5 Things I Learned by Filling out our Pledge Card

Lauren and I sat down to complete our 2-year giving plan last night.  I put a few hours of prep into it before our talk by evaluating our 2013 budget expenses and predicting our 2014 expenses.  Here are 5 things I learned:

1.  God is good and faithful.  He met all of our needs last year, and enabled us to give to His church.  Whatever fears and concerns we faced last year are gone, and written over all of them is, "God was faithful"...again!

2.  God's timing is perfect.  We noticed several things in our finances are changing at once, allowing us to give more generously.  We paid off a car, we are lowering our monthly housing expenses, we paid off past auto and medical bills.  God is able to weave our finances together in a way that allows for timely giving.  We couldn't have planned it this way.

3.  We have many reasons to walk by fear.  Over the past month, we've been hit with many unexpected expenses.  Our furnace went out, our washing machine was clogged, our garage door broke and our garbage disposal died.  We could easily say, "Now is not the time to give to the church."  But we know God will provide as we step out by faith.  We can find many excuses to follow our fears, but God is able to meet all of our needs.  We are walking by faith.

4.  This is a FAITH plan.  As we decided our monthly pledge amount, we were able to account for most of it.  But some of it we cannot guarantee.  That's why this is a FAITH plan.  We were able to trim down our expenses on eating out.  We also directed some of our car savings to the pledges.  We can pretty much guarantee these offerings will be available.  But we are expecting to give some money from sources that are not guaranteed yet.  We think this money will be available, but we are making the pledge by faith before the money comes in.  We can't account for all of it on paper.

5.  Where our treasure is, our hearts will be.  Over the past 5 years, we had the joy of giving to various offerings.  I remember when we had to raise $50,000 to launch the church.  I remember our first benevolence offering when we raised over $40,000 for people in need.  I remember when we collected our first building offering of $114,000.  By giving to these special offerings, our hearts became tied to the people who were blessed by our generosity.  We were overjoyed to see a full room on launch Sunday as the Gospel was proclaimed.  We were deeply moved as we heard how Harvest was helping people struggling in this economy.  We were excited when the facility search began!  Our hearts follow our treasure, and we are now praying fervently that many souls will be saved, that disciples of all ages will be taught, and that God will be worshiped because we gave to move the mission forward.