Walk by Faith, Not by Sight

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from a woman who had stumbled across my blog by googling Amazima Ministries. If you didn't know, Amazima is the LAJ Shop cause, and 10 percent of all shop proceeds support their ministry work in Uganda.

Melinda was googling Amazima because she, along with her husband Michael and their five youngest children, will be boarding a plane in December with one-way tickets to Uganda to work with Amazima. They will establish a missionary kids' school for the children of the Amazima School’s in-country staff.

As it turns out, Melinda and I have a lot in common. She's a native Mississippian who also graduated from Mississippi State, and she has several friends who live in Brandon. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I got to join Melinda and her friends at a luncheon to hear all about the Pierce Family's upcoming move to Uganda. 

I asked Melinda if she would share her family's story with you, and she graciously agreed. Today, she's writing about their journey to Uganda and how you can help them along the way. I'm still in awe of the way that God brought us together, and I can't wait to follow and support their ministry in the coming months.

The Call to Adopt

As a family, we have done some things that have surprised even us.  

In 2010, with four kids already, we adopted our two youngest from Ethiopia. We prayed and felt God leading us to adopt specifically from there, so we obeyed, even though there were lots of unknowns. Our biggest test of faith came in the area of finances. Paying for an adoption is no joke, and it's not something we could ever do in our own strength or through our own resourcefulness.

But we believed that God had called us, so we also believed that He would pay for it. Even when our faith wavered, we saw time and again that God is always faithful. Not only did he provide every penny that we needed, many times from those whom He knew but we had never met, He provided it all in record time.

We serve a faithful God.

The Call to Go

Fast forward to April of this year when we were unexpectedly contacted and asked to pray about accepting a position with Amazima Ministries and moving our family to Jinja, Uganda.

We prayed, and God said, "Go." So we said, “OK," even though:

• We are 54 and 46 years old.

• We have 5 kids (18, 16, 14, 10 & 9) still at home who will be going with us.

• Only my husband and one son have ever been to Uganda, and none of us have been to Jinja.

• We are responsible for our own financial support. No salary is provided.

Once again, there are lots of unknowns: Where will we live? Who will we meet? How hard will daily life actually be? Will the kids make new friends there? Which American foods and luxury items will we miss the most?

As if the unknowns aren't bad enough, there are also the scary knowns: Leaving behind our 21-year-old son and daughter-in-law. Moving far away from family and friends. No air conditioning. No washer or dryer.  Spotty internet. Iffy electricity. Weird bugs. Big rats. Snakes.

The whole thing reminds me of Hebrews 11:8. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”

So we are stepping out in faith once again, believing that if God is calling, He will provide. But before you think we must have a special kind of faith or give us credit where it’s certainly not due, please read on.

I stress. I doubt. I panic. I have total inner freak-out moments.

Again, the thing that scares me most is the financial side of it all. We will not receive a salary. We must rely on brothers and sisters in Christ to send us. Looking back on the adoption and how God provided, it seems ridiculous that I would ever doubt God’s provision, but I do. I forget Whom I serve.

The Call to Send

The truth is that we are NOT going on this adventure alone. We are NOT solely responsible for raising our own support. We are going in the strong hands of our perfect Heavenly Father who loves us more than we could ever imagine and who owns the entire UNIVERSE. And we can depend on Him!

God is good and He is faithful. And God will provide for us now just He has done in the past—through calling our brothers and sisters in Christ to come alongside us.

God invites us to use the resources He has placed in our care to be part of sharing the Gospel around the world. That’s how He’s been sending out missionaries for the last 2,000 years, and now, the generation He is calling to send and to go is our own. 

As believers, we are all expected to either be goers or senders. There’s no third option. If you genuinely cannot support missionaries financially, you can support them in other ways. Write a note or send an e-mail to encourage them. Just make sure you do whatever you can to be involved in what God is doing around the world. Your faith will grow when you see how God is working through the personal gifts that you have given. There’s nothing like it.

How You Can Help

If you have friends on the mission field, they're trusting God to provide, just like we are. I'm sure they would be honored and excited for your support, financial or otherwise. Just ask them how to do it and they will gladly tell you. And when they say there is no amount too small, they mean it.

If you don't know anyone personally for whom you can be a sender, we would love to have you as one of ours. One of our greatest privileges is praying for our family’s senders. We're preparing a prayer wall for our home in Uganda. It will have pictures of everyone who supports us financially, and our family will pray for our senders each day.

We would love to have you pray for us and consider joining our sending team. You can keep up with our journey to Uganda and our work at the Amazima School on our blog or on facebook. We also have a private facebook group for members of our sending team. If you want to join our sending team, click here to set up your donation. Please feel free to share this information with friends or family who may also be interested.

And finally, please contact us if you have questions or want to know more about the Amazima School! We're looking for teachers who feel called to be goers to work with us in Uganda, and we love hearing from fellow believers to see how God is working through ALL of us. 

Find out more about Melinda's family, follow their adventures in moving to Africa, and learn how you can get involved in supporting them or joining them in Uganda at her blog, We Don't But God Does.

• Follow the Pierce Family on facebook.

• Support the Pierce Family financially.

• Find out more about the Amazima School.

• Read Melinda's blog.

