A love and a longing for things I do not understand have been placed upon my heart. The Holy Spirit has awakened my senses to His kingdom in a way that has made me hungry to achieve great ends for His namesake. My mind, heart, and desires are endowed with a burden for His peoples, tribes, and nations; neighborhoods, cities, and countries; and every soul that desperately needs to be reached by His indescribable love. At journey’s end, my team and I will have left both physical and transcendent footprints in Thailand, Nicaragua, and South Africa. My hope and prayer is that those marks will be left as imperishable reminders of the love of a Father’s heart.
So what do I mean by a longing and a desire for things I do not understand?
‘How great is God—beyond our understanding!
The number of his years is past finding out.’
We do serve a God who goes far beyond our understanding! Sometimes I look at my life and ask myself why I would leave comfort and security; my family and my girlfriend of whom I love and adore; college opportunities, job promotions, and dreams for so long a time to pursue a God of whom exceeds my understanding in an unhindered manner? I weigh my options on the ‘world’s scale,’ and it always points to staying here… however, my heart longs for the contrary! It is simply an indescribable, transcendent desire for broken people, given by the Holy Spirit that drives me to do things that make no sense to the world.
I know that it is the Holy Spirit moving and working inside of me. I have had people tell me not to go, or that it’s the wrong timing, but it is through this that God has taught me that when you hear the Holy Spirit’s voice within you, and you try to say that it is not the Holy Spirit, it is then that you are speaking against the Holy Spirit and rejecting Him. I certainly do not wish to deny the Holy Spirit! I FIRMLY believe God is leading and guiding me to go on this trip. I may not be given to understanding in full, but I am given to the Father’s will and purpose.
‘…The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’
My team and I, among many others, are of a small percentage of the laborers of who have been prayed for and sent forth by God Himself. Therefore, we should not let any fear, doubt, or persuasive tongue guide us away from the work the Father that has been placed in our hands! The devil would love nothing more than to damage this trip in any way possible. We must be deep in prayer for each other. When Jesus Christ purged the temple in Matthew chapter 21, Jesus did not say ‘my house shall be called a house of teaching,’ or ‘my house shall be called a house of worship’… these things are important, yes; but what did He say? “My house will be called a house of prayer…” How are we to know the will of the Father… how are we to know the Father’s heart and His desires if we do not talk to Him? Sometimes I feel we treat prayer as a segue between things we deem more important and miss the intrinsic importance of prayer. Please do not misunderstand me, for I am so passionately driven by worship and so profoundly influenced by the teaching of the word; I am not trying to diminish their value. However, I am saying that we as a church HAVE, in some regards, drawn down the value of prayer.
This mission’s trip needs to be thoroughly enveloped in prayer and everyone going on this trip needs to be deep in prayer. If we are constantly on our knees before the Father, then I know He will work mightily in our lives; not only on the trip itself, but in and through every second leading up to it.
Yours in Christ,
-David Sands
