To be honest, ministry has been extremely draining this month. We’ve been doing door-to-door evangelism/encouragement here in Area 24 of Lilongwe: we literally go from house to house, preaching on a passage from the Bible and praying for people. I was – and still am, I guess – excited that it was a month where we’d actually be working with people, but it can be so hard to see the purpose in having a single conversation with someone. At the end of last week, my heart wasn’t in it at all.
Even though I dragged my feet to ministry, too stubborn to stay back and refill my spirit, God redeemed an exhausting day of trying to pour out of nothing. In the morning, I felt like I was pulling verses out of nowhere and was saying things that I wasn’t even sure that I believed in. And if I as the missionary didn’t believe what I was saying, how was I supposed to convince anyone about Jesus and His death and resurrection? It was all words and trite sayings that I grew up hearing in Sunday School. There was a lot of falseness in my ministry; false joy, false love, false passion. I feigned wisdom and strength. I wanted to look good and represent Christians well without being full of Christ.
After going back to our contact’s home for our lunch break, we shuffled out of the gate and down the road back towards our ministry site. The encouragement we had received in the morning (and my refusal to be “weak” and stay back to refuel) gave me just enough strength for the afternoon. I sulkily wanted to drag out our walking time and our prayer times so we wouldn’t have to meet as many people and keep being so fake. We left what I thought was going to be our last home with relief, but we all saw a pair of women at the end of the road that sparked something in us: we knew we should talk to them. So, picking up my feet and trying to rearrange my thoughts so what was left of the positive attitude in me could be at the forefront of my mind, I trailed along as we walked even further away from “home”.
As soon as we got there, we could tell that something was wrong. Through a few short sentences translated from Chichewa, we discovered that one of the women had just been beaten up and kicked out of her house by her drunk husband. The same thing happened every week or so, and she was finally going to leave him and go back to her family in Blantyre. She had stayed with him for the sake of her two-year-old baby, who she had dropped off at a friend’s home. The other woman had convinced her not to run just yet; I believe that God orchestrated that so we’d be leaving the last home just as they were sitting at the end of the road. She literally had nothing: no money, no food, no clothes. My teammates and I decided that we could pray, but more than that, we were actually going to do something. I know we’re supposed to believe in the power of prayer, but that belief had faded fast that day. We went back to our home to collect enough Malawian kwacha to cover her transportation to Blantyre as well as cold water, a snack, and a little care package. We left her with our prayers and traded contact information with her so we could make sure she and her child got to her family safely.
I don’t want these stories to be about anything we did. I don’t want you to see this as a “look-at-the-good-work-we’re-doing” story. What I see here is brokenness and redemption: God using me despite my awful attitude. I see Him using a sulky “missionary” for His purposes. It was at the point of emptiness and feeling like I could do nothing else that He began to do real Gospel work through me. Looking back, I see now that I was trying to pull from my own understanding. I thought I had been through enough evangelism workshops and learned enough Gospel-sharing tactics to go out there and bring the Kingdom on my own. That false face I had put forward was a cover for the pride that was shearing away as I tried and failed to be effective, pulling from my own wisdom and strength. I have yet to learn what it means to fully rely on God and to trust Him to make my paths straight, but I know it is only His wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption that will bring His Kingdom to the earth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-31)