Practicing Faithfulness in the Space Between

Note: This is the third and final post in a series on seasons of waiting. In the past couple of weeks, we've talked about trusting God when hopes are deferred and Betsy Childs Howard's book Seasons of Waiting. Today's post is about practicing faithfulness in the space between.

When I was in college and felt the burning of God's call on my heart, I envisioned myself doing great things for the kingdom. Living with boldness and fire. Going and giving and serving and teaching and basically being a rockstar for Jesus.

But then real life stepped in. I married an engineer, and if you know any engineers, then you know that they are at their very hearts logical and practical planners. It's what makes them good engineers. It's part of what I love about Dennis. But the very pragmatism that is so much a part of him also means that the life I had envisioned for myself is different from the reality that God had planned for me.

In all honesty, I never imagined living in a small Southern town and serving as a room mom for my children's teachers or as a substitute Sunday school teacher for the senior ladies at church. This life isn't nearly as bold and fire-filled as I had planned, and yet I now know that this is exactly the life that God had planned for me all along.

I spent a lot of years frustrated at just how slowly things were going for my ministry. Even though I knew and believed that children are a blessing, I cried when I found out I was pregnant with our youngest daughter because I thought it meant that it would be at least five more years before I could do something big for God.

As if shaping the hearts and lives of tiny humans is nothing at all.

I know what it means to wait for a dream to be fulfilled. I'm intimately acquainted with the bitterness that wells up when you see someone else living the life that you long for. But the longer I waited, the more I started to wonder if maybe I had gotten things mixed up. Maybe God had placed more than one calling on my life. Now I know that my mistake was in believing that the calling of motherhood was any less important than the calling to teach the Word.

I don't know what sort of waiting season you're stuck in, but I don't doubt that you're waiting for something. You could be waiting for a spouse or longing for a child or wishing for more purpose in your life. I don't know how everything will work out in the end. But I do know this: your waiting season is not pointless. Know that God can, and does, use the unlikeliest of situations to accomplish his good plan.

I've been reminded of this truth several times lately. The story of David and Goliath has been popping up with some frequency, and I, of course, took it to mean that God was trying to tell me something. I can be a bit hardheaded at times, so he brought it up again, and again, and yet again, until I got the message. 

We first meet David in 1 Samuel 16—just one chapter before he slays Goliath. And he's an ordinary boy. A shepherd and musician. The unlikeliest of candidates to become Israel's next king. And yet, in God's eyes, he was exactly the right one for the job. There's just one tiny problem. Israel already has a king. The current king, Saul, has displeased God, and because of that, he will be displaced from his throne. Eventually. But not yet. David has no choice but to wait.

So here's the thing that God keeps pressing on me: While David waited, he kept on doing the work that God had given him to do for that day. He had been chosen as king, but knowing it wasn't yet his time, he continued to be faithful to the tasks in front of him. And the crazy thing is that if he had not kept on doing his work as a shepherd, he wouldn't have been prepared to defeat the giant.

Sounds crazy, right? You really should read the entirety of 1 Samuel 16-17 when you get a chance, but for now, know that while David's older brothers were off doing noble things for Israel, David was back home tending sheep. His father sends him to carry food and supplies to his brothers on the warfront, and when he gets there, he's shocked to find the army of Israel quaking in their boots at the taunts and threats from the Philistine champion, Goliath.

David, handsome teenage shepherd boy that he is, immediately volunteers to fight the giant. When everyone, including Saul, points out exactly crazy that is, David won't listen. Instead, he argues his case. Listen to what he says:

Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God . . . The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.   1 Samuel 17:34-37

First of all, if you've gone head-to-head with a lion and bear and come out on top, I want you on my team. Just saying. But seriously, let's talk for a minute about this, because it's important. David was a shepherd. It was a lowly job. There wasn't much praise and glory to be had there. And yet it was a job that he did faithfully and consistently. 

What would you have done if you were out tending your sheep and a lion wanted one for dinner? Personally, I would have let the lion have as many sheep as it wanted, as long as it left me alone. But David didn't do that. He stood up for those he was charged with protecting. He fought off the fiercest of opponents. And it was that readiness to step in and do what needed to be done—even at great personal risk—that enabled David to stand before Goliath with confidence.

Do you see what's happening here? God was preparing David all along. David couldn't have known that there was a giant in his future. He didn't know what God had in store for him. But the Lord did. He put a task (raising and defending sheep) before David that would prepare him for the work ahead, and it was David's faithful commitment to that task that gave him the skills necessary to strike down Goliath.

Not only that, but David also knew whose he was. He knew that he was the Lord's anointed. He knew that through his training as a shepherd, God had given him all he needed to defeat Goliath. He wasn't being arrogant or cocky when he insisted that he could do it. He was resting confidently in the knowledge that God had called and equipped him for the challenge ahead.

How does all this relate to you and me? Well, I personally find great comfort in the knowledge that God honors faithfulness in his people. David wasn't perfect. He made mistakes in his life. Big ones. But he also made it a habit to be about the business of God, even if that meant tending sheep for a while.

Is it possible that God is using your current circumstances as a training field for something he has planned in the future? Maybe you have big dreams but you're stuck in a place you never wanted to be. If so, you have two choices: you can give in to the bitterness and disappointment that threatens to overwhelm, or you can honor God and practice faithfulness in the space between. I hope you choose the latter.

Until next time, grace and peace.