64% FUNDED!!!! Wow, before I could even start on another blog we (you all are in this with me!) flew past the halfway mark and are cruising up toward the finish line of $15,500! Big props to God the Father’s provision and the Spirit’s moving in your hearts to respond in support of me in this missionary endeavor! I can’t thank you all enough (but I will continue to try) for the sacrifices you have made to help advance God’s Kingdom around the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 
As of late, the Spirit has immersed me in Brennan Manning’s book called Ruthless Trust. It has been an amazing read thus far, both challenging and thought provoking as to what we hold back from Jesus like a tightly clinched thought, possession, or struggle. Then Brennan provokes me with what a life may look like when we finally give EVERYTHING to Jesus.
Chapter 4 is entitled, “Thinking Big” and highlights all the ways we marginalize God. How we box up what God can do and confine His glory to our Imaginations. Or when we get into the harder situations of life and quit trusting God by saying, “i’ll just huff it from here and get it handled.”
So many times in my life I find that I trust God partially, and one of the areas has been funding for the Race. I went into this saying “Yes God will provide, but I’ll get the rest.” Here is one story where God told me, “I am bigger than this.”
After I had sent out the first wave of support letters I began to check my funding status each morning to be able to update my funding bar to let ya’ll (using this for all my southern Squad-mates) know exactly where I am at and, in a way, to honor those that gave by “counting” there donation to the ministry! Now I have logistically thought out how the processing of these donations work and think i have it all handled. A donation check gets sent in, it takes 2 weeks to process the checks, if it’s a credit card donation maybe 3 days processing before it hit’s my WR account. The WR staff will update it maybe once every couple of days during staffing hours. In conclusion, I might see donations hit a few times out of a week during the day. God decided to blow that out of the water!
So one day at work, I decided to check my funding account, It was nearing 5 O’clock and I had already checked it in the morning and nothing hit. But God prompted me to check it again. So I said, “OK God I trust you,” and boom a few donations came and I praised God for it! Truly blessed! Now it was 11:00 pm as I was going to bed for the night. I cracked open the laptop to crank some sweet soothing instrumental music that my College roommate always listened too. I had a thought to check my account again. As I logged on, I suddenly remembered I had already checked it work, and it was no use, there is not going to be any new donations.
At that very moment I marginalized God, I halted my trust in Him. I trusted the spotty logistics of the donations process, rather than the creator of this whole universe whom I can’t fathom with the most vivid of dreams nor the most out of this world imaginations. How could I do such a thing? How could I doubt the one who has my life in His hands?
But, before I could close the screen the Holy Spirit asked me one thing… “Do you trust me?” I responded with a smile and a vocal “yes” as I click the funding account and BOOM! My account increased at 11pm on a work night by nearly $1,500! I laughed hard and praised God for His prompt, challenge and answer!
That night God showed me He is Bigger. God revealed his vastness to me, though this vastness I conceived is incomparable to His true Glory. Yet He still enlarged the box that I continually put Him in! Praise God for His faithful growth in my life through you all! God is humbling me and molding my faith through your selfless acts of generosity!
B. Manning said it best:
“What is affirmed in one breath must be denied in the next. For example, we link divine love to human love. The similarity induces us to think that we are getting a grip on God’s love. And yet, though human love is the best image we have, it is utterly inadequate to express the love of the infinite.”
You see, God is bigger than our funding account, our worries, our bills or our short comings. God is bigger than our sins, our sufferings, and broken relationships. God is bigger than our ideas, or grasp of what love is, and bigger than our images of what divine glory is. God is E.P.I.C.L.Y. bigger!
We need to trust Him continually and when we stop that for just one moment, when we compromise and give in to just one shred of doubt. We run the risk of taking away the divinity and majesty of our Creator. We take away his vastness and contort Him into something comprehensible, something human, something fallible.
“See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. -Matt. 6:28-33
So let’s keep our eyes on God (we are in this together!) and continually put our trust in Him who loves us more than we can ever fathom! Thank you all for teaching me that God is Bigger!
