What Is Required?

Lately our team has been talking a lot about faith and what it means to rely on God for daily manna.  You see, we’re in Brevard waiting on the anointing to go forth into the place where God has called us.
  Imagine all that goes into planning for a week long vacation and then imagine the planning that goes into moving your family and team across the ocean for two years.
  Actually for me, it doesn’t require more than a couple hours planning for me to go on vacation and I figure a change of clothes is sufficient to make the trip to Swaziland, but you get the idea.
  In my mind, there is plenty to be done ahead of leaving but what does God require?
  Best I can figure, He requires one thing.
 
Faith.

So that leads to a little story about Monday morning prayer time.
  Seems we’d gotten onto the subject again about when we were leaving for Swaziland and what it would really take for us to be able to leave.
  Normal questions of finances and logistics arose.
  Questions we didn’t have a lot of answers to, but none the less, they come up every day and we beat them around for awhile, toying with the idea of what it would be like to be on the ground in Swaziland.
  My familiar response was something like, “If I had the tickets, I’d leave tomorrow.”
 

Monday morning, Anne asked me if I really mean it when I said, “I’d leave tomorrow, if I had the tickets.”
  I thought for a minute and after a bit of wrangling around, said I was definitely ready to go.
  There would be a few logistical things to take care of but nothing
  that I felt couldn’t be taken care of quickly.
  The team continued to chew on the question for a while longer and there was a strong consensus that we weren’t going to have everything we wanted before we left.
  Rather it was going to be another step of faith for us to leave and depend on God’s faithfulness to provide after we hit the ground.
  We left the discussion for later, as it would inevitably come up again.

Fast forward an hour and I’m walking through the church hallway.
  Pastor Todd asked me into his office.
  He is a really big guy so it was somewhat intimidating to have him call me into his office.
  (Todd, do you like how I described you?)
  Anyway, he sat across from me and told me the church had decided they were going to buy us roundtrip tickets to Swaziland… the whole team!
  I was so shocked I think I didn’t even respond with much enthusiasm.
  That question came back to me, “If you had the tickets, would you go tomorrow?” 
  
 

God has a funny way of seeing if we mean what we say.
  And faith is a fun place to experiment.
  Since faith is the hope of things not seen, it is always a surprise when God presents that thing we’d hoped for but couldn’t envision.
 
 Romans 12 talks about God giving each person a measure of faith.
  As I read it, faith is like the talents, if you use it wisely, God will give you another measure greater than the last.
  Another measure of faith, another big surprise.
 

The wheels are in motion.
  We’re preparing to leave ASAP.
  It’s a step of faith, but when I think about it, God holds the universe in the palm of his hand, so it’s not like a big gamble.
  It’s more like that excitement one gets waiting to open that gigantic birthday present sitting in the corner.
  I don’t know what’s in it, but I’m excited because I know my Father, so I know it’s good.