Saturday night we launched a daunting 24-hour fundraising surge. We had an incredible opportunity to buy a coffee truck for our coffee ministry for only $16,000. This was $9,000 less than originally negotiated.
I woke up Sunday morning and checked the first 12-hour total that was raised — $1,300…
After meeting up with a friend at Starbucks (ironic, I know) around 7am, the Lord burdened me with this passage in Mark 11:22-24. For context, the day before Jesus had just cursed this fig tree for not being ready and bearing fruit. As Peter and Jesus walk by this same spot the next morning, Jesus said to his followers:
“Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea’, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for — believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
As I sat reading this, I couldn’t help but think,“If this truck purposed anything other than to bring glory to Jesus, then what’s the point?”
The point of the fig tree, and what our prayer should be, is that we be found faithful with what we’ve been given, regardless of whether or not God fulfills visions we believe to be of Him by our expectations.
At 7:19am I concluded my thoughts regarding this and decided my scope of God wasn’t in right perspective this morning, so I began my fast. I took some time to make note of some things pertaining to God as I prayed. I was reminded that God perfectly placed this Earth on a 23.5 degree axis, that everything orbits in space at the exact pace in which God’s allowed it. I was reminded of a David Platt quote that I love,
“Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator… until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, ‘No.’”
Before I knew it, my phone rang to some dear friends telling me, wherever the fundraiser was by 6pm, they’d like to fund the remaining up to $16,000. At that point I realized it was 7:36am, and yes, I had just completed the quickest fast I’ve ever had!
God has, can, and will continue to do the miraculous. My encouragement to myself and you is to be wholly satisfied in Him at all times though. It’s easy to walk with Jesus when God does blatant miracles, like this, to make his glory undeniable to a world who tries to deny His existence.
Simultaneously, maybe the greatest miracle He’s trying to work in you and I today is our unwavering devotion and patience when He’s not visibly moving mountains before us.
May God be glorified in our lives, and may we be found “ready in and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2).