When I sat with Troy at the end of college, he was showing me a list of my strengths and weaknesses. On the weaknesses side, he said I was anxious. I didn't really understand what that meant totally... but I think I'm starting to get it.
Support raising is rough. We're all stressed, even Lisa, and she's doing better than all of us % wise (even though I recently informed her we're in a race). Honestly, the source of our stress is an uncertainty on whether the money will come in. It comes in many forms, sometimes manifesting in the outright doubt of the possibility it will come in. This, for me, is not the issue I face.
I'm actually really certain that the money will come in. But I'm not sure that I am really relying on God for that money. And in turn, I am anxious. I am anxious to be doing anything I can to be faithful to spending my time well in raising that money. I must be driving my mom nuts with talking to her about it three times a day. She is really a great mom though, just rolling with it and telling me it'll come in fine.
Well, after going out of town, I pretty much exhausted all of my immediate appointments. Upon coming back, I realized I only had a few people left to call, and I have arranged appointments with them or future times to set appointments. I can't talk to my church until Tuesday (because of our church rules), and then I have the job of getting that rolling. But right now I am really without any MPD stuff to do other than a couple thank yous.
With such a halt to what I can do, I have started feeling really anxious. I want to be doing stuff! I want to be calling people, setting up appointments, plugging the J Film all over the place and writing letters, etc. But God has shut that down for me. Instead, He says to me, "Be still, and know that I am God."
I am sitting here tonight, with having done absolutely NOTHING all day long concerning MPD. I have deduced that I should really chill out and see where these next few appointments go, see what happens in my church, and then start working that avenue. I honestly don't have much else. So instead of freaking out and scrounging random names and numbers, I didn't do anything.
Tonight I went to hang out with Kellen. It was a great time! But listen to this. He tells me that he talked to his boss about me, and his boss was instantly like "I would like to support him." Kellen didn't say I needed support, didn't ask him to support me, nothing. It just came out of nowhere.
That's the way this is working whether we realize it or not. Lots of the money will come through us faithfully using every second God gives us. But for me, God decided to remind me that He's the one doing the raising, not me, and in order to do this He shut me down for four days and let me see the support keep coming in regardless of what I do.
I guess we should trust that God is using this for our good, whether it's going well or not, and know we can trust firmly in the Lord to use this support raising to draw us closer to Him.
Awesome.
