'Fun' Raising

I just finished raising the rest of my money for the Denver trip this summer. It feels great to be done. Although I shouldn’t say I raised it, because God did all of it. I’m not going to lie, it was a struggle for me. I’ve never had any problems raising money, (of course I’ve never had to raise this much before) so when the money didn’t come as easily as I had expected it was hard.
Last summer for our missions trip to Havre Montana, I quickly and easily raised almost double the money needed. I definitely expected to able to do that again. That was my problem, I expected to be able to raise the money, I didn’t trust God to raise it for me. I thought that with my great ability to write an awesome support letter would bring in all the money I needed and then more. I was already preparing to share the excess amount of money I’d have with everyone else going on the trip, one problem, God didn’t like my pride.
I didn’t realize that pride is what I was feeling. When the money raising didn’t start as strong as expected I just thought it would pick up and be fine. I told myself I was trusting God by not worrying about the money, but in reality I was still trusting myself, and my skill and my desire.
I became so prideful in this, that I didn’t even want to take the jobs provided for the team to earn money. I still assumed that I would get all the money I needed, because of me. Well it didn’t happen. I started to realized that I needed to get money from somewhere. I accepted a job to go and do some work for somebody, and I remember coming home from youth group that night and just being angry. I didn’t know it at that moment, but I was mad at God for not providing me the money when I thought I had been trusting him.
That night was a long night. As I was telling my parents about my frustrations my dad finally told me that I was mad at God, and rather than talk to them about it I should deal with God. That night I wrestled with God. I bet you can guess who won. I poured out my feelings, and finally admitted to God that I was mad at him. I confessed and decided to actually put my trust in God and not in myself any longer.
Guess what? A week and half later I had all the money I needed for the trip and even more! God is good. He is faithful…of course you have to trust him first. Something I should have done from the beginning.
I’m glad now that this happened to me. I’ve learned (or at least started to learn) about the importance of trusting God, and the ugliness that pride can take. I’m definitely happy to be able to focus on the trip now and not worry about the money. I also am glad to know that I’m doing something that Satan obviously doesn’t want done. I know that this trip to Denver is the right thing, and something God wants me to do…and now I can’t wait. I’m putting this trip on God’s hands now, after all, whose hands are better suited to guide us than Gods?