Ten Months Pregnant

God woke me up at 4 AM yesterday morning.

Thankfully that is a rare event.

I went to my laptop.

Soon I was on a site I encountered years ago.

Start with Why www.startwithwhy.com/

That was exactly what I needed just then.

I had been stuck and overwhelmed.

That gave the timely guidance.

The man that founded the site had a profound experience.

It transformed his life and business.

He has since helped others.

It gets back to a simple question.

“Why do I do what I do?”

Answering that question put a person at the core of the matters.

I had been wrestling with the What and How of the ministry.

I knew the Who and When matters.

There are an abundance of ways to share those.

But what I needed then and now is to keep the Why front and center.

He says this has helped all kinds of people in all sorts of situations.

Pray for God to guide and bless me to answer the Why question.

I have begun to address this and it has brought clarity and order.

He has helped hundreds of people get to their Why.

He has distilled that process into an online interactive process.

It takes 7 to 10 hours and costs 129 dollars.

https://www.startwithwhy.com/learnyourwhy?

That online course is now on my Wish List.

The title of this message is Ten Months Pregnant.

I use that title because that is how I feel.

It feels like I am an expectant mother that is long overdue.

What is inside of me is very large.

Getting it outside of me in a way to share with strangers is the current challenge.

That will lead to crowd funding that will pay the bills.

I have made some progress in organizing and prioritizing the first videos.

But it still seemed like it is far too much.

And it lacked an orderly structure.

My tendency is to ramble too much and go off on tangents.

So I began with the Why issue mentioned before.

I have used the proven tool of journalists as an outline format.

It has helped before to use this so I am applying it at this time.

I refer to the good old questions Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

Pray for me to continue to set up and use that structure.

It has already given me much needed insight as to how to best present.

It is a simple way to bring order out of chaos.

Let me give you a hint of what I have been dealing with so far.

This educational nonprofit is the spiritual fruit of decades of seeking the will of God.

It is obviously intimately connected with my personal life journey.

My personal stories need to be mentioned in ways that is suitable.

I do not need to go into every single detail.

Pray for me to notice the parts most useful for these initial videos.

Then in the coming weeks I will include more as needed.

This is an innovative application of digital communication technologies.

But it is not just online because those in severe poverty are offline.

So there are ways that online and offline interact.

I need to give a brief sketch of my vision for how that can happen.

I do not need to tell of all the technical aspects nor skip that part.

This is a Christian ministry that is biblically based and Christ centered.

There are lots of Bible verses, biblical doctrines and biblical theology under it.

I need to briefly sketch this and then like the other parts add details later.

This is a new mission’s agency that blends care for body, mind and spirit.

Those in severe poverty will learn how to better raise crops and livestock.

That will feed them and provide income to transform their lives.

There will be literacy materials to teach the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.

When children use these then that will cause lifelong learning.

That will break the generational cycles of poverty.

The innovative distribution places will be small community centered libraries.

These will have collections of resources as well as places to study and meeting rooms.

The costs of those facilities are tiny contrasted to the long term impacts.

I have heard that there are 1 million pastors and 5 million elders in developing countries.

Those leaders have very little Christian education or access to Christian resources.

We can equip them using the community centered libraries.

That will transform individuals, marriages, families, communities and regions.

That process will take years and even decades but as we sow then so shall we reap.

These lofty concepts have lots of practical ways to become a reality.

There are five services as follows:

Networking Hub will be a grand collection of links to those who are in alignment with our mission.

Lots of organizations are doing similar works and I glad to send them more traffic.

Wiki Plus is an online encyclopedia that is collaboratively created to share knowledge.

There will be a wide range of inputs from various sources all around the globe.

The practical solutions to problems will be shared.

These problems include water, sanitation, food, income, literacy and more.

The wiki will be made so that it can be saved to a storage device.

It could be put on a USB flash drive or SD card.

Then that can be taken offline to a computer that has solar power in remote locations.

I call this Wiki Plus because the purpose goes beyond just the organized knowledge.

This becomes part of a system that leads to us publishing educational modules.

The wiki articles are the raw materials that become separate units for learning.

The early versions will be booklets that are made from printing out letter size paper.

Then fold those pages in half and staple the spine to create a simple booklet.

Those can range from 8 to 48 pages.

Each booklet can be read offline using the sunlight.

They can become units that are parts of the library collections.

They can be sold as a way to fund the overhead costs for the libraries.

So this is like that story about the blind men describing the elephant.

There are several valid ways to describe this and together they present the whole.

Today my guess is that I could write all of this overview in more than 200 pages.

I could make 12 to 20 hours of video to tell all the details.

I have spent hundreds of hours over the years on parts of the business plan.

This is like a dissertation of the last 10 years of research and planning.

So getting all this online to share with strangers briefly is a challenge.

The crowd funding platform will be like a sales and marketing interface.

The aim will be to cast the vision and request funds.

Enrolling new donors is an ongoing project for any nonprofit.

Then the fund raising seminars I have attended teach to continue to engage with them.

Offer them a few ways to get updates and share their comments.

I have been pondering making short videos for weeks.

I have been requesting prayers for that to happen.

Today there was an unexpected development.

I recalled a fund raising training I took many years ago.

There is one lesson that stuck with me.

Supporters view those they support through 4 different lenses.

Each one is important and they are not necessarily related.

The lesson was to present yourself and needs in ways to appeal to each kind of supporter.

Those 4 ways supporters see you are as family, friend, minister and investment.

As family they want to know about the personal and external news.

As friend they want to know about the internal struggles and victories.

As minister they want you to give samples of ministry while serving others over there.

As investment they want to have faith that long term the vision will manifest.

Each of those has a different audience and kind of content.

There is some overlap but not much.

Online it is easy to offer all 4 with links to invite supporters to go to other ones.

The art and science of building email lists involves offering something new often.

So I began today to create initial Power Point slide shows for each kind.

I will begin to roll these out soon.

It will give me practice in making and publishing online.

I will get a wide range of feedback that I will use to make improvements.

The bottom line is that I have strengths and weaknesses like every human.

I like to use my strengths and I tend to avoid my weaknesses.

What make me different is that I do this in front of others because I need prayers.

I like to pray, seek, research, plan, organize, prepare and learn.

I dislike sales, fund raising, budgeting and going outside my comfort zones.

I will get through the current difficulties by the grace of God.

I must do my part and that includes taking action steps based on my faith.

Only God can and will cause the needed breakthroughs in my life.

There are moments like this I wish I was a robot.

I wish I could program myself to do the difficult things quickly.

I wish I did not have fears, anxieties, resistances, selfishness and pride.

One of my strength is to be open and honest.

That leads others to know me and to pray better for me.

But at the end of the day I am totally dependent on the mercies and grace of God.

Part of me wishes that I did not write these long messages.

I wish I would just create compelling fund raising materials.

But for whatever reason this is how I process the junk passing through me.

It does gradually get me closer to execution by degrees.

This creates a community of supporters in the short term.

The archive creates a chronicle of how God moved in my life.

UPDATE

I enjoyed a peaceful and productive day at Motel 6.

God answered prayers by granting me some of His wisdom.

There is more order and less chaos in my thinking and planning.

I hope to soon be making and publishing short online videos.

Pray for yet more wisdom.

May I soon break the ice and start publishing short videos.

PRAYER

I honestly and earnestly mean the following.

I know that God can and will answer this for me.

I invite you to adapt it for yourself.

Jesus Christ, How Will I Best Ask, Seek and Knock?

Lord Jesus during Your brief visit to earth You made many profound statements. Some of those have stuck with me for many years. You told Your followers to ask, seek and knock. You said when they asked they would receive, when they sought they found and when they knocked it would be opened. I bear witness that what You said has happened to me. I have asked and received. I have sought and found. I have knocked and it has been opened to me.

But Lord I admit I have not been asking, seeking and knocking consistently nor persistently. I have been sometimes lazy in my spiritual life. I have been motivated by discomfort, pain, compassion, concern and other factors. I notice that my unwillingness to aim for higher goals is partly due to how much more my mind needs to be renewed by Your Word. I have not been motivated by the kinds of matters that motivated You during Your time with us on this planet. I have attended meetings of missionaries over the years and I have been reminded of the eternal importance of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. I have been blessed to see video biographies of those You used for decades to extend Your kingdom.

Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weak in my faith. I have been short sighted in how my life might best serve the body of Christ. I have been held captive by my comfort zones. I have let my fears keep me short sighted.

It is my greatest desire to glorify You with my thoughts, words and deeds. It is my intention to live a life that pleases You. I want to keep Your commandments as revealed in the New Testament.

I choose to surrender my will to You. I submit my ambitions, intentions, priorities, values and passions to You now and for the rest of my life. I desire to become a faithful steward of my time, talents and treasure. Guide me in how to best use my money.

I invite You Lord Jesus Christ to enter my heart of hearts. I submit to Your lordship in all areas. I look unto You to interact intimately with me in the navigation of my life through this temporal life.

I admit I have fallen short of Your high calling on my life. I have neglected consistently inputting Your Word and failed to apply it to my life.

You often offer super simple solutions to my overly complex problems in Your Word. Starting now and for the rest of my days Lord Jesus Christ guide me in what to ask for, seek for and knock about. Get into my head and heart in that kind of close way. Show me what You would have me ask in my prayers. Reveal to me the prayers You want me to pray so You can answer them for Your glory. Point me in the directions to seek what is best for me and Your kingdom. May I earnestly seek that with the strength You provide. When I come on closed doors then may You guide me as to which ones You would have me knock on because You know what is best.

Shalom