Some find it humiliating to have to acknowledge their dependence on charitable donations, and still others find it almost too good to be true. I began my journey on the first side, and a key part of my personal testimony is how the Greatest Giver has been gently wooing me towards the other.
When I lived with the Great River people in Cambodia, I certainly didn’t have a lot of money to give, but I had a lot of myself. I opened my home to kids who needed care. My home was a refuge from hunger and parental disregard and abuse. They used to stand wordlessly outside my door until I brought them in and cleaned the blood and puss out of their ears. When I ran out of food, my friends would share theirs with me. I never told anyone, but they knew.
I began to visit the hospital and give away my money for care and surgeries for people who couldn’t pay. The same day I got down to my last dollar, my English class decided—on their own—that each student would pay four cents for each night of class. For the rest of my time in Cambodia, I paid for my food at the market with small change.
As I learned to hold the things of this world loosely, God held me tightly. Once I left my iPod with a doctor as collateral, promising to come and pay the bill later. Another time I put $700 on my hospital account for a man who needed his foot amputated. When my quarterly wire arrived from AFM a few days later, there was an extra $700 from a donor who had sent in money for medical work in Cambodia. I hadn’t asked them, and they had never given to me before.
To raise money, I sold my fancy guitar, my Kindle tablet, and a small collection of useless electronic gadgets. God gave me back a guitar several times. A youth group from Canada on an ADRA mission trip left me money to buy a guitar. Of course I used the money to help patients at the clinic, so God had to try again. Braden and Johanna Pewitt went back to the States and left me their guitar, so I got to enjoy it until I came back to the States myself and left it for the Clay family. When I got here, I found a long-forgotten guitar behind the piano at my great aunt Dorothy’s house, and she gave it to me on the spot. It is old and beautiful, and each note is rich and clear—better in every way than the one I sold.
God helped me start sewing industries with donations from a 98-year-old lady at my home church. I even learned to sew well enough to make an old shirt last an extra six months. I wasn’t “dressed for success,” but the people I worked with often didn’t have any clothes. One of my biggest regrets was not giving one of my shirts to a man who told me stutteringly that he could sure use a shirt. My house was two minutes away, and I could have gone and gotten him one, but I liked all my shirts for different reasons. Does that sound familiar?
Nowadays the acquisition of things has become so acceptable that most people consider material prosperity a human right. How is your struggle going against our cultural tide calculated to make us want more than we need? Think back to the last game night in your home. Did you invite your favorite people, or did you invite the hungry, blind and naked?
God gave me a guitar four times. He helped me give to hundreds of patients. But let me tell you about the best gift God gave me just this year. After I had served four years as a single person in a place where there weren’t any other Christians my age, God had a gift in store for me better than I could have imagined. Mutual friends and my sisters helped. Two weeks after I arrived back in the States, they planned a game night so I could meet Stephanie. I had no idea. It took me a while to believe she wasn’t too good to be true. We both grew up with missionary parents in Asia, which has a big place in our hearts. Our goal is to go back together in the next few years. With my wife Stephanie, I’m looking forward to a new adventure trusting God, receiving from our supporters, and giving to others.
“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18, 17).
