—Mat.7:7.DO 289311/93

—Mama's Prayer Request for Finances!

Maria #213

1. THE COMMENTS I'VE HEARD recently from some of our young people on the subject of finances have been heart-rending & have made me cry. These comments have been just another confirmation to me that our burden for finances is not misplaced, & that we are on the right track in realising that obtaining our financial needs is one of the keys to the success of our Work right now. We are going to have to raise a lot more money than we have been, & not confine ourselves strictly to the old methods. Raising support for our Homes has been a heavy burden for our poor Family Members who have been having to work extremely hard to pay all the bills.

2. This does not mean that we should stop getting out the audio & video tapes. In fact‚ we haven't been getting out enough of them & some of you have seriously neglected your distribution of these very important witnessing tools, which may account for some of your financial problems. But the point we are trying to make here is that the normal distribution of our audio & video tapes‚ while it is an important & necessary ministry & part of our witness, is not sufficient to raise your Home's entire support. Perhaps we are going to have to consider other ways of distributing the video & audio tapes whereby we can get them out in larger quantities, enabling us to gain more substantial support & a more widespread witness.

3. We need to pray desperately for worldwide finances! We need a phenomenal amount‚ & the Lord is going to have to do bigger miracles along this line than He has ever done for us to supply at this time in history when there is worldwide recession, & when much of the World's attitude toward us is less than favourable. Not only that‚ but most of those in the World who have a lot of money have it because they have been blessed by Satan & are firmly in his employ! (Luk.4:6,7) So there are some very great obstacles, but our God is the God of the impossible, & where God guides, He provides! No matter how difficult the situation looks, He is able to do the necessary miracles. In fact‚ God likes "impossible" situations, because then when the answer comes we know that it only came through His miracle-working power & not by any of our own plans, works or schemes.

4. There used to be a time when the Lord couldn't completely trust us with very much money, as we would have just fallen down on the job & decided it was too difficult to keep going out witnessing every day, getting out the Posters, Tapes & Videos. We might have just decided to stay home & take care of the very important job of raising our children & doing our teen training & all the other many jobs that need to be done at home, if we didn't have to get out the tools in order to raise support. Therefore the Lord had to force us to go out & witness so we could bring in the financial support we needed, while still trying to do our work at home.

5. But now the Lord has come up with another way to force us to get out & witness to people, completely independent of any need for finances! Whether we have sufficient finances to run our Homes or not, we are still under pressure to get out & meet people‚ to make new contacts & to follow up on these contacts, because we need their help in an even greater way than we do their finances. We need their help in the form of the good testimonies that they will give to the World about us, & the word that they will spread to their colleagues, to their churches, to the media‚ to their universities, to the government. The Lord has set it up so that we are now forced to get out in the public eye for our actual survival!

6. Even if we had all of the finances that we need to run our Homes, we would still be forced to be meeting the media‚ the education people, the social services, the lawyers, the sociologists, the psychologists, the theologians, the neighbours, the ex-members, & on & on the list goes! We need to meet these folks for the survival of the Family, so that we can dispel the wild tales & misinterpretations & distortions of truth that have been circulated about us by our enemies, & so that we can become known as the prophets of God with a valuable Message for those who are seeking the Truth during this Endtime.

7. The Lord can now give us the finances without having to use them as leverage to get us to do our job of witnessing, since He's now prepared another way to ensure that we witness. Therefore we should all have the faith now to come before the Lord with this desperate need, letting our wants & wishes be made known, & crying out to Him for one of our greatest needs—the influx of a constant, substantial source of funds which will enable our Homes to operate comfortably without the great pressure of finances always bearing down upon us to the point where that is what we have to think of the most, & that is what influences all of our decisions. This heavy financial burden takes us away from many fruitful ministries that we could be doing & that we want to be doing‚ & is a source of great discouragement for our poor adult, YA & teen Members.

