Overwhelmed is an understatement to describe how I’ve been feeling lately. Between a huge load of school work, preparing and paying for boards, mentally and spiritually preparing for the race, and paying for all the gear I will need before training camp in August it’s been incredibly nerve wracking.
Through this I’ve been struggling with truly believing that God will provide for me, since He has called me to the World Race. I had even, briefly, considered postponing my trip until January so I could have a little more time to raise more of the funds, myself. But as I prayed about it and talked about it with people around me I began to realize that God called me to leave in October so I needed to have faith He would provide. And what the King wants, the King will pay for.
One day I was listening to His Radio and they played a segment that mentioned Matthew 20:21. It says “Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree [mentioned in verses 18-20], but also you can say to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and it will be done.'” I felt as if this verse was speaking straight to me. If I have faith and believe that God will provide, I can literally do anything. But for some reason there was still a little sliver of doubt in my mind.
I began looking for Bible passages that would relate to what I was going through. Before reading my Bible one night I prayed that God would use whatever passage I opened it up to, to speak to me. I opened it up to Matthew 14 and the story of the 5 loaves and 2 fish feeding 5,000 men (which may have even been 15,000 – 20,000 people).
It is verses 15-21, “As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food’. Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’ ‘We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,’ they answered. ‘Bring them here to me,’ he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.”
One of my favorite parts of this story is not only did God feed His people, they had leftovers! The disciples filled TWELVE baskets full of leftovers. So, not only does God meet our needs, He EXCEEDS them.
If God can feed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then He can certainly equip me to go on a mission trip that He has so clearly called me to.
Also, if you read John’s account of this story he includes something Philip had to say about it. In John 6:7 Philip says, “… It would take more than a half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” In that moment, Philip believed feeding those people relied on THEIR work. But it didn’t! It was God that provided for them.
This was my whole worry leading up to my launch date. I was worried that I wouldn’t be have enough money to buy everything I needed before August. But I don’t need to worry, because God’s got my back and He will provide. I just need to trust Him to do it.
Who knows how God will meet my needs? Maybe He’ll use donations or sponsors. He may even use ways that I haven’t even dreamed of! But it doesn’t matter HOW He does it, because He WILL do it. And I am so excited to witness how he chooses to fulfill those needs.
