Lately there have been times where I find myself questioning whether or not I am even making an impact out here on the Race.
That’s just me being 100% honest.
There’s just these times where it’s hard.
Times when I struggle with understanding how I can preach the gospel and have not a single member of the group of villagers respond. Times when it’s tough to come to grips with the idea that my mere 30 minutes of sharing Sunday-school Bible stories with slum kids is somehow doing something for them; isn’t it just the candy that I brought them that interests them? Times when I wonder if teaching college-level chemistry to a group of refugee kids in a language that they don’t even speak makes a difference.
Times when I feel stuck. Times when I feel like there’s no point of doing it anymore. Times when I feel like all of it is fruitless.
There’s these times where I just get frustrated with God and I just want him to give me a reason. A reason why I should push on; a reason why I should continue to fight.
But then he presents me with good times—times like now.
Times when God reminds me that he can make fruit out of everything. Times when he reminds me that he is faithful even when I’m beginning to have doubts. Times when he reminds me that he is the one who is sovereign over all and who has the world in his hands, not me.
Times when he reminds me that he is there via a FaceTime call from an Indian family and the 11 orphan boys that they have taken in.
You see, tonight the Father spoke to me in a way that literally left me speechless. I couldn’t talk—couldn’t move. When I saw the faces of those Indian children and Pastor and Sister, I saw the Father; I saw him smiling at me through the faces of every single one of those orphans.
And through the mixture of the broken phrases of our two separate languages and the spotty internet connection, one thing was certainly coming through clear tonight: the love of a Heavenly Father, right on time.
He had come to me at a time when I needed him—like he always does. Knowing that I had begun to have questions, he showed me that while short-term missions may seem to bear little fruit to our human eyes, he is the God of abundant harvests. He is the Lord our God who sees all good things come to fruition.
It’s the times when we think that we aren’t making an impact—when we think that we are useless for the kingdom—that God brings us back to a remembrance of the fact that he called us out into this and set us apart for a reason; he unveils for us just a glimpse of the ways we are impacting the kingdom.
And so—at all times—we push on.
We love in the times when we are angry.
We fight in the times when we are exhausted.
We hope in the times when it feels pointless.
Because even when we can’t see the results and we think that our laboring is futile, we must know that the Faithful One will finish what he called us to begin.
We must remember that we are loved by the God of both the hard times and the late-night-FaceTime-from-three-countries-and-three-months-ago times.
Our God is the is the God of all the times.
