Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain. (Psalm 127:1)
The verse above is a good verse that you, or I, might hear on a Sunday morning and say yes I “believe” that to be a true and right. But fundraising is forcing me to see in a number of biblical passages the deference between believing something in my mind and believing it in my life. You see, the Lord brought this passage up when I was thinking about how much support I need to raise and He is bringing it to my attention that unless He is fundraising with me no amount of effort on my part will be able to compensate for that.
I realize I have always seen life in terms of how much personal push do I need to put into something to accomplish it. But what I feel like the Lord is saying to me is not primarily how much do I need to push but rather how much do I need the Lord to pull (and I am not quite sure how to get there yet).
Some of you may be saying, “yes, of course Aaron, that’s totally biblical.” But do you realize that that means unless the Lord supports us in our place of work or ministry we are wasting our time? That is a scary thought to me. This is an area that I need to discuss with the Lord that I am afraid to trust Him.
A lot of us hesitate to be honest and tell the Lord that we are afraid that He might not be good enough or merciful enough to take care of our needs. But I would encourage you guys that it is very important for us to do so. Because, in reality, what we have done is we have run from the presence of God with our fears and gone to the Devil’s throne room of “what ifs” and made the Devil the confidant of our fears because, “Surely I couldn’t say this to God”. God already sees our fears and He has a good answer for them, He is simply waiting for us to come to Him with our questions and fear to give them to Him.
So, to sum it all up, pray that the Lord gives me grace to let Him be the one who does the building and I be the one who does the helping. I don’t want to waste my time building something that will not last so, therefore, I pray that God teaches me to take the time to seek Him first and let Him be the builder of my life.
