Your probably wondering how in the world did I get here, why missions, why give a way 11 months of my life?!? Why?!?
But really the simple answer to you question is all wrapped up in ONE word…
WRECKED!
He wrekced the way I thought and the way I loved!
He wrecked my image of myself… he wrecked my image of life!
After all the walls crumbled, he took the wreckage and re-built something beautiful!
He rebuilt my bitter, angry heart by replacing it with a passionate love for people!
Not just any people.. but the broken, depressed, discouraged, the outcast, the hopeless, the addict… He wrecked my heart!
9 years later, he is still rebuilding it! Molding it to look more and more like his everyday. The answer to your why is… I got to this place I am at because God wrecked my heart! Why missions?!? God wrecked my heart and gave me a love for his people.
I do not desire to go throw the Bible in there faces and tell them they are going to hell. I desire to love the "Least of these!"
As one of my sqaudmates puts it, I desire to love the people of the world to LIFE! Yes, Love them to LIFE! I desire to love them where they are…. I want to meet them where they are and love them… love tyhem by just loving on them and meeting there needs. There are millions of people around this world who are dieing and they know no love…. My greatest desire is that through my love, they would know HIS love!!!!
Romans 12:1 (Msg) "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it."
My attention is fixed on the one who passionately pursued my heart in the midst of my chaos! The one who pured his love into my desperate heart….There is a world full of hurt, disease, poverty, and human trafficking… and God's desire for me is to "Go" to where they are and Love them to life… I will not ignore the one who created a BEAUTIFUL WRECK of me!
While reading the book Radical by David Platt… I found a perfect quote that sums up my heart.
On page 19 & 20 it says, "and I want to be a part of people who are risking it all for him. For the sake of more than a billion people today who have yet to even hear the gospel, I want to risk it all for the ske of 26,000 children who will die today of starvation and preventable disease, I want to risk it all for the sake of an increasingly marginalized and relatively ineffective church in our culture, I want to risk it all for the sake of my life, my family, and the people who surround me, I want to risk it all."
The more I read the Bible, the more my life and the church in America looks less biblical… and this scares me! The Jesus I read about in the bible was radical. He called his disciples to radical abandonment… and as disciples of Christ, he calls us to the same radical abandonment!!! He hasn't called us to a wishy washy faith… but we've created this comfortable image of Jesus that won't challenge us…. I am no longer comfortable with this false image of Jesus we have created.. I cannot say I am a disciple if I am not willing to abandon everything…. and honestly the world race isn't even radical compared to what we see in the bible… Its the NORM!!!
SO I GO… because in Matthew 28:19 Jesus said, "GO!!!" and I believe he ment GO!! I go because when Jesus called his disciples in the new testament, they went. They didn't hesitate, they followed immediately with a radical and reckless abandon. They didn't look back… and the ones who said to Jesus… wait Let me go bury my father…. Jesus replied let the dead bury the dead.
I GO because I want to embrace, love, and follow Jesus for who he really is and not for what we've created him to be…. and in order to do that I must GO!!!!
