When love captures your heart

I don't want to just say that I'm a Christian...I want to do something!

That statement opens up hundreds upon thousands of opportunities, and sometimes the seeming endless list of options seems quite overwhelming. And when I look at everything I could do for Christ, I begin asking "where do I start?!?", and as a result I end up doing...nothing. Because when I think of making an impact for Christ, I think of bringing the gospel to African villages that have never heard of Jesus before or leading great revivals. While God may have something "big" later down the road, many times He's asking me to just do the little things that He lays in front of me on a day-to-day basis. Things that may seem somewhat insignificant to me, but could make a lasting impact on the lives of the individuals that I come in contact with.

For quite some time one of the "small-just-take-the-next-step" kind of things that I've felt the Lord laying on my heart is sponsoring a child through Compassion International. In my devotions I had been reading a lot about not just calling yourself a Christian, but actually living it out. As I felt God's tug on my heart to sponsor a child, I was hesitant and kept putting it off. Besides, what if I need that money somewhere down the road for a missions trip or something? What I slowly came to realize was that I don't know what God will call me to do a year or two from now, but what I do know was that right now God was asking me to obey Him in this, trusting Him for the future. If God was really calling me to do this NOW, then He would also provide when He asked me to do something LATER.

As I scrolled through pages of photos of children waiting for sponsors, their beautiful faces melted my heart. I wanted to gather all of them up into one big bear hug and tell them that they are loved. They matter. They are beautiful. As I read my Bible and prayed about it, honestly I couldn't come up with any reason not to sponsor a child. So I took a leap of faith and sponsored a beautiful, 14-year-old girl named Rebecca from Uganda. The neat thing about it is that, not only does it encourage and bless the child who is being sponsored, it's also a blessing and encouragement to the sponsors themselves! Even though it's been only a few short weeks since Rebecca's sponsorship started, I can't even begin to describe how much of a blessing it has been to me. God has used it to deepen my awareness for the needs of others around me, strengthen my prayer life, and helped me to trust in Him to provide.

So now I have a family member half way across the world in a beautiful continent that is tightly gripping a piece of my heart. Yes, by the world's standards it may seem kind of crazy....but that's ok, because that's what happens when love captures your heart.

While there are currently over 1,172,170 children in the Compassion program 

who have sponsors, there are also over 1,600 who are still waiting.  

Want to learn more about sponsoring a child?

Visit Compassion.com now!