As I approach my final fundraising deadline of $16,252 on December 31st, I will be writing one blog a week for the month of December. As you read, please prayerfully consider partnering with me by contributing any funds or time in spreading the word to help me meet my goal, move on to Mozambique in January, and finish out my World Race. $4,300 to go. I am confident this will be met, but I need some help. With that being said, here’s where I’m at this week…
This month in Malawi has been truly incredible so far. To start, my team and I are camping right on Lake Malawi; it is the first thing I see when I wake up every morning. Our ministry has been incredible as well. I have spent the past two weeks teaching English in a small primary school during the mornings, and co-leading a bible study for a group of prisoners in the afternoon three days a week. Personally, I have also been stretched to grow in so many ways, and see the work God is doing in my own life on a daily basis.
Perhaps the thing I have learned about the most this month is freedom. I have been forced to face my own misconceptions of freedom on a daily basis, and it has been hard. I have been forced to challenge my own definition of freedom, both in regards to my life, and the lives of others.
One process the Lord has started in my life is being freed from control. More specifically, being freed from the need to control things in my life that are out of my control, and things in other people’s lives that I think might harm them. I have realized that I have a very deeply ingrained belief that it is my job to protect everyone I care about from harm, whether real or percieved. This is a burden I have carried for a long time. When I shared this with one of my squad leaders, he gave me the real honest truth, which I needed, as hard as it was to hear: The people I care about who are adults are responsible for themselves, and if they get hurt it’s not my fault, so I need to let it go. My first thought was “I don’t want to let it go, and even if I did, I cant. Thats who I am: protector. Thats my job, and if I dont protect them who will?” But when I took a step back, I realized none of that was true. Thats not my job. Thats not who I am. And the one who will protect my loved ones is the same as the one whose job it is to protect them: God. He promises that to all of us, and our only job in that regard is to trust Him.
Perhaps the place I have seen that promise being kept the most this month has been inside the walls of the Nkhata Bay prison. Here I have had the privilage to meet 20 men with some of the most sincere faith ive seen in my 6 months on the World Race. This setting has challenged my conception of freedom in another way. These men are physically incarcerated, but have been freed by the love of Jesus, and it shows. Every time we meet with thse men, I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit inside of them. They have a hunger to learn more of God’s word, to learn more about Jesus and his character. Ive yet to meet a man there who has denied what he has done to get him in prison. Time and time again these men have spoken out about how sin has got them where they are today, but the more true thing about them is that their souls have been set free by the love of Christ.
Of these men, many have talked about returning home and spreading the Gospel in their villages when they are released. A few have said how they aspire to preach or sing gospel music in their future. But maybe the craziest thing I have heard from many of them is that they are happy to be in prison right now. Why? Because, as many have expressed, God is keeping them safe there behind those prison walls. God has a plan for them, which includes being incarcerated. God is sovereign and good all the time, even in the hard times.
When I think about thse men, I am humbled. I am blessed to have physical freedom, despite my sin. But God calls me, and all who believe in him, to have complete spiritual freedom as well. I am not God, and it is not my job to carry burdens that have already been taken care of by Jesus on the cross. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. I can proclaim that with all sincerity to the men in the bible study, but it is time that I take this to heart for myself, in all areas of my life.
