A Challenge to Share

Imagine that! A picture of me with my mouth wide open! Shift your gaze to that gorgeous face to my right, though. She was one of the beautiful children sitting with me at the table at one of the Compassion projects in Ecuador that I talked about in today's devotion. That trip was a huge marker on a journey that God has been designing for me. I wanted to share a little more about the journey in the blog today.

The BIG THING I want to do today is to share a challenge. Did God tug at your heart about changing the life of a child as you read the devotion today? I urge you to respond. Here's the challenge that God has laid on my heart. As a group of God-loving, Jesus-serving, devotion-reading people, I believe that God wants to make a difference through us today. If you'll look to the right of this post (oops! not my family but the face right above), you'll see a sweet little face of a child who is in need. Please stop and take a minute to pray right now and ask God if He wants you to sponsor this child. The post below will give you some details. I've written and rewritten this post, but God has impressed on my heart that it is He who will do the work today. So I'm giving up on eloquent words or heart-wrenching pleas to move your heart to sponsor a child. Please just pray and be obedient to what God is speaking.

As part of the challenge, I'd ask you to help encourage others. If you decide to sponsor a child today, would you please leave a comment to share what God impressed on your heart? Did you know that He was giving you an opportunity outside of your sphere of personal influence? Did that child across the globe share your child's birthday? Are you waiting for your own child and investing in the life of someone else's? Please, please share.

Compassion can give us numbers of sponsored children in a few days, and I'll post them when I get them. I'm excited already! It's not about numbers, but in this case it represents the number of children with changed lives. In the mean time will you help to spur others on to good works? Comment anonymously if you'd feel more comfortable, but we'll all be encouraged to hear how God is working. As my boys say, "Don't leave me hangin'!" Here are some things God has done in my heart and family through child sponsorship:

Giving. God's been speaking it to me through Dr. Stafford's book Too Small to Ignore that I quoted in today's devotion. He spoke it to me this morning through the podcast that I listened to as I ran. He spoke it to me through Marybeth's devotion yesterday. Giving...

No matter how much or how little we have, God asks us to be givers--of our time, our gifts, our resources, our money. It's a total contradiction in a culture that teaches us to be hyper-consumers. I have to say that God has been pretty "in my face" about my life and my attitude about money in the last few days. I can't say that I'm feeling very comfortable about some of the changes that I'm being called to, but I can say with confidence that I know that God's ways are best.

I'm excited about issuing a challenge to our readers. I want to give you a place to start in being a God-called giver. God has been showing me that life change starts with an action that agrees with the direction God is leading. Just one action. Today I challenge our devotion readers to sponsor a child through Compassion International. God has put a big vision in my heart. Let's see how many children we can save together today!

To the right of this post is a picture of a real child who has real and probably desperate needs. For just $32.00 a month, you can help change not only the life of this child but the lives of everyone in his or her family for generations to come. It's a fairly small donation that will make a huge impact in the life of a family. I love Compassion so much because they have a staff of nationals all over the world that use American dollars to meet the spiritual, educational, nutritional and medical needs of children in a culturally appropriate way through local churches.

You may already be sponsoring a child through Compassion or another organization. That's fantastic! Would you pray and ask God if He'd have you sponsor a second child or send an extra donation to the organization you support? I'm just asking you to ask God. Your obedience to what ever He says is perfect.

My family's budget is fairly tight, but we've adopted a much-loved family tradition that was suggested by a friend. Each month we have a meal of beans and rice that replaces a time that we would have gone out to eat. This meal helps to finance our sponsorship, but it's done so much more. My family is gaining a bigger view of the world. We've been reminded that not everyone gets to eat the way we usually eat, and we are more sensitive to bigger needs than the newest edition of Guitar Hero or those new cute shoes (shocking to me, too!). It's also a time when we write to Manuel, our sponsored child. If you know that your family budget is already stretched thin, would you prayerfully consider this as a way to sponsor a child? Here's a picture of me with Manuel who I got to meet when our team traveled to Ecuador. One of the top ten memorable moments of my life!

If God has been speaking to your heart about giving, here's your chance to take an action in the right direction. I'm so excited about that! Click on that beautiful face on the right, and don't miss coming back here to see what kind of impact that Proverbs 31 devotion readers can make on the world for God's Kingdom!