Trust. Something I thought I was good at. But then we walked around Pipeline.
Pipeline is the area around the church where we are serving. We've spent the last week walking around with members of the church, talking to people, sharing our stories, listening to theirs and telling them about the peace and love of Jesus Christ. Not something that I ever saw myself doing. I've never wanted to offend people, I always want to be politicaly correct and wanted people to know that I respected them. All really good things. Until you walk into a situation where someone you are basically working for asks you to go up to someone and tell them about Jesus.
Every afternoon, we go into the community. Here, every afternoon, it rains. So we walk around in our serious sandals, and our raincoats through the mud. We ask people to come out into the rain to talk to us, we distract them from their work and their family obligations. Would you want to talk to wet, muddy us?
So I had to trust. I have to trust these people will understand that I have the best intentions at heart. I have to trust that God will give me the right words. Words that will warm their hearts to my message. Words that will make them feel loved and cared for. I find more and more that when you just trust, when you smile and give someone a hug, because you don't know what to say and when you open your mouth and let God talk through you, people are so much more receptive. It's when we say the least amount of words, and we let the people we are talking to share their hearts with us when I feel like we made the biggest impact.
In situations like this, I go to Proverbs 3:5 – Trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. What about you? In what ways do you have to trust the lord? Do you have any awesome stories of him pulling through in the clutch for you?