8. What we need for our large worldwide Family of thousands is a very great amount of money. We live very frugally‚ much more so than average Western families‚ because we live communally & we can economise on housing, food, utilities & vehicles. We also provision many of our needs so that our expenses are very small, comparatively speaking. However, when you consider that we have 10,000 fulltime Members worldwide, you can see that even as economically as we try to live, it takes a great deal of money to help support us all.

9. Moreover, we have many needs other than our basic food & shelter. We have utility bills, vehicles to maintain, medical needs‚ school needs, clothing needs, travel needs, expenses for visa trips & renewals, & a very long list of everything that it takes to operate not only a basic Home of 40 or 50 people, but to pay for all of the ministries which that Home is involved in. In addition to this‚ our expenses have increased phenomenally over the last couple of years because of our media battles, court cases & lawyers' fees. We have to pay many thousands of Dollars in travel fares for troubleshooters & lawyers, great amounts of money for mass mailings worldwide, expenses of teams visiting various organisations, conventions & conferences worldwide, expenses incurred from our picketing & other demonstrations‚ etc.

10. WS has continued to put out many publications, & their expenses have also continued to mount. The Family is a very big operation doing a very big job, & because it's the Lord's job, we have the right to demand of Him the wherewithal to do the right kind of job, to do the things that we know need to be done, & not be hindered by lack of finances.

11. So I believe that regardless of how bleak the outlook, the uplook is thrilling, & is as limitless as the power of God! However, we are in a very desperate spiritual battle, & the forces attacking us are very great & powerful & are doing their utmost to keep us from doing the job that God has for us. Therefore, we must put much effort into this fight through great prayer & supplication & letting the Lord (& others) know our desperate needs, pouring out our hearts before Him (& others) & breaking through those evil forces which are trying to keep us from getting the kind of answers that we need.

12. We have to have miracles, & lots of them! We have to have money, & lots of it!—Not for our own sakes‚ but so that we can be free to carry out the ministries that God is requiring of us & do what He wants us to, & go where He leads, & we won't have to be bound every day to doing the "most financially profitable" thing that we know is going to bring in enough support to help us pay the rent or the utilities or the gasoline.

13. In spite of worldwide recession & the loss of thousands of jobs in even the most affluent countries, there is still wealth in every country. There are millions & billions of Dollars stashed away by their owners, who don't even know what they are going to do with it all. The World is full of wealth, but mostly hoarded wealth by the few rich, while the millions upon millions of common people are suffering economically.

14. So there is money out there, folks, & lots of it!—And we have every right to demand that the Lord open up some of that wealth to us for His Work! After all, we who are doing a mighty work for the Lord in this Endtime have a right to claim the finances to properly carry it out. His Word says that the "wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just."—Pro.13:22. We don't know where it is & how to begin getting it, but God does. And He says, "Call upon Me & I will answer thee & show thee great & mighty things that thou knowest not."—Jer.33:3.

15. If He has said that we only have to ask of Him & He will give us the heathen for our inheritance & the uttermost parts of the World for our possessions, can He not give us what is far less valuable, the "filthy lucre" of the World that we need for His Work? There is no question that the Lord wants us to survive. He has not let us come this far to abandon us now. We are some of the only ones He's got who are doing this special ministry‚ therefore we can expect Him to supply our great needs, & we need to start asking Him (& others) with this in mind.—And not just asking for "any old car" or "any old donation." We need to expand our horizons & ask Him for what we really need, that He will supply every bit of it & make us "every whit whole!"—Not just put a bandaid on, but solve the whole problem & give us "exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to His power which worketh in us."—Eph.3:20.

16. So, beloved, start crying out to the Lord for this great need‚ & expect Him to supply in ways that we never dreamed, & above all that we can ask or think.—That He will fill our coffers full to overflowing & thus make it possible for us to do the great job that He has laid out for us to do. This is one burden which I'm sure all of us share & all of us feel, so let's take it to the Lord together, earnestly beseeching Him to open the windows of Heaven & pour out the great blessings that we need. And let's ask Him to speak to us, confirming His power & might & His wish to supply‚ for our own encouragement, strength & faith to hold on until the answer comes. Love, Mama.