Isn’t funny when you look back on small, minuscule events in the past couple of years and realize that God has had His hand in the whole situation since the beginning? It has happened repeatedly throughout my life, yet I am still surprised every time it becomes clear to me. I’m a slow learner when it comes to God and the way He works.
During the first semester of my freshman year of college, I attended weekly Campus Crusade meetings to try to get involved with a body of Christian believers on campus. During that semester, there was a speaker at one of the meetings who talked about world missions and encouraged people to get involved if God was so leading them to do so. Afterwards, they held sign-ups for one-on-one info sessions for students who were interested in learning more about opportunities. Without having a desire to actually do missions, I signed up anyway to see what was out there. I figured I had nothing to lose. I don’t really remember much about that meeting- I don’t know the woman’s name that I met with, what we talked about, or what we prayed. But God had me there for a reason that I couldn’t see at the time. I walked out of that meeting with a large book called “Operation World” by Patrick Johnstone & Jason Mandryk. This book is a wealth of information, a useful tool for praying for the nations, covering each country in the world in 3+ pages. There are stats on each country’s religious, economic, and racial demographics. In addition, there are specific prayer suggestions and a yearly calendar for prayer for each country. While this book didn’t really mean much to me my freshman year (in fact, I hadn’t opened it until recently!), I now find it extremely applicable as my team and I begin to pray for the countries that we will be ministering in. (The print version is over 700 pages, so I think I will be purchasing a CD-ROM version for use while on the WR!) God just has a funny way of putting useful resources in our lives even before we are made aware of what He is up to.
