Finances for your ministry: a Vacation Bible School boon

I don’t like expensive church activities, so when Brenda Bowen announced a $10/week vacation Bible school, I was overjoyed.

Trained in utter poverty of African missions, Brenda Bowen delivered ministry that excluded no one from the salvation message.

There would be hardly any money for the snacks, the crafts and all the activities that were to be done. I was drafted for a couple of skits, one of which was clowns with my son and another boy. What fun!

But since God is great, the project finished with $80 extra — not the shortage I imagined impossible to avoid. This is God’s provision for His ministry.

If you are working to save souls, you can expect God to take care of you. Like Peter who hauled in a net-wrenching haul of fish when there were none in the lake, so God will multiply and make something out of nothing. When you pray for finances, believe and wait expectantly.

Praying for finances: Don’t panic

• Praying for finances

Pastor Banner now teaches in our school, el Liceo Bilingue La Puerta

Money is a problem for most of us. If I had just a little bit more…

We always need just a little bit more. It seems like “just scraping by” is normal. We don’t know how we make it. Having lack of money is good because it keeps you praying.

• George Mueller prayed for his orphans to have milk and bread daily, and the miracles came daily. He prayed for the furnace to be repaired in the dead of winter.
• Hudson Taylor received miraculous money for the China Inland Mission time after time.
• Elijah was fed by a raven after 3 years of drought.
• Jesus multiplied bread and fish to feed the hungry multitude.
• To pay a temple tax, Peter caught a fish and found a gold coin in its mouth.

Miss Jeannette with her class at the private school God raised up in Guatemala. God did miracles of finances.

The list is endless, inside and outside of the Bible. We can encourage faith in our hearts by remembering what God has done.

I reversed my life. Most people do what they want when they retire after working for years. Now, after 16 years of doing what I wanted (missionary in Guatemala), I’m getting into the work scenario. Maybe that’s a good way to do it: do what you enjoy while you’re young.

My wife, Dianna, and I at the recent July 4 parade.

And I’m praying for finances. Though I don’t have much, I have the great satisfaction that my life has counted for something. A church and a school are alive and well in Guatemala today because I answered the call to go.

Whatever your situation, don’t be depressed about finances. Keep working and praying. God will provide.

Even more impossible: prayer’s power

• How do I pray effectively?
• Prayers of the Bible
• Pray for finances
• Inspiration for prayer

from http://www.alphaconsultant.com

First they were 32,000. Then they were 10,000. Then they were 300.

The shocking attrition was actually good news. If Gideon had too many, Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved Me (God)’ Judges 7:2 NIV. By making victory even more impossible, God assured He’d get the praise.

If your situation is steeply difficult, don’t despair. Don’t calculate “possibility.” A miracle, by definition, is contrary to natural law and contrary to reasonable explanation. Do you have:

1. church rent due with no foreseeable income to cover it?
2. big dreams and small budgets?
3. restrictions on what you can do for God due to finances?

Rejoice! When Gideon won against the Midianites, everybody got whooped up! Don’t glower, don’t be glum. God is going to move! Just pray with faith! Watch and see! Act and know that God will do what you cannot!

Audacious faith

One man stands alone against 750 false prophets, against a despot and against his power-hungry wife who runs death squads.

Elijah challenges virtually an entire nation when he calls down fire from Heaven upon a water-saturated sacrifice that gets incinerated. Seeing this, the Israelites remember God Jehovah and turn back to their roots.

Where did such faith come from? Everything was against him. I want this kind of audacious faith. Procure in prayer and Bible study a faith that:

• never cowers
• always hopes
• always loves
• never complains
• accomplishes the impossible
• whips the devil
• never wavers no matter the storm’s intensity
• does not let fear creep in

Some of my favorite faith-filling verses are:

1. James 5:16 NIV Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly…
2. Matt. 17:20 NIV if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
3. Matt. 9:29 NIV According to your faith let it be done to you
4. Matt. 21:22 NIV If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
5. Heb. 11:1 NIV Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Unpaid here

with my family

I became an actor briefly. It seemed like the logical thing to do to avoid the stigma of “unemployed.” Besides, this is LA — 60% of the people are actors, which means “unemployed.” I never took acting classes; I just declared myself an actor (it’s cheaper that way), and I no longer felt obligated to provide explanations for joblessness.

I’m hamming it up again.

But soon I realized my folly. After all, I was a writer before I became an actor. About writers, let me say it is totally redundant and unnecessary to place the adjective “aspiring” in front of the word “writer.” Being a writer is another acceptable way of calling yourself “unemployed.”

with a Chinese friend. Man, is he serious!

