- Members would seek God each day in anticipation of leading worship
- Gifts are used for sole purpose of honoring God
- Growth of children's and preschool choirs
When I was a sophomore in college I felt God calling me to serve for a month in China on a mission trip. The problem was that I lacked the funds to go. The trip cost was over $3000.00, and I was paying my own way through school and working side jobs for spending money. $3000.00 was, literally, and impossible sum for me to raise on my own.
To make matters worse, my parents had just moved from Tennessee to Florida and I no longer had my church home to ask for support.
But I felt that God was calling me to go and I knew he would make a way. So I signed up and started praying.
I headed “home” to Florida for spring break and talked to my parents about the trip. They told me that they could offer no financial support, and that I should probably rethink going to China.
But I felt God calling me to go, and I knew he would make a way. So I looked for a summer job.
Just as school was ending, and like all other college students do, I got a credit card application in the mail. The limit was $1,500.00. Normally I would have just tossed the application in the trash with the countless others, but I thought about the cost of my plane ticket ($1,700.00) and the tips that I would be making soon at the “Happy Tomato Café” and decided to apply.
I felt God calling me to go, maybe this was how he was making a way.
I got my credit card in the mail, right as I was going home.
My first week at the “Happy Tomato Café” was definitely happy, but I didn’t make even close to the $3000.00 that I needed to get to China, and I was only going to be able to work about a month before I headed out of the country. I went home that Friday very discouraged, questioning if what I had felt and heard was really the call of God, or if it had simply been my wishful thinking.
On my drive home from work I devised a plan: when I got home I would call the travel agent and ask if I could pay for most of my ticket with my new credit card and then pay the rest by check in a few weeks.
I picked up the phone and called the travel agency. I reminded her of who I was and before I could tell her of my plan, she told me: “we received your full payment yesterday and your tickets are in the mail.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, sure that I had heard her wrong.
She repeated herself clearly. “We received your full payment yesterday and your tickets are in the mail.”
“So my tickets are paid-in-full?”
“That’s correct. Is there anything else that you need today?”
“No, thank you.” As I hung up the phone, I realized what had just happened: I had felt God calling me to go and he had made a way.
I had said that he would, I had told people that he would, but I hadn’t really believed that he would. But he did.
I had no idea then and I still do not know where the payment for my tickets came from. I do know that God understood my financial situation and I learned that when God calls us to do something he already knows how it’s going to work. How reassuring.
~Tirzah Turner
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