Written: 2/22/14 – 0900H
We are two days away from leaving Malawi and Africa altogether. Wow, has the time flown by! I'm in a state of awe in the Lord. I'm paralyzed by His majesty. So now I reflect.
It's been two and a half weeks. Eighteen days of hard labor on the Zehandi Missions base here in Senga Bay and lots of ministry. Last night, my team and I stayed up all night to pray. Each team on the squad has been taking turns doing all-night prayer this past week. Last night we started things off by chatting about what God has done in our lives here in Malawi and I came upon an interesting fact:
I have not gone out to do any ministry off-base during our entire stay at Zehandi Missions.
Whoa. That's crazy. I'm a missionary. I'm supposed to do ministry. Surely, my month here has been a waste, then? No. Not in the slightest.
As our contact Johann put it: "Your ministry on any given day is the person directly in front of you." This means that sometimes, your ministry won't be with the people in the community around you. Sometimes, your ministry will be to each other, your squad and teammates or even your contact. At any given time, you have the opportunity to be Jesus to any person standing in front of you. And Jesus isn't exclusive. The people in the country and community around us aren't the only ones we can be Jesus to. Jesus is inclusive, meaning anyone and everyone can benefit from your "outreach" to them.
But that isn't even the half of it. If your relationship with God isn't in the right place, then there is no possible way you can minister to others. Your heart has to be in the right condition, abiding in the identity God created it with, living in fellowship with God. When your heart is captured and arrested by God's love, your heart gets filled up. That love deficit gets replenished and all the cracks and brokenness gets repaired in the tender mercy of the Father's love. It is only when your heart is healthy and filled by the Lord can you turn around and pour it out into the lives of others.
This month I learned what it is like to be arrested by God's love. To be romanced by a God that fiercely pursues me. I had to be willing to let go of all my comforts and allow God to break me down so that He could rebuild me. In the quiet moments here, God taught me that relationship is "everything"!
"Your ministry is not God's top priority. You are." – Leif Hetland
"God often takes us aside from every other source of comfort so that He alone can have out heart's attention." – Captivating by Stasi Elderedge
I was removed from darn near every comfort that I was used to –even in Zambia– and thrust into a place where we had nearly no "luxuries" to speak of. It was here that God has completed the most repair work in my heart and revealed the largest portion of my true identity. It doesn't even matter that I didn't go to the Baptist Clinic, or the Primary School, or the market place, or the Muslim village. I first had to let God in and work on my heart and get it into the right place, otherwise I would have been trying to help people with my own power and abilities rather than helping them from the overflow of what God is doing in my life.
Really the only ministry I've done is preach to a small –I mean tiny– bamboo church a couple weeks ago. The only reason that was such a success was because of the outpouring that God was doing in my life. Since then, my time at Zehandi Missions has been mostly hard labor, ministry to my contact Johann and his family and to my squad and teammates. It wasn't purposeful that I didn't do ministry off-base, that's just how the dice fell, but in God's eyes, it was still a successful month in His eyes and to His kingdom. I chose Him. I pursued Him in order to give back to Him. This month has also been that with the greatest challenges and changes in my own life and walk with the Lord, as well.
God is all about relationship. Your relationship with Him and your relationship with others. Ministry is relationship. Ministry isn't about your agenda. Ministry is whatever God says it is. Ministry is whoever is standing in front of you.
