I remember in December of 2010 when I came home from my first ever mission trip to Guatemala. I was wrecked in a way that I didn’t know how to explain to others. I dumped my boyfriend at the time and wanted to sell everything I own and live on the $2 a day those people lived off of. I was angry with God for giving me so much and giving these people so little. I didn’t understand how someone who had nothing could offer me a plate of food that would give them even less than but that people in the U.S. could barely even look at the homeless or the needy.
Have you been here before?
Anger.
Guilt.
Pity.
Just recently on the race we had the opportunity to bring our parents out on the field for five days with us. I never thought when I invited my parents that they would actually come. So when I was in Cambodia and I got the text from my mom that her and my dad were coming I almost instantly had an anxiety attack.
“What will they think?”
“Am I ready to finally let them in on my walk with the Lord?”
Three months later the time had finally come. I waited anxiously out by the road with my sign to greet my parents in Swaziland, Africa. I was excited to seem them, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of almost wanting to throw up a little from the nerves.
I love my parents. They’re some of my closest friends. But I have never been vulnerable or raw with them with how much my relationship with the Lord really means to me. And I knew that this experience would either wreck our relationship or improve it light years.
They stepped off the bus and we spent the rest of the day together just enjoying being in each others physical presence for the first time in 7 months.
The following days were filled with all kinds of ministry. We’d visit Care Points where we would feed the kids, play games with them and put on a bible story in the form of a play. We’d do home visits where we would take a months supply of food to the poorest of the poor in the village. We put on a fun day for one of the Care Points. There was a sports ministry. We crammed as much as we could into the 4 days our parents we’re there.
On the last night I had to ask the dreadful question…
“So what do you think so far?”
With tear filled eyes they began to explain to me the feelings I had felt back in 2010. My mom cried over dinner telling me she didn’t know how I had been doing this for 7 months. My dad, who I’ve seen cry maybe twice in my life, told me about the things he saw at the care points; little children saving their plate of food knowing it had to feed the whole family, children running around on rocks and thorns without shoes, children with ripped clothes if they had clothes at all.
I wanted to tell them it gets easier seeing these things.
But it doesn’t.
I wanted to tell them that eventually every family will be clothed and fed.
But I couldn’t.
That’s when I shared with them the revelation the Lord had to show me years after I got over my stubborn thinking.
People in poverty don’t need your pity.
People in poverty don’t need your guilt.
People in poverty aren’t going to benefit from your anger or feelings of injustice.
What people in poverty need is the love of Jesus.
The enemy is so sneaky like that. Deceiving our feelings and our emotions into thinking that these things are what’s going to help people. But Satan’s job is to steal, kill and destroy. He steals and kills our ability to serve and love these people like Jesus did while we have the chance to. And he destroys our ability to do anything else but focus on ourselves.
There’s a parable in Matthew 25, the parable of the talents, that helped me come to terms with this. The master gave out five talents, two talents and one talent to his three servants. The servant with five went out and made five more. The servant with two went out and made two more. Both of these men were rewarded for being good stewards with things from the master. But the servant with one talent went out and hid his in a field, afraid to lose what his master gave him. But he was punished for hiding his talent away.
God doesn’t expect the one talent servant to be capable of producing as much as the five talent servant. And the servant wasn’t punished for that reason. The reality is it takes just as much work for the five talent servant to produce five more talents as it does the two talent servant to produce two more talents.
What’s my point?
It’s not about what we have, it’s about what we do with what we have.
It seems so unfair that we are born into the wealth of America and some people are born into the poverty of places like Swaziland.
But from my experience what has been the most powerful and transformative thing in a person’s life is the love of Jesus.
I’ve seen it heal wounds, physical and emotional.
I’ve seen it patch broken relationships.
I’ve seen it bring people out of drugs and slavery.
It’s changed my life and I’ve seen it change lives for the past 8 months.
That’s what I want to see more of.
Lives changed because of the love of Jesus.
So set yourself free from the guilt and the pity.
It’s worthless to everyone except Satan.
