our contacts in the jungle, Arun and Pang. