Im one to regularly say that God does not like to tell me things quietly, he SCREAMS them at me. This has happened to me on a few occasions where I don’t feel so confident in His plan for me, but He sure likes to make sure i know when a piece of it is really important. This weekend’s sermon was one of those times.
There is a lot of awkwardness that comes along with fundraising and asking others for help. It actually might be my least favorite think that is factored in with the beginning process of mission work. I have always preferred being independent and not asking for help on tasks and feel a lot of pride when I figure them out on my on. It is undoubtedly hard to ask people that are friends and family, as well as strangers, for money and support and recently I’ve been struggling to do so.
Last Sunday I walked into the third week of a series my church is currently working through called “Life Hacks”. This week was all about the money. As a widely touchy subject in Church as well as daily life, I was feeling a little stressed. When we started to dig into the message I realized that God was about to scream something at me and I should probably listen up.
From the first line of our pastor’s sermon my attitude about money changed. He said, ” money is about attitude, not the amount.” So I thought about that and my recent prayers about how I had been feeling so discouraged when it came to my personal finances and fundraising efforts. I realized that i have had a bad attitude. I had been feel awkward. I had been feeling really bummed. My money is His, I am fundraising for His work and I need to give that all to Him. If I can find comfortability with trusting God with my World Race money and my personal spendings, I know I will ultimately feel more at peace.
The four takeaways from this sermon were:
1. God owns my money- He rightfully owns everything, it is not for me.
2. We must have an aggressive approach to generosity to find happiness with money – giving is another form of worship therefore, Giving = worship = freedom
3. Have adequate savings for life challenges/ emergencies.
4. Accumulate/ Allocate money from a place of trust in God. – learn to trust Him with out money and our worries and it will all fall into place
Scripture even shows us truth about money.
Matthew 6:21 ” For where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”
We cannot focus ourselves on our treasures, aka money, but on Him because it all belongs to Him anyway. He is our treasure.
1 Chronicles 29:16 ” O Lord our God, even this material we have gathered to build a Temple to honor your holy name comes from you! It all belongs to you!”
By giving we worship. It is all for Him, and He is worthy of all of the praises because of goodness given to us.
So it was screamed at me, after the past few weeks of being so worried about money. He answered. Loud and clear captain! I will trust Him with my money. I will be diligent in fundraising, but not let the stress consume me. I will not allow money to be my main focus.
Stay Blessed!
Emily
