Every fall, missionaries and department heads within AFM sit down and work on budgets for the new year. They compare strategies with current progress and evidence of God’s leading. They update ministry plans and try to align them with God’s revealed will. Plans and budgets are then discussed and fine-tuned: plans for medical ministries in remote mountain regions, mission schools, salaries, radio ministries and Bible translations. The list is long.
Once complete, members of the AFM team can take a fresh look at our new God-sized goals and plan confidently on accomplishing them, for we should be able to assume that if God has a plan, He also has a way to enable it—including funding.
What fascinates me is that all across the world, dedicated Christians, such as yourself, also sit down and create budgets for the new year and set aside funds for important things—like rent, car payments and food. Because you have also embraced being part of the AFM team, your budgets allow for ours.
I recently talked to a donor who committed herself to supporting an AFM project by pledging her waitress tips one night per week. Then, as an act of faith, she paid what she expected to receive—for a whole year in advance! I am not encouraging everybody to do this. I only mention it because she is one of a vast array of people whose support of missions and AFM involves active faith. Mission life is not always easy, and neither is its support. But when we all live out our faith, at home and abroad, work among the unreached can consistently move forward—and does.
As the fireworks said goodbye to 2022 and welcomed in 2023, and the last sounds of roman candles and other fireworks echoed across the countryside, folks at AFM shook their heads in wonder as we recorded the last donations for the old year. We realized that, once again, your budgets and ours have sufficiently overlapped to allow the everlasting gospel to continue its spread among the nations. Emergencies have even been addressed. We were not expecting them, but God obviously was.
And so, we would like to publicly recognize God’s hand at AFM and in each of our lives. As we do so, we share a special thanks to each of you for your financial support, dedication and faith. Thank you for being part of the team.
As we step forward in 2023, I believe we can each do so with confidence, knowing that the God of yesterday is also the God of today and tomorrow. As we work together to complete the Great Commission, we have His promise, “And lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.” Oh, that that age would be ours!
May the God of “all things good” be with you throughout this new year!
