TESTIMONIES: CNCT Founder Had Only $0.91 But He Also Had God
By David Tennent
It’s been almost three years since I last climbed the mountain behind my wife’s family home in Los Angeles. Sitting on the trail this week, taking in God’s beauty, I was overcome by His faithfulness. The last time I was here, life looked very different.
We were deep in grief after losing my wife’s brother. I was a year into Capitol CNCT —waiting tables nights and weekends just to make rent. I had $40,000 in credit card debt from starting CNCT, and the future of the business felt uncertain at best.
On the mountain back then, I felt the need to completely surrender my finances to God and let Jesus overcome what felt like an unscalable mountain — financially, emotionally, and physically.
Two days after that surrender, we went to church. During the service, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to donate the last $200 I had to my name. At the end of church, I gave it. It left me with $0.91 in my bank account, the only account I had.
Since then God has been so generous with the business and with us personally. He’s been so faithful in healing my wife’s family of tremendous grief and delivering CNCT through many challenges.
While up here on the mountain, I put on a song that carried me through that season: “Delightful (The Sower Never Wastes a Tear)” by Hillsong United. I balled my eyes out the first time I heard it three years ago, worshiping God in the middle of everything unraveling.
I didn’t fully understand the depth of the lyrics then, but they gave me hope:
“I know there will come a day when we sing upon these ashes how Your beauty made this valley so delightful.
“And we’ll laugh upon that mountain how this Everest of grief became our dance floor.”
God was so faithful and so persistent in delivering us from overwhelming pain and uncertainty. In the months that followed, I had no money and relied entirely on Him to provide. And He did — through $200 tips on $30 tabs, making me a master of Facebook marketplace, and countless other moments that are stories for another day.
Finances have picked up since then, but there are still many moments that test what my heart truly treasures. But in that moment, with 91 cents to my name, God filled me with a joy and hope that carried me through the hardest year of our lives.
Matthew 6:21 & 33: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also … But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Former Capitol Hill staffer David Tennent is the founder of Capitol CNCT, the app that brings together congressional aides who likely would never otherwise get to know one another,