As I’m sitting on an airplane that has been grounded for an estimated 45 minutes, I am realizing that this is about to become my norm. I will spend days traveling, and it wont always (or often?) go as planned. I suspect that my team and I will have very bumpy (pun intended) travels between and within countries.
You know that feeling when you find yourself in a less-than-desirable situation…and then you remember that thing that you prayed for that you’re now receiving, and for a minute you sort of wish you hadn’t prayed for it?
Patience.
The Lord has done tremendous work in my heart in the areas of grace and patience over the past year specifically, but I have a long way to go! So, as the Captain is just announcing that my flight will be grounded for another hour from now, I will begin to learn to let go of my frustration and use this time to lay out some expectations:
Basic:
I expect to be broken – I expect to be exhausted – I expect to get sick – I expect to be overwhelmed – I expect to grow closer to the Lord.
Digging Deeper
I expect to feel extremely uncomfortable and out of place – and then to find myself feeling at home in cities that I can’t yet pronounce.
I expect to have my faith tested – to see the sick, the hungry, the poor, and the broken … and then to see them healed, fed, provided for, and built up.
I expect to need some kind of medical care at least once. I can’t guarantee that I will remain in good health throughout the year, all I can do is have faith that any hardship I encounter, including illness, has been allowed by the Lord and can and will be used to conform me to the image of Christ (see Romans 8:28-29 for more on that odd claim).
I expect to have my own faults laid out before me in the most unexpected, unappealing, and gracious ways – and then I expect that God will begin to show me how He can heal those areas of my heart.
I expect to face spiritual warfare in very personal ways, and to better learn how to leave my heart in God’s hands and abandon my own desires in order to be an instrument for the Lord’s Kingdom. If the enemy doesn’t come after me, I’ll know I’m not allowing Christ to live through me.
I expect to face the same temptations that Jesus faced: to flee and provide for myself, to seek my own glory, to put myself before others.
(If you’d join me now in praying against that and praying that my heart is prepared to submit to the Lord in those situations, I’d greatly appreciate it 🙂 )
Getting Personal:
I expect to be overwhelmed by the way other cultures and groups of people express and experience love! If you’ve read anything on my blog, you know that the Lord lead me to study Anthropology in college. I love people, I love people groups. Revelation 7:9 says that people from every tribe and every nation will praise God as one – that means different tribes (cultures) and different nations (countries) were God’s plan for this world! We are not supposed to all be the same, we are supposed to be drastically different!
I am convinced that as I experience each culture during the race, I will be exposed to a different view of God – and, thus, exposed to different characteristics of God Himself! If we were all created in the image of God, and there are thousands of people-groups all over the world with very different ways of living, then I am convinced that I can learn more about who God is by meeting more of His children! Yes, we are going into these countries to try to provide for them and love them to the best of our ability – but really, God’s allowing us to go experience these cultures because He loves us and wants to reveal Himself to us through the people we will meet and the experiences He has planned for us to encounter.
That’s why I’m so excited about this trip.
That’s why I feel so honored to have been accepted.
That’s why I’m so grateful to the Lord for calling me to apply.
That’s why I’m so confident that He will provide for me to be on the mission field as long as He has planned.
“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me…”
I will meet Jesus in hungry faces, laughing children, crying women, sick men; and I will have the opportunity to lay myself aside and invite Jesus to love them through me!
I hope you'll join the adventure by reading my blogs, and I'm praying that I'm faithful to update as often as I have the chance to fill you all in while I'm gone!
