I challenge you “what will you leave behind when you leave this earth?”

Do you have a project that is bigger than yourself that will outlast you? Think about what the world will be like when you are gone. What mark will you leave behind? Do you think of your family? Most of us do. We want to leave a good legacy for our kids.

But what I want you to think about is something that God decides. Something that if God is not involved in it there is no way it would happen.

I challenge you to start thinking this way and see what happens in your life.

What is the God size project in my life?

In 2002, I was invited to go on a missions trip to Namibia Africa. Namibia is a country in Southern Africa right next to South Africa.

It is one of the most remote places on the planet.

It’s two-hour jet ride to New York, an eight-hour ride to London, a 12-hour flight to Johannesburg, a two-hour flight to Namibia, and an eight-hour Jeep ride.

I took my two sons there. They were 11and 13 at the time. They were the youngest kids on the trip. AIDS was ravaging in southern Africa and we went there to talk to school children. They were some of those beautiful people I’d ever seen in my life.

It is so remote, one day we got some frisbees out we were out throwing them. The kids had never seen one.  They didn’t know what it was. If you throw a frisbee at just the right angle it will go up and come back to you. The kids were blown away by that. They called it a flying plate.

While I was there I met a young man named XXXXX.  He’s very sharp! He spoke seven languages. Six of them were tribal and he spoke English as well. He was one of our translators. He lived in a mud hut, no running water and no electricity. He told me he really wanted to go in college and he actually wanted to go Seminary School. Seminary is a school you go to if you want to become a pastor. The problem was the only seminary in the country was 500 miles away. When I was leaving the country I told him “you know what you’re a great kid, I like you and I’ll try to help you if I can.” That’s all I said.

Then one day I got an email from him.

He had to walk five miles into a little town to an internet cafe to send an email. He said I really want to go to school and I said “Well we’ll see what happens“. About a month later I get an email from the school that he’s at the gate and they said if you don’t agree to pay his tuition and room and board we’re sending it back. He had walked or hitched a ride for 500 miles with the belief that God would not let it down.  And that I would not let him down. I said Lord I am paying for three kids of my own kids to go to college right now. How can I do this? This is impossible. The next three years were the most profitable years I’ve ever had in my business.
 

– He graduated from Seminary School in 2006. Then he said “I want to build a school in my own Village.”

Again, I said Lord that’s impossible! How can I do this? I have to have some more income. I came up with an idea. I own an I.T company that I started from scratch in the trunk of my car at 40 years old, with three kids, a mortgage and two car payments.  I wrote a book about that experience called “How to Start and Run a Successful IT Business”.  I said Lord whatever money I made from this book and Consulting jobs I get from it – I will donate to this project. The book sold like crazy on Amazon.

I started a Consulting practice. Bizarre people actually do pay me like $400 an hour as a consultant. I don’t have a lot of time to do that but I do it every month. Whatever I make I send to them. The first thing I said to him is you have to get out of the mud hut. You need to live in a house. You have to have a car to drive.

Lord it is impossible to build a home 8,000 miles from here.

But it Happened. He built this 4 bedroom home with running water and electricity where he holds services. Was that my God size project? That was really the beginning. The school was next. Again, I said Lord “I don’t have the funds for this – you’re going to have to help me.”

So I started the African Hope Education Foundation. One day I will report here to you and tell you about the first graduating class. I’m going to be visiting there again and I will see how things go. He and his wife were also having trouble having children. Children in their society are a very, very big deal. They had one son and they really wanted to have more and started praying and God provided them with another son. Guess what the son’s name is “TIM”.

What is your God size problem?