Ads bombard us with messages telling us we are entitled to fancy cars, designer clothes, and opulent jewelry. So with plastic in hand, we overspend and wreak havoc in our families and in our individual lives.
Contrast the previous spending habits of Mary Hunt with those of Carol Vetter, 59, a nationally appointed home missionary, who is pioneering a work among deaf gang members in inner-city Chicago and also pastors Calvary Deaf Assembly in a suburb.
Carol lives where her parishioners do. "Police used to stop me as I drove into my neighborhood," she says. "They would ask, ‘Lady, what are you doing? Go home. It’s not safe here.’ "
Carol would smile and say; "I am home. Mine is just around the corner." As Carol plants a ministry on the south side of the city, she drives new converts in an older van, from which the battery has been stolen many times. "When that happens," she says, "I go to the local junkyard to get a replacement. Once the owner put a huge chain around the battery and strapped it in. The next morning it was gone again."
As with all home missionaries, Carol receives her support from funds raised through itinerating, plus a salary provided by Calvary Deaf Assembly. Carol’s biggest struggle with fear isn’t from the break-ins when her meager possessions are ripped off. She says, "Several years ago my needs for the ministry were so overwhelming that I was emotionally strung out. I was afraid. My debts were accumulating. "The Lord asked me to look at my situation," she says. "In our dialog He impressed on me that I will never have an abundance, but I will always have enough and He told me not to fear. "I haven’t been afraid since," she says.
Stories of how God meets Carol’s needs — for taxes, for health insurance when a provider dropped her — reveal His faithfulness to His servant. She says, "At times I have a tremendous influx that I quickly apply to the needs I know are coming up." At a surprise birthday party for Carol in a rough neighborhood, deaf people filled the house. "They were so full of joy to do this for me," she says. "It wasn’t just happiness; it was anointed happiness." And another need was met: they had pooled their meager resources to buy something she needed for her computer.
"I’m believing for things that some say are impossible," Carol says. The "things" are the souls of deaf gang members in the inner city — an "unreached people group," she says.
What things are you believing for? If you want them, "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33, NIV).
