing in the understanding of Him and His Kingdom. Financial faith is a faith muscle that must be excersized by every believer so that we can run the race of faith without injuring ourselves in the long haul.
This month I was blessed by God by getting to be part of one of His heavenly transactions. My role in it was a small one but what a joy and a priviledge it was to see Him working and actually work along side Him. His orchestration, leading, timing, power, and love are just too perfect and it trascends the natural into the supernatural.
Now I will lay down all the pieces of the story of what God did, trying to present them in a way where I can reveal Him to you and He gets the most exhaltation. To do this I must jump back and forth in time, but I promise that in the end it will be a beautiful picture (or at least that is what I will try to accomplish). So bear with me.
This month in Romania we partnered with Living Hope Church in the city of Pitesti. One of our core ministries was having a service with the homeless people of the community where they would come to the church building, take a shower, eat a big meal, have conversations, sing, and pray. It was a really challenging ministry but it was very close to my heart.
The second week of ministry the Lord reminded me of month 3 in Malaysia. It was the first week of december when I got separated from my team. They went to the northern part to the country while I had to go to Kuala Lumpur, the capital, to get my visa for Ukraine. This was the last country we were going to visit before heading to Eastern Europe that had a Ukranian embassy so I had no other option but to get there my visa.
One day, while I was walking through the city on my own, I was praying and worshipping and the Lord started to speak to me about the homeless. He spoke to me about some basic needs that would restore some dignity into their everyday lives and would help them recover their sense of value. A place where they could take showers, get monthly haircuts, have a meal, rest, get discipled, and even where they could save their money and learn how to build financially for their future. It was so clear that I had to write it all down in a note in my phone.
At the moment I thought it was the Lord speaking to me so that I would build a ministry like this in the future when I got back home. The similarity with the ministry I was currently doing (the meals and the showers) was interesting enough to make me pull out the note and show it to the pastor that lead the program. When he read it, he told me that all the things that were written down were part of the program he lead but we had just not gotten to see it yet. This sparked my attention even more and I realized that the Lord was pointing out something about this church.
About a month before, in Ukraine, something out of the ordinary also happened to me which sparked my attention. During a phone call with my mom, she told me that a friend of her had been following my blogposts and was inspired by the work we were doing. She felt the Lord leading her to donate $1000 directly to my account and that’s exactly what she did. I was impressed and excited. It was the first time this happened to me. But because of the fact that I was already fully funded and had no latent need, I quickly realized that this money did not belong to me but it belonged to God. It was now my responsability to listen to the Spirit and find out where he wanted me to invest that money for the expantion of His Kingdom.
It didn’t take me long to connect both experiences, so I quickly started to look for needs this church had that matched the amount of the donation I had gotten and also that stirred up my spirit. Eventually, I heard about one of the young girls in the leadership team that was planning a mission’s trip to Africa but was still about $800 short. Being a missionary myself and knowing the amazing change that it can have in a person’s and even a church’s life, this resonated a lot with me. I asked Pappa “Is this where I should give this money?”. I got a classic Pappa’s response “Do you want it to be here? I will support you fully whatever decision you make”. Don’t you just love Him? He is so awesome and loving.
Having His approval, I spoke with the pastor and handed him the full $1000. He gave the $800 to the girl so that her trip was now fully funded. Later that day I spoke to her and she told me how the day before she had called the mission organization she was going with to cancel her trip due to lack of funds but the phone call had not gone through. I also asked her if something special had happened in December since that was when the Lord spoke to me about the homeless ministry.
Initially she didn’t recall but the next day she told me that she went through her journal to see if something had happened and told me that during that week she assisted a conference where she completely surrendered her fundraising process to the Lord. For two years she had stopped eating at school and had been picking up odd jobs to save up the money on her own but had only raised about $250. After that conference, she told me how the Lord started to open doors and donations of $200-$300 had started coming in in a very rapid succession. For me it is amazing to see how the Lord answered her prayer of surrender and immediately started to orchestrate the provision for her trip through all of this crazy series of events.
Regarding the $200 left, it just so happened that the pastor’s 17th wedding anniversary was on the 17th of June of 2017 so they had special plans to go on a vacation (a honeymoon actually since they never got to have one). Their plans were trampled on due to some unexpected expenses so they no longer could afford the whole trip and they ended up loosing their airplane tickets which they had already bought. For a while now the Lord had already been laying on my heart to bless them so as soon as I heard about this I knew that the rest of the money was for them to simply enjoy. For me it was just a small glimpse of God’s love and care for them even when things didn’t go as planned and for them it was also a great encouragement of God’s faithfulness and closeness in their lives.
The Kingdom works in a crazy way. It has an almighty and powerful God running and ruling everything behind the veil of our understanding. He orchestrates everything in a beautiful way in which He invites us to play a role in His plans. A willing heart is all He asks for and I bear witness to all of you who are reading of what a wonderful and rewarding experience it is to partner with Him in His will to bless all of His children in amazing and extraordinary ways.
