Like many of you were probably doing in the past few days, Charissa was going through her budget this past week to determine what sort of year end giving she might be due to give. It was fascinating to watch her wrestle a bit with God about this. You see, this year for her persuasive speech in competition she has decided to focus on teaching teens fiscal responsibility. For months she has been researching her three points: spending, savings, and yes – giving! In her speech she speaks to parents, exhorting them to model giving at least 10% of their income, and to encourage their teens to do the same. She is passionate about her speech, and came in 4th overall in our recent competition – but that was when it was just words. Now, here she was adding up her paychecks from her restaurant job this year, moving the decimal point to see the 10%, and swallowing hard to think that God would ask such an amount from her. When she asked us about it we pointed out that the Bible doesn’t give an exact number but yes, 10% is a good starting point. In the end, she went ahead and donated to both our local church and a children’s charity called ‘Cure International’. Not an easy move for a girl who has visions of her own car in the future.
Around the same time, Eric and I wanted to be sure to review our giving for 2014 before the close of the year as well. After review, we gave a year end donation to our church, but then we had a new idea. We decided to involve all the girls. We gave each one of them a chance to designate where they’d like a portion of our year end giving to go. This may seem odd considering our obvious commitment to FamilyLife, but we feel like it is important for them to realize that God’s work is much bigger than just us. We asked them to each consider where God might direct them to give. For Charissa, this led back to Cure where she is supporting a little boy with hydrocephalus in Zambia. Brenna asked that we send her portion to K-Love radio – she is so thankful for the music they provide as an alternative to all the junk found on the radio! Amanda thought right away of Focus on the Family – particularly for their production of Adventures in Odyssey audio dramas. She has pointed back to them many times for spiritual lessons, and says they are the main reason that she asked to be baptized a few years ago. It was a great opportunity to clearly show our support to the work of God in so many different ways! I think we may have to make this a new tradition! We pray you head in to 2015 looking for all the ways God is a work as well – and give as the Lord leads you!