As the days marched toward the impending doom that was the August 18th $6000 deadline, my support account faithfully stood stagnant at $3345, just as it had since July 5th. After a while, the static state of my support led me to the occasional lapse into panic. What do you do when your certainty doesn’t calculate? These lapses most often occurred while sitting alone in the lifeguard stand at work, a place where there is clearly too much time to ponder life problems. I mean, I do my job, vigilantly guarding the life of every patron, but mostly I think too much up there and sometimes I sing softly to myself under my breath, much like you would imagine that one guy that you always see on public transportation by himself would.
But how’s for singing the same song over and over, every 30-minute rotation in the stand? For an 8 hour shift? My "song" is probably more actually described as a broken record rendition of one line from United Pursuit Band’s Nothing I Hold On To / Climb:
“I lean not on my own understanding; my life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven.”
And after a while, I started to believe it.
It was in one of these solo sing-song times that I was reminded of something my favorite undergrad professor, Dr. Fowler, said during discussion over Moses’ reaction in Exodus 4:10-13 in light of Exodus 3:
“Do you really think a burning bush is going to solve your doubt problems?”
Ohhh shoot. In other words, was a sign itself really going to put me at ease or cultivate lasting faith? Was reaching a financial figure really the point? Moses certainly didn’t lack any signs, information, or promises. But like him, I think all of us to some extent are struggling with belief & doubt, that God is good and therefore can be trusted. So I started praying for a greater faith.
There are a lot of obvious things that can be prayed for when it comes to reaching deadlines. Aside from being the proper ‘spiritual’ thing to do, asking for a bigger faith instead of asking for more support to come in seemed a little counter-productive. Asking for people to pray that the money would come in seemed pretty harmless, but it became apparent that the money was just an afterthought, something that would certainly be worked out in due time. Much like any miracle, it was just details. What was necessary was more faith to believe God for what seemed impossible, more faith in Him as the good Giver that he is, and more faith to trust Him for even greater things in the nations.
Reaching the deadline itself was never meant to bring about more faith, instead, faith's source is the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). I think that’s what the man in Mark 9 had in mind when he asked the Lord to help his unbelief, fully acknowledging & emphasizing faith over the specific result itself… because maybe that was the whole point.
So the August 18th deadline came and passed, and I was still $2800 short. But behind the scenes, God compelled people to give; from August 12th through August 21st $3900 cash flooded my account. I am now coming in just around $7200 (not including monthly donors), which is well above my $6000 deadline, and puts me close to being half-funded for the year. Thank you to all who have given in these last 2 weeks, it is alarming evidence of His faithfulness. I can't doubt the words I've been singing:
I lean not on my own understanding; my life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven.
