John Knight is the Sr. Director of Development at Desiring God.

We are deeply humbled and very grateful to God for the more than 630 people who gave to Desiring God through GiveMN yesterday. 

As we prayed last week about this opportunity and how to present it in a prayerfully-dependent, God-centered way, we had no idea that God would raise up so many people during that short amount of time. It appears that this group of friends gave just over $139,000 in that 24-hour period.  We will know final results, including our portion of the match, in the coming days.

We are also grateful for all those who emailed who cannot give to us right now because of unemployment, health issues, or giving being guided to church or other ministries. We feel your affections and your prayers!

Please continue to pray for us.  This is a great help as we enter December, which is our month of greatest financial need. God is kind to provide that encouragement so early in this year-end season.  And, obviously, we remain dependent on him to provide the rest.

Thank you for being part of God’s provision to Desiring God!

As of 3:30 p.m. today, God has provided 315 gifts to Desiring God through GiveMN.org!  We are grateful to God for his kind provision to us through these friends of the ministry.

And, as Pastor John tweeted this morning, “zero pressure,” but if you are prayerfully considering a donation to Desiring God, gifts given by 8:00 a.m. (CST) tomorrow morning (November 18) qualify for a match from GiveMN.org.  You can give through Desiring God’s site at GiveMN.org. 

We’ll provide an update on the totals when we have them tomorrow, probably later in the morning.

Thank you for praying for us.

As we reported last Friday, from now until 8am tomorrow, GiveMN will be matching donations made through their website to all Minnesota-based non-profit organizations, including Desiring God. $500,000 has been committed to be given to Minnesota non-profits through this one-day campaign.* 

GiveMN is covering all transaction fees, so 100% of your gift will come to Desiring God.  You do not need to be a resident of Minnesota, nor do you need to register with their site to make a one-time gift.

I tried it out last week and everything worked as they described, including the opportunity to make an anonymous gift if you prefer.

Here’s how to participate:

1. Pray about giving.  If you have never given before, would you pray about financially supporting Desiring God?  We only want you to participate as you feel the Lord leading.  God is good to provide for all of our needs and we are grateful for every person who donates. But we do not want you to feel any pressure to participate except happily in response to God’s call.  And please only give after you have first given to your local church.
2. Visit Desiring God’s page at GiveMN.org between now and 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. 
3. Choose your donation amount and click the green “Donate” button.  You’ll be asked for credit card information and an email address for your receipt.  The minimum amount that can be donated is $10.  There is no maximum, but they limit their match to $2,500 per individual.
4. You’re done!  An electronic receipt will be generated through Network for Good.  It will indicate your donation amount and date, and list Desiring God Ministries as the recipient of your donation.  Desiring God will receive your gift and the match by December 15 from GiveMN.org.
5. You may also choose to give a recurring gift through this site, which requires registration.

* We won’t know how much of the $500,000 matching funds are coming to Desiring God until after all the gifts to all non-profits have been tabulated.  If Desiring God’s portion of total giving to all non-profits is 5%, we will receive $25,000, or 5%, of the $500,000 matching grant, regardless of how much is actually given to Desiring God.

Thank you for your prayers!

Did you know that we depend on God to provide nearly half of Desiring God’s budget through donations? Donations help underwrite everything from the freely accessible resources found here on our site to our whatever-you-can-afford policy to our global spreading opportunities through International Outreach. We are grateful to God for his provision to us through people he leads to give!

Friends of Desiring God recently alerted us to a special matching gift donation opportunity through GiveMN, an organization designed to help create a stronger nonprofit community in Minnesota. Desiring God Ministries is one of the non-profits listed on their website.

GiveMN has a total of $500,000 they are dedicating to match gifts made during a 24-hour period to Minnesota-based non-profits.* They're also covering all transaction fees, so 100% of each gift designated to Desiring God through this site will come to DG.  You do not need to be a resident of Minnesota to participate, and you do not need to register to make a one-time gift.  You may also give anonymously if you choose. 

The matching gift opportunity will be from 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, November 17 through 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, November 18.

Here’s how to participate:

1. Pray about giving.  If you have never given before, would you pray about financially supporting Desiring God?  We only want you to participate as you feel the Lord leading.  God is good to provide for all of our needs and we are grateful for every person who donates. But we do not want you to feel any pressure to participate except in response to God’s call.  And please only give after you have first given to your local church.
2. Visit Desiring God’s page at GiveMN between 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, November 17 and 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, November 18. 
3. Choose your donation amount and click the green “Donate” button.  You’ll be asked for credit card information and an email address for your receipt.
4. You’re done!  An electronic receipt will be generated through Network for Good. It will indicate your donation amount, date, and list Desiring God Ministries as the recipient of your donation. Desiring God will receive your gift and the match by December 15 from GiveMN.org.
5. You may also choose to give a recurring gift through this site, which requires registration. 

