Raising support to sustain a life of missions can be overwhelming. It can be a major obstacle that keeps people from ever obeying God's call on their life. We know God controls every resource in the world, but do we truly believe He can provide in this way for our life? We've put together a series of support raising stories from people in different stages and viewpoints of life as a way to remind you that God is at work and He loves to show off in this way.
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I am currently raising support to join the mobilization team. I’ve been raising since last April, so it’s been a fairly long season for me so far. In the past couple of months, I’ve felt led to pray that I would be fully funded by April 30th of this year. I remember telling my coach, about this prayer even though I’d been sitting around the 65% mark for many, many weeks straight. She was, understandably, quick to remind me that I would have to raise 35% in about six weeks if I were to meet that goal. Quick reminder–it had taken me about nine months to even get to 65%. She didn’t discourage me from lifting for this, but we both knew this was a bold ask. Nonetheless, it’s what I felt led to, and it’s what I asked my investors to pray for alongside me.
I was feeling so good, and then Coronavirus happened. The bit of motivation that I still had remaining after almost an entire year of investment raising pretty much crashed and burned as soon as we went on lockdown. After a few days of not seeing any humans besides my husband (side note: I’m about 95% extrovert), I called my coach and told her I was really struggling with depression from being alone and anxiety from all that’s going on around us. It’s not really like me to deal with these feelings, so I also wasn’t quite sure how to handle them. I told her I really wasn’t motivated to do any of my tasks the following week, and she was super understanding of all that I was feeling. On top of that, I was thinking about people being less financially secure right now or being too stressed out to meet with me, even via FaceTime.
We were reminded in our new hire meeting that we don’t know the financial situations of others and that if anything, we can have more meetings right now since people have so much more free time. I’ll be real though–I was still pretty skeptical that anything good would come out of this. It was a rough few days. In all honesty, I even stopped praying about being fully funded by April 30th because surely that request needed to be altered now that we’re in the middle of a literal worldwide pandemic.
But God, right? But God isn’t just faithful when we’re faithful, is He? The very next day I had a meeting with a couple that had never heard the term “the 10/40 window,” so I honestly wasn’t any more hopeful after that meeting than before it. I told them I was about $400 away from 75% and that I would love for them to just lift about what they can do to help me reach that goal. This couple texted me a week later and said, “We want you to be at 75%, so we’re going to give $400 a month so that you will be.” WHAT?! It was completely unexpected, and I was overjoyed. This couple that didn’t know anything about the unreached was suddenly my largest donor.
Later that day, a friend texted me out of the blue and asked me to send my giving information to her mom so that her parents could join my team too. Another $50. A friend from our small group got back to me the next day and said he wanted to join our team at $125 a month. Then later that day a couple that I met with in September reached out and said they wanted to join at $250 a month.
In less than 72 hours, God provided, through my friends, $825 of new support, even during this time of so much uncertainty.
I’m currently 85% funded and am in awe of all the Lord has done through this weird season. When we are weak, He is strong. If I had received this much support in such a short time at any other time during this season, it would have been easy for me to attribute this to what I said in those meetings or that I had been meeting with a lot of people. Our God deserves all the glory, though, not me. Praise that He didn’t give me this much needed investments until this point when I cannot point to a single thing that I did to cause this. All of this was from Him. He is so good to us, friends!
I’m still praying to be fully funded on April 30th, which I just realized yesterday would be the one-year anniversary of my first day of my support raising training. I would love if you could pray with me!
Ultimately, I want to remind us all that even though this is a strange and unprecedented time, that God is still so much better than we can ever know, and we truly can “take courage, be strong, and remember where our help comes from.”
