Who is the Body of Christ?

 

This has been a difficult week.  I am seeking GOD for direction about WT and my senior years.

Today I listened to a LOT of videos about Christian business.  Faith Driven Entrepreneur (.org) is one organization I get emails from, C12 (joinc12.com) is another.  C12 is a peer group organization for very successful (wealthy) Christian businesspeople.  I think Faith Driven Entrepreneur is for start-ups and beyond.  

Faith Driven Entrepreneur has a lot of short videos and series of videos on YouTube about different topics.  I was watching them today.  I wanted to hear what the Christian view sounded like.  I was looking for information that might help me find the answers to my prayers.

I have been waiting on GOD to provide the funding for Working Together (WT) for many years.  Watching these videos was hard.  I went through a lot of difficult experiences in the early years as I searched for GOD's source for financing.  I can't even remember all the things I tried in my efforts to make enough money to start WT.  I finally stopped pushing myself into the process and decided that GOD would have to provide it for me to know what I could do.  It has always been His Ministry, and my only purpose was to help other Christians survive life without money.  

I still kept trying to increase my income - for my own life and for WT start-up costs - but not aggressively, like the people I watched in the videos.  Today I was trying to decide why GOD would put this important effort into my heart and life.  I am not like them.  I guess I always thought of myself as the budget person. Because of my poverty, I saw my work as taking  what GOD provided and making it stretch as far as it possibly could.  That was what my life was about.  Trying to survive on very little money.  I assumed that was what the struggle would be like when the End Times and the Antichrist were a reality. 

I knew Missions.  Homelessness.  Food boxes.  Meal outreaches.  Clothing programs.  Housing programs.  Government programs.  Church programs.  Anything that was related to poverty and surviving.

I learned about business options.  

I remember thinking, while watching these videos, about how different our world will be if the economy collapses.  Many references were made to the verse or verses that say GOD will provide in hard times. I think the speakers said "famines."  I wondered what that would look like for all the Christians and Jews in the world.  

We are heading into serious food issues.  We already have drought issues.  Wars are increasing.  Families and ministries are struggling to survive.  Governments are struggling to survive.  GOD doesn't promise we won't suffer.

I recently responded to a major ministry that GOD has only promised food and clothes, not shelter.  I am wondering what that will look like.  The shock of being a Christian and being homeless in my own life was part of my effort to create Working Together.  We think GOD will provide the things we think are basic, but our expectations are not the same as GOD's view of providing.

I don't remember really suffering a need for food, so I think my willingness to reach out to charities I discovered was part of GOD's provision for us (myself and my children).  I know there are many Christians who will avoid this path.  Is that pride?  I am not sure.  I just know it was the only way we were able to eat, to reach the next allotment of cash and food benefits.  

We always had clothes, too.  We got free clothes at many places when we really needed them.  Christian ministries and other places.  GOD was faithful.

But we didn't always have shelter.

This is important.

In my efforts for Working Together, I prayed and prayed and prayed over what the needs would be in our future.  

As the years passed, I have kept praying and looking for GOD's answers about the hard times ahead, before the Antichrist rises and decides to kill us.  I am not sure what GOD will do now.  I am just doing my best to seek answers from Him and keep Working Together alive as a possible force to help us.

I thought every Christian would become a member of Working Together.  Then I realized that Working Together is just another Christian organization in the fight for dollars.  I have still been waiting for GOD to provide.  It seems important, as long as I am still alive, to do that.

I wish I could be better at selling, making money, building a place for Christians to find help when persecution rises and money goes away.  I am what I am.  There must be a reason why GOD gave me this vision.  I just don't know what it is.

We are ALL the Body of Christ... together.  I hope we find a way to help protect and care for each other in all of our communities before it is too late.