Then too, I’m a prayer warrior. Boy, I keep chalking up the unremunerated professions, don’t I? At least here on Earth, it’s hard to get paid to pray.

Of course, in Heaven, it’s paid handsomely. Most people just don’t have the patience to defer their gratification that far into the future. (On second thought, given the brevity of life, maybe it’s not that long to wait for after all.)

It’s the same God

from soumyav

Commander Joshua receives his marching orders from God: As I was with Moses, so I will be with you — Josh 1:5 NIV. You’ll have no less success, God says, because I’ll be with you in no less measure.

That promise is for us, New Testament habitation of the Holy Spirit. God is with us. Our lives testify to the same outpouring as the Biblical heroes, the same kinds of miracles. It’s an error to think “that was then, and this is now.” The book of Acts does not end with the word “amen,” unlike most other New Testament books; this signifies that the “acts” of the Holy Spirit continue in and through us.

God offers no less for us than for them. Our only limitation is our own lack of faith. He responds to faith and is shocked by lack of faith. When you pray — whether it be for health, deliverance or finances — realize He is with you in the same way He was with Moses and Joshua.

God loves the unfavored

This fact makes the case for prayer. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing –– Deut.10:18 NIV. Not many people study the verses of “widow.” To do so blows your mind.

From Exodus to Revelations, God repeatedly and pointedly favors the disenfranchised, the proletariat, the 99%, the unpopular, the underdogs. Forget about smoking pot; it’s not as much a sin as mistreating (or not helping) the widow, orphan, foreigner, poor — the quartet that encapsulates what we now call “powerlessness.”

from DumpaDay

Often, we go to prayer after other options have failed. We are powerless. Outside of divine intervention, things look bleak.

The fabulously fantastic news is God LOVES people who are desperate, broken, without resources. His heart goes out to them.

This should flood your heart with faith. When you cry tears before the Lord, He is there crying with you. Given this unmeasurable empathy, you can be sure He will answer.

Don’t just work for $$$

Time is money. Or so they say.

If you fully ascribe to that philosophy, you tend to allot time slots only in two categories  1) Work hard. 2) Play hard. God gets increasingly shorter shrift because time is money and time we dedicate to Him is neither money made nor money enjoyed.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, deep in my heart resides an

from Kendra Hansen

unquenchable desire to serve humanity for free. Dunno why. Maybe because I was so disillusioned with the American Dream as a child (loneliness). Whatever its cause, I treasure service to God and man as 24 carat gold.

I highly recommend the emotional riches of altruism to everybody. For years, I was a missionary. Now I teach in a small private Christian high school

from EcoGreen

(“small” = no budget. Get it?). And I’m loving it. I find myself trying to explain myself to a a country that, by and large, doesn’t understand anything beyond keeping up with Jones. (Hey, if you’re in the rat race, what does that make you?)

By no means am I disparaging hard work and prosperity. I’m only trying to stress the need to make significant time for selfless service. Such enriches your heart. If you don’t know how wonderful it is, give it try.

 

 

When you reap what you didn’t sow

Money is a problem for us, not for God. We quote to our kids that money doesn’t grow on trees or appear out of thin air. But for God it does. He can make money appear from nowhere.

I harvest crops I didn’t plant and gather crops I didn’t cultivate. — Matt. 25:26. Many know God as the “God of the Harvest.” But do you know that He is also the “God of the Harvest that He did not Cultivate” and the “God of the Harvest You did not Cultivate.”

He can bring a windfall at any time — usually just in time (it always seems late). The word “windfall” is derived from the Middle Ages, when peasants were forbidden to chop wood for cooking. When a wind whipped up, it often blew down the necessary firewood. It was called a “windfall.”

God’s Wind, his Holy Spirit, will blow finances your way. Just pray. God’s harvest of unknown origins will be reaped into your barn. Just pray. Don’t chafe under the mounting bills. Trust and keep working for souls.

The grateful dead

This is my family.

And so a whole nation came from this one man who was AS GOOD AS DEAD —a nation with so many people that, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, there is no way to count them. — Heb. 11:12 Living Version.

Hey, I figure that if God can prosper a dead man, He can prosper you.

Maybe your ministry doesn’t have much to offer in the way of variety. But it probably is not as bad as Abraham’s. Think about it — the guy was WAY PAST the age of hope. His wife had already passed child-bearing years. Just as barren as a desert. Then, whamo! God does the miracle, and a nation results.

When you pray for finances for your ministry, pray for something big. Don’t settle for anything smaller than a nation. And whatever you do, don’t get dragged down by current circumstances. Your situation may seem “dead,” but God has a history of using the “dead.”