I am sitting in my bed right now on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Yes, not only do we have beds this month, we also have lazy Sunday afternoons. It’s great! We are at a YWAM (Youth with a Mission) base here in Panama. God has been teaching me through some very strange things. I was trying to think about what story I should share, and I keep coming back to this work project. So here it is.
I was moving junk. A lot of time I catch myself trying to make it seem like every second of every day is full of doing something awesome. That people are coming to Christ, kids are being loved and people are being healed. While God has let me see a lot of that, some days we get to do stuff that isn’t that rewarding and things that are not enjoyable. We were working last Tuesday and six of the ladies got to go to a women’s prison and give testimonies. . Most of the YWAM staff were in classes that were happening on base. That left a few of us with a “we have some young guys who will do the things I don’t want to” job. (That may not be true but it felt that way.) So we put on a good attitude and went to work. We were moving a pile of junk that was made up of old materials. There were tons of old boards, pipes, rope, tin sheets, and ants. I am talking about biting mean ants. Our job was to get all of it from one place and make it look nicer in another place.
As this great day of work started, we started making “sermon talks” out of it. When writing a talk, a good way to start is with a personal story related to what you are teaching on. The teacher in me still calls it an “attention getter.” When we are doing something hard, someone always says, “How can we make a sermon out of this one?” It always starts fun conversations and this time was no different. We asked God to teach us what He wanted to and once one point was made, it was on. So here are the things that I learned from the big junk pile:
1) We tend to wait to deal with the junk in our life until it becomes a problem. It is so much easier to deal with things as they come rather than to wait and have to deal with all the junk at once. It wouldn’t take a long time at all to move one or maybe two pieces of tin. But we don’t do that. We wait until it covers the ground and people can see the mess we have and then we want to deal with it. I wish I could see my amazing Mom’s face when she reads me saying that. She has been trying to teach me that for years, but better late than never.
2) It is so much harder to move junk in your life when we wait. The more we wait, more comes that we will have to deal with that makes it harder to move. When we just put it to the side, grass grows all over it and the roots hold it down. It is easier to move as soon as it comes.
3) Ask for help. I understand that there are things in life that you and God have to deal with alone. I just feel like these are few and far between. I could not have moved all of this junk on my own. I could have tried, but it wouldn’t have worked and it would have taken forever. Letting people help makes it go faster. I also believe that God puts people in your life to help you move stuff that you put there. The really cool part about this is that once you get all of your junk moved and dealt with, then you are free to help move someone else’s.
4) Once you start dealing with the junk you will realize how much you really have. The pile did not look that big when we started. I couldn’t believe how much it was. Once we moved one thing, three more came out of nowhere. It felt like the lady in the Bible with the jar of oil that never ran out, but with things I had to pick up. I have seen this in my life over and over. I deal with a heart issue and when dealing with it God shows me something else I haven’t surrendered to Him. This used to bother me, but now I know that all of these problems have always been there. When we decide to put in the work and give the space for God to come in and work out issues in our lives, something great happens. Not only will He do it, but He will also make every part of you more Christ-like.
5) Dealing with junk hurts! I don’t know how many of my issues have biting ants around them, but they do cause me to feel pain. The more we ripped the stuff out of the roots and from the ground that had grown around it, the more it hurt. Things in my life feel the same way. The soul ties and deep-rooted sins in my life hurt coming up. But here is the great part.
6) It is worth it. After we finished, we got to see a nasty, useless junk hole be turned into a place where they are going to now put a garden. I thought that was about as fitting as it can get. Jesus came and gave His life for us to have a beautiful right relationship with God. He has already overcome every bit of junk in our life and restored it to the way it was meant to be. He has paid the price for all of our junk and wants to help you move it.
I am sure I missed several points we came up with. There were a lot. I do want to give a shout out to two of the best teammates in the world. Without Christian and Lindsey, this would have just been a hard job. Instead it became something great with y’all.
