We haven’t written lately, and most of that is because of how hectic both of our schedules are with me working and going to school and Bethany working full time. But I wanted to write just to get some things off of my chest and to be transparent with any of our supporters. First of all, thank you all if you have supported, or are planning to. Second of all, I want to keep you up to date on where we are in this whole process. For a little while, we have questioned God’s calling of us to this, letting things create doubt in us as far as financial support deadlines and things of that nature.
But I’ve wondered, is it just our inability to trust? I have such a hard time with that, especially with financials. One of our main ideas that we share is that it shouldn’t cost money to show people Jesus. It didn’t cost the disciples money to go to all the nations and make more disciples. We understand that the airfare to get there is unavoidable and that it wouldn’t be possible to get there in too many other ways, but as far as accommodations when we get there, Jesus was homeless…
And for a long time, we thought that it was too much money to go, that we wouldn’t be able to go because we couldn’t raise the money, that we didn’t think that we could fundraise that much. And it only made it harder when going to churches who claim that their existence is to make disciples of all nations couldn’t support us because of our lack of membership. This happened on multiple accounts and really opened our eyes to the hypocrisy that exists in the ‘church’ today. We’ve gotten so ingrained in our minor theologies that we’ve forgotten the basics. We have all of these rules that if you don’t follow, you’re doing it wrong. Being a Christian isn’t a rulebook, and I’ve said that so many times and heard it so many times from the same pulpits that we got the “Oh you’re not a member, we can’t support you.”‘s. But when do we actually start living it. This isn’t meant to be a rant, but I hope that somewhere, someone else can see that we’re doing it all wrong here. Jesus wasn’t a Southern Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Catholic, a Non-denominational, or any of the other branches of Christianity that we have today. He was the church. And as a society today, I think that we’ve lost that. Are we turning into the Pharisees? Having all of our rules and forsaking our relationships? Please don’t take my concern for denominations separating Christianity as condemning them because that’s not the purpose of this off-track from our main blog. The purpose is to show that being a follower of Jesus isn’t a special club that you get privileges once you’ve been voted in. It’s so much more. Following Jesus is understanding love. Love doesn’t abide by politics. And if we’re subscribing to those rules and regulations, I’m under the impression that we might be missing the whole picture. Following Jesus is about being loved, regardless of your denomination, and showing that love to other people. In an older blog I mention a quote that was in my bible. “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another where to find bread.” It’s funny to me that the quote doesn’t say that the beggar can only go to Walmart to get bread, or that he can only go to Ingles to get bread. It’s about finding bread, not the store that it’s sold in. Just like life. It’s finding about Jesus, not the building or denomination He’s preached from.
It looks like someone put a rabbit hole somewhere in this blog because I just chased it for a while. My apologies. In getting back to the main idea about God’s plan, I think that our problem lately has been us. I just caught this as I was re-reading and I think it speaks volumes. Earlier I said, “we thought that it was too much money to go, that we wouldn’t be able to go because we couldn’t raise the money, that we didn’t think that we could fundraise that much” Notice all the we’s? I did. But not until after I had written them. There’s our problem. We’ve been trying to get through the financial portion of the trip. Not letting God be in control. And that’s what we need to be reminded of daily. That we’re not driving this boat. He is.
If you’re following, please pray that we will be reminded of that daily, that He’s driving and that we’ll remember to let Him, because He’ll take care of us.
Also, if you’d like to buy a t-shirt, there’s a link on our facebooks.
finding aslan 