We have been going through one of the most challenging times financially that we've ever experienced in the ministry. We need literally hundreds of thousands of dollars yesterday, and it is stretching my faith like never before.

I've been doing the support-raising thing for so long now that it's hard to remember a time when I didn't have to trust God for finances. I started raising funds for my first mission trip when I was 12 or 13. I continued to do that every summer; then it was a year-long internship; then I moved to South Africa. I have been living on support every day for the past nine-and-a-half years. Trusting God for finances became as second-nature as breathing.

And now I feel like I can't catch my breath. (Has anyone seen my inhaler?)

This should be routine to me. Same ol', same ol'. So why am I having such a hard time giving this care over to the Lord and leaving it on His lap? Why am I finding it so challenging to trust God for money this time, and not last time?

I felt myself losing heart. And while I'm not yet gaining heart (is that the opposite?), I'm somewhere in between at the moment.

God led me to read this today, and as I did, I could feel my heart being strengthened. It was an almost tangible feeling, as though I were feeling my physical heart being strengthened within my chest.

"Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart...Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Lord, help me to keep my eyes fixed on You and on the promises of God which are yet unseen, but soon to be revealed...