You are the G.I.F.T. And UNITE Linky

I sit row six from the front. Church rumbles as the pastor announces.  Instead of asking for money…he is giving away $10,000 to the congregation.

This pastor is young, but wise beyond his years. He has served overseas and has a heart for those outside the four walls of the church.  That’s why we are there.

And I am sure he has learned, knows…anything focused inward will eventually explode.  And that includes people.

I grab an envelope, along with everyone else there, sitting comfortably.  There is random amounts of money in each.  Our job is two-fold….

1. Listen to the Holy Spirit.
2. Don’t keep it, but give the money away as God leads us.

Tears shed at the awesome responsibility entrusted to us. I hold it tight in the pages
of His word.  Pray about it…while conjuring up my own random thoughts of what I would do with it.

I want to do something big, grandiose.  We had multiplied money effortlessly for other events and I knew we could raise enough to build an orphanage in Dominican Republic, buy a well, or make a huge impact in someone’s life by paying off their bills.

But, I don’t hear God’s voice.  And I struggle with the tension of how it can be easier to jump, leap, dive out of the passions of our own will…or good intentions.  When we should wait, and keep waiting until God speaks.

For moving without God’s instruction…can actually be an act of  disobedience.

So, I wait for that still small voice.  I waited for His very specific direction.

A few weeks later, I need a car seat for a special needs foster daughter we are getting. Two days before coming, I find an add: Car seat.  Cheap.  Close to our house.  I call.  She answers.  I feel God’s tug…“This is the one”.  Then drive to get it.

A lady answers with an infant straddling her mama’s hips. A school age boy follows closely behind.

“You are such a blessing.”  I start in after seeing the car seat. “We get a child in less than forty eight hours and I am glad to be getting this just in the nick of time.”

“Do you believe in God?” She says right off, almost awkwardly.  The “blessing” word?  Did it catch her?  Or was it God…leading our hearts to UNITE?

“Yes”, I respond far too enthusiastically for my normally more mellow personality, “Absolutely! I have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ.” Bouncing with enthusiasm.

She lights up.  “He saved me too. I would not be here if it were not for Him.”  Her eyes sad, her arms heavy…with the child she is carrying…and much more.

I want to reach out to hug her.  Tell her of the love of God that is with her no matter where she is at.  But before I can, she keeps going…

“I am all alone.”  Her heart opens. “Their dad walked out on us and we haven’t seen him since.”  The lawn is long.  The regular maintenance on a house a dad would do…is missing.

He has left so much more than his kids.

She looks down.  “I am sorry” is all I say. Letting the silence fill this moment. Praying where no one can hear me.

“But God has been with me.  And I am here because of him.  I could never do all this without him.”  She looks down at the fatherless boy, the long lawn, the house, the baby crying out for more of her time…more of anything she might have left over.

“He is faithful”, I profess with my sister who I now feel a strong bond with.  “He is faithful!”  I let my silence linger…and the quiet prayers continue.

She shares further.  “Plus, my daycare kicked me out and I only have a week to find someplace for my kids.”  They want full-time children, but mine are only part time. I can feel the fear rise and encourage her that if I hear of a place accepting kids, I will contact her.  I have her number.

Her heart continues. “I have looked for a church around here.  Been to three.  But…”

She need not say more.  I am an expert at learning that grace can be hard to find behind the four walls of a church.  Especially in churches imploding with their own inward focus.

After all was the church ever intended to be a social club, a place of comfort to ease the conscious of those being of the world and in it?

Or wasn’t the church a place for desperate people…the needy…for the broken who come empty to His banqueting table?  Those most desperate and needy?

And sadly, I have experienced, that when we are full with ourselves…sometimes what God offers will never be satisfying.

But a hungry soul looking for scraps will always be open to receive food from whatever God has. For truth be told….sometimes being hungry is not a curse…but a blessing given from God himself. 

We talk on.  She used to work for a doctor that defends parents who abused their kids…like the one who hurt the little girl that was coming.  “I quit.” She says.  “My conscious wouldn’t let me work somewhere that defended families who abused little children.”

I want to hug her again.  But instead smile big, “I feel like you are my sister and I thank God that He led us here.  He lead me here to get this car seat. Bless you, Bless you.”  

She doesn’t attend church, but her heart is bigger than most I have met, her discernment much keener than those who chase after spiritual things. Her love greater than many content, hiding in buildings just to ease their conscious.

Then eventually I leave, backing out slowly between the fence of my convictions and the grass growing because the flesh of man failed to lead him to where he was needed.

I drive around the corner.  Then remember the hundred, sitting idly in my purse.  I had taken it, planning to use it to buy a cute red cabinet for my house.  It was on sale.  But I didn’t need it.  It had no purpose.  Its goal was just to sit vain-fully. Looking cute so other could see it.

And yet, how often do we do the same?  Sit idly against walls, contently planting ourselves, like ornaments, in the seat seemingly reserved with our name on it.  When we were meant to give ourselves away.

Just then, the lady I just drove away from comes to mind.  A weight falls on me…As I see the own grass of my soul needing to be cut down…needing to reach, to grip, to see as God sees.  To love, like He did…outside of the four walls of our own ideas and agendas.

It is then, I stop right in the middle of the road.  I sit there for far too long, hoping nobody plows into me.  But I cannot move.  I am paralyzed in the grip of His presence.

“Give it away” He whispers.  And a knowing settles on me where there is no question it is Him speaking.  I have no choice.  To not give it would be disobedience.

“But, I’ll look weird to go back. What will she think?”  Questions wriggle through my mind seconds after He speaks to my soul.

But it is then, I choose His wisdom…not mine. And turn around.

Driving ahead thinking about…

• How God had planned that money to be in my purse then.  How it was not the churches money…but how it was the exact amount of what I had planned to give away, all along. 
• How He ordained this meeting.  I knew it.  And suddenly I felt silly…all my plans….my great philosophies of how I wanted to go BIG, how I wanted to multiply what the church had given.  Such futility in my own thinking.

For sometimes big, grandiose, multiplied is not what He asks from us.  Sometimes He just wants us to see “That One”.  Know and hear and see the need of The One next to us, the one He connects us with, the one out in front of us that we might have missed…if we are trying to reach for the big vision….instead of giving to the small, open, reaching, needy hand in front of us.

I knock. Confused, she reaches out, open palms in front of her.  I explain the situation.  I explain how this is not from me, or necessarily my church…but that this money is from God.  And how I want her to know…God sees, God cares, God knows her need….even before she asks.  

Her eyes fill with tears.  Mine are already flooded.  We both sit there speechless, and we hug.  Now more than friends. But somehow, unspoken eternal siblings.

“It will be well spent.  Thank you.”  She chokes out the words.  Her little boy tugs at her shirt, the baby still wrapped in her arms.

And I glory in the fact that it is not the receiving…but the giving that is the heart of God. Giving, often the closest act we can do that resembles the love of the Father.

The weight I had felt in the car now lifts.  A peace surpasses the understanding of what I just did.  And I knew I gave my one gift away well.

Then, I think about that red cabinet…and how silly it seems now.  Now, in light of the color of grace.  How His blood shed down not just so we could receive….but so that we could give away His grace to a world trapped, looking, seeking a refuge for their aching hearts.  Seeking a Father for the Fatherless and a church where they can feel safe, loved, cared for…fed.

And it seems we have a choice.  To sit vain-fully like the red cabinet my flesh desired to have, filling the empty spaces in the corners of our hearts.  Or we can give the greatest gift of all…..the gift of you, the gift of me, the gift of love, the gift of His abundance….

To a whole world waiting.  A world looking.  A world needing an earthly expression…

Of Jesus.

How can you Give It Forward Today?

(Linking with Jen, Tracy, Emily)