Someone asked, “How do you afford all these evangelistic trips you take around the world?” I blurted out, without much thought, “God provides.” I didn’t need to think much about it because I can’t explain God’s favor all the way. I just give Him all the glory. People see me as I am today, but they fail to see when I could not afford common milk for my daughter. I had to sneak into the university’s cafeteria with an empty bottle of coke to obtain milk. That was how broke I was. People see me traveling the world today with ease, but they fail to see the years I waited because I could not get a single visa.
They See Now But Not Then
Unbelievers marvel at the majesty of Jesus. They cannot deny His enduring allure. That He is seated in the Kingdom of God interceding for saints. That He has a name given above every other name. At its mention, every knee on earth, in heaven or under the earth must bow. His fame, glory and preeminence is unparalleled, unprecedented even. But this same Jesus once hung shamefully on a cross, bleeding from ear-to-ear, dying as a common criminal. Unbelievers refuse to acknowledge the anguish on His face as He was betrayed by those He came to save.
The Kingdom’s Path
The way to the Kingdom is straight, but it is bumpy as well. The Kingdom way is that you toil, most times in obscurity and inadequacy, for weeks and months, sometimes years. Then, all of a sudden it seems, you enter its rest. People then wonder how you make it look so easy. But they just fail to see the blood and sweat that you invested in toil. They don’t know that you lived, sometimes for a long while, dealing with the tension that your externals were not yet matching your internals. This tide will turn. You doing the right thing today ensures that when the Kingdom comes, it is to you as growth, not recovery. As needed propulsion, and not merely restitution. I exhort you today, “Stay the course.”
Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God – Acts 14:22
