What Will He Ask You To Give?

Yesterday was an amazing day in my life, a day of beginnings.  I took my daughter to the airport to begin the next phase of her life's journey and as our last hug for eleven months came to an end, I felt the magnitude of what God has asked of me.  He asked me to release her and trust her to His hands.  Then last night, we had the first service of our Faith Promise Missions Conference and Brother Jerry Byars challenged us about faith and finding out what God would have us to do for Missions in the coming year.  These two events stirred similar emotions in me.
I have had a number of people ask me if I cried all day yesterday.  The answer is no.  The process of releasing my daughter didn't happen all at once, so yesterday's farewell was not terribly traumatic.  I learned from Dr. James Dobson many years ago that I needed to begin to let her go a little at a time as she approached her adolescent years, so that she could learn and grow and so that I would be ready when the time came to let her fly.  Shelley and I have encouraged our children to make their own decisions, offering godly counsel, but allowing them to make choices and deal with the consequences.  They have not always chosen to follow exactly the same path that I would have chosen for them, but as I look at their lives right now, I can see the hand of God moving them and both of them have learned to listen for His voice and to follow it wherever it leads.  God gave me the responsibility to teach them what is right and then release them to His care.  The result, in my life and that of my family, is that I am now being blessed by the life and testimony of my children.  I am learning from them new ways to worship and serve the Lord with gladness.  And by God's grace, I can now count both of my children as joint-heirs, co-laborers, and best of all, friends.  What God asked me to give up was control, something that we never really have anyway.  What He gave me instead was a relationship that is both fruitful in His service and joyful for me.
When I think about Faith Promise Missions, my mind goes to a similar place.  This is not a new thing for me.  I have been giving regularly to Faith Promise since I was 12 years old, almost 40 years.  And God has never let my giving to His work become a burden.  Long ago, He taught me that my life and all that it entails is not my own.  It belongs to Him.  Just as my children are gifts from God, so everything else in my life ultimately belongs to Him.  He asks me to surrender control to Him, and promises that if I do, He will allow what He has given me to germinate and grow into something that will be fruitful in His service and a joyful blessing to my life.  As I heard Brother Byars' testimony about Faith Promise last night, the question wasn't, "Will I give?" but "How much will I trust God for?"  And since I have already learned to give Him control in my family, it's not too hard to surrender control over my finances as well.
I challenge you to be a part of Faith Promise Missions giving.  It will change your life when you decide to trust God with all that you are and all that you have.  Then you can just sit back and see what God is going to do with what you have given Him.