And please pray for us! Your prayers are an important part of God’s good provision to Desiring God.

* The amount of the match to Desiring God will be determined as a ratio of the total amount given. GiveMN will track the total amount given to all Minnesota non-profits that day, and whatever percentage of it was given to DG, we'll receive that percentage of the $500,000 that is set aside for this project.

So, for example, if $1 million is donated to all Minnesota-based non-profits that day and Desiring God receives $25,000 in donations (2.5% of total), the match to Desiring God would be $12,500 (2.5% of $500,000).

As a father of a multiply-disabled child, I have consumed dozens of books, articles, and web sites on suffering, disability, and the sovereignty of God. 

What I read yesterday morning from a young man with spina bifida may be the best statement I have ever encountered on this subject.  Here is an excerpt:

Both pain and pleasure are meant to point us to the same reality; namely, that Jesus Christ is infinitely beautiful and so much more than enough for our every need. Living for Him, even suffering for Him, is worth every moment of affliction! Why? Because Jesus shows you such beauty in pain, because He is there and He is carrying us through.

The writer, Joe Eaton, is well-known to us at Desiring God as a volunteer and an intern with Children Desiring God last spring before starting college this fall. I can testify that he lives what he writes.

Originally posted, July, 2008

The 4th of July is a different sort of ‘Independence Day’ for me. On July 4, 1995 my multiply-disabled son entered the world and my life came crashing down around me—and would soon include a deep and intense bitterness toward God.

I never denied that God existed or is powerful; I concluded he was mean and capricious. But it also began God’s work of creating an affection for him and for the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. I am often astonished, when thinking back, that I am now able to praise God for his goodness in giving my son his autism and blindness.

None of this happened easily or by accident.  I can point to five specific things that God brought to bear on my life:

1. Faithful pastoral leadership.

I can still remember Pastor Tom Steller, now leading The Bethlehem Institute, walking up my front steps with a note from Pastor John. And I remember sitting with and emailing Pastor David Michael. 

These men, with great courage and biblical conviction, entered into dangerous territory. My attorney, a man trained in conflict, said that my intensity and bitterness frightened him. But my pastors never wavered from bringing a message of hope and absolute certainty in the sovereignty and goodness of God, even when I pushed them away.

2. Faithful people of Bethlehem Baptist Church. 

Shortly after my son was born we dropped everything at church—our small group, volunteering, Sunday school class and attendance. One couple refused to let us go and loved us with a gracious, firm, consistent tenderness that made me want to understand how they could love someone like me, my wife or my son so completely.

3. A faithful father. 

My own father was the first person in the world to understand and communicate my son’s value and inherent worth as a creation of a good and loving God to me. Through 13 years, he has stood with me through much pain and sorrow—and joy.

4. A faithful wife. 

My wife and I have not walked the same path; hers has been much harder than mine for many reasons. But by the grace of God we are together and I thank God every day for this woman whose spine is made of steel and who loves me and our four children.

5. The sovereignty of God as revealed in his word. 

I remember a particularly heartbroken, bitter email I sent to Pastor John. He had every right to discipline me, but instead wrapped the words of the bible around my heart. God used those words from the bible, among many others, to create longings I didn’t have, to start a dead heart beating, and to reveal, when I was incapable of seeing, the beauty, sufficiency, and majesty of Jesus Christ and his cross.

God has done it all, and it was his word that proved decisive.

Living with a boy, now a teenager no less, who will always be dependent on someone for all his needs is hard. I have a daily, often hourly, fight for joy in my salvation. Yet, through my oldest son’s daily care, through my youngest son’s premature birth, and now through my wife’s ongoing battle with metastatic cancer, God is not just sustaining me, but revealing more of his goodness because he is sovereign over all these things, for his glory and my good. 

So, on this Independence Day I am grateful to Jesus for my real freedom in him and for giving me my boy to help me see it: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36). 

Happy birthday, Paul.

Every week our Philippian Fellowship receives a letter from us with updates and prayer requests about things going on here at DG. This week, in praise to God, we wanted to go a little more public with it.

*               *                *

Praise God for the First Quarter of 2009!

God has done marvelous things for Desiring God so far this year—please join with us in praising him for all that he provided! 

• New resources have been released, such as Noel Piper’s Do You Want a Friend?
• The DG home page has been completely redesigned with new functions to more easily view video.
• The Pastors Conference in February served more than 1,500 pastors.
• The media team travelled to Angola Prison to document five Christian rap artists in concert there. They then travelled to Memphis to finish filming DG’s first music video, Don’t Waste Your Life, which was released last week by Reach Records.
• Donations have exceeded our expectations, both in numbers of dollars and numbers of donors, in each of the first three months of the year so far.  We are grateful to God for what he has provided through the Philippian Fellowship and others.
• God opened up opportunities for International Outreach to donate books and media resources for ministry partners in 37 countries including...Bulgaria, China, India, Malawi, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and the UAE.  Pray with us for impact and fruitfulness for the global church.
• DG signed a lease to stay in our current offices while considering our longer-term needs.

Pray for Pastor John

Please continue to pray for Pastor John as he fulfills a number of preaching and speaking commitments through the end of April:

• April 19 — Preaching at Park Street Church, Boston
• April 21-23 — Speaking at The Gospel Coalition
• April 23 — Lecture and discussion at Park Community Church
• April 25-26 — Services at Bethlehem Baptist Church
• April 30 — Children Desiring God Conference

Thank you for praying with and for us,

John Knight

[Read an update on Hope Commons.]

Desiring God has been given new facilities for $1 a year. All we have to do is outfit the building for our needs.

And God has provided through more than 500 different people! As ofOctober 3, 2008, $1 million has been donated to help make Hope Commonsthe new launching pad for Desiring God. Please join us in praising Godfor this good and timely provision from his hand.

God moved in a mysterious, miraculous way to provide for this need.Since December of 2007, we have been bringing this need before God andbefore friends of Desiring God. After God quickly provided nearly$600,000 this spring, we made little progress for the next five months.

But God knew what we needed and when we would need it. So we gathereddaily to pray, to encourage each other to press on, and to rememberGod’s good provision to his people in the Bible.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

And all along God was taking care of us. He knew before we did thatthe buildout of our new space would be delayed by several months. Andwhen construction began in earnest, God provided through his peoplemore than $300,000 in less than five weeks—during some of the mostdifficult economic times in memory.

God is not constrained by a credit crisis or inflation or the stockmarket. He reigns supreme and is lavish in his generosity to those whowait on him!

Thank you, Father, for your good provision through these faithfulpeople. Thank you for your word to carry us through difficulty:

But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Thank you, most of all, for the greatest treasure in the universe - Jesus Christ!

The 4th of July is a different sort of ‘Independence Day’ for me. On July 4, 1995 my multiply-disabled son entered the world and my life came crashing down around me—and would soon include a deep and intense bitterness toward God.

I never denied that God existed or is powerful; I concluded he was mean and capricious. But it also began God’s work of creating an affection for him and for the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. I am often astonished, when thinking back, that I am now able to praise God for his goodness in giving my son his autism and blindness.

None of this happened easily or by accident.  I can point to five specific things that God brought to bear on my life:

1. Faithful pastoral leadership.

I can still remember Pastor Tom Steller, now leading The Bethlehem Institute, walking up my front steps with a note from Pastor John. And I remember sitting with and emailing Pastor David Michael. 

These men, with great courage and biblical conviction, entered into dangerous territory. My attorney, a man trained in conflict, said that my intensity and bitterness frightened him. But my pastors never wavered from bringing a message of hope and absolute certainty in the sovereignty and goodness of God, even when I pushed them away.

2. Faithful people of Bethlehem Baptist Church. 

Shortly after my son was born we dropped everything at church—our small group, volunteering, Sunday school class and attendance. One couple refused to let us go and loved us with a gracious, firm, consistent tenderness that made me want to understand how they could love someone like me, my wife or my son so completely.

3. A faithful father. 

My own father was the first person in the world to understand and communicate my son’s value and inherent worth as a creation of a good and loving God to me. Through 13 years, he has stood with me through much pain and sorrow—and joy.

4. A faithful wife. 

My wife and I have not walked the same path; hers has been much harder than mine for many reasons. But by the grace of God we are together and I thank God every day for this woman whose spine is made of steel and who loves me and our four children.

5. The sovereignty of God as revealed in his word. 

I remember a particularly heartbroken, bitter email I sent to Pastor John. He had every right to discipline me, but instead wrapped the words of the bible around my heart. God used those words from the bible, among many others, to create longings I didn’t have, to start a dead heart beating, and to reveal, when I was incapable of seeing, the beauty, sufficiency, and majesty of Jesus Christ and his cross.

God has done it all, and it was his word that proved decisive.

Living with a boy, now a teenager no less, who will always be dependent on someone for all his needs is hard. I have a daily, often hourly, fight for joy in my salvation. Yet, through my oldest son’s daily care, through my youngest son’s premature birth, and now through my wife’s ongoing battle with metastatic cancer, God is not just sustaining me, but revealing more of his goodness because he is sovereign over all these things, for his glory and my good. 

So, on this Independence Day I am grateful to Jesus for my real freedom in him and for giving me my boy to help me see it: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36). 

Happy birthday, Paul.