"Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have." - Jim Rohn
No matter where you are in your walk, I am here to tell you that YOU ARE ABLE to accomplish any and every thing that the Lord has laid on your heart to do. The secret is in your faith. You never know exactly how faithful you are - until faith is ALL you have. And those are the days the He picks you up and carries you.
The mission field is hard, harder than I ever could have possibly imagined. Emotionally, physically and financially. You see the need and it breaks your heart. You serve the need and it breaks your back. You give to the need and it breaks your wallet. But you do it anyway, and with JOY.
The need is so big that you feel you are only a drop in the bucket. You don't have an actual "starting" point, so you pray for direction and the Lord guides you to a point of contact. A colonia full of kids, just roaming the streets; some are hungry, some want a friend, some want to learn, some are in search of discipline, and some...just want a hug. Those are the ones, those kids that just want someone to love them; they become your heartbeat. Then the Lord guides you to a place called "la familia de basura" (families of the dump); yes, they live and eat in the dump. Children with distended bellies and dark circles around their eyes; crying for the oranges you have in the truck. Mothers with haggard faces and tear stained eyes because they didn't find anything to feed their children for the last 2 days. Those are the ones, those mothers and their children trapped in a life of poverty; they become your second heartbeat.
You live in this poverty stricken area with them, you sweat in your apartment, you sweat outside, you sweat and you live their life. You don't go to a 5 star hotel and live the good life after doing good deeds for the day. You live life with them.
Your door is always open, you feed your own groceries to the hungry, you color with the children on the sidewalk, you play in the rain with all the children, you hug the little girl that has lice so big you can see them across the room, you help an elderly man dig up his sewer line and replace it, you buy chicklets from an elderly lady with no other income, you help a neighbor with an injured child get back and forth to doctor appointments, you go to grocery stores and ask or bribe the guys at the back door for the discarded food to feed the hungry, you clean up trash in the street of your colonia, you teach English to children that are hungry to escape a life of poverty, you take 10 kids for a ride in the air conditioned car, give 60 kids their very own set of markers or colored pencils, take 2 kids to a grocery store the first time in their 9 year old lives, you clean and bandage cuts and scrapes, you take a whole family for an outing to the beach, and you just "be there" for those that need a hug or a shoulder.
You don't want anything. You don't expect anything. You only want to love them, even the ones that give you lice.
One day you find yourself down to 7.5 pesos (.42 cents) and no idea how or where you will come up with money to pay rent, put gas in the car, or feed your own dog. All you know is that you HAVE to make your daily trip to pick up donated food behind the grocery store and take it to the family in the dump that you have adopted. They are depending on you. You hit your knees and you cry out to God. And somehow, the wifi signal lights up on your phone (a phone that is not even in service anymore) and you receive a message from someone who would like to send an offering to help out.
Praise God! He ALWAYS makes a way where there is NO WAY!
This - this is why I say "you are able." Because you must latch on to faith, BELIEVE the impossible! He called you, He is faithful and just to deliver you. When fear and doubt creep in, cry out! Hang onto your faith with everything you got! Hang on by your fingernails if you have to.
You are able. And when you are so emotionally, physically and financially drained - He will carry you. Just. Don't. Let. Go.
"being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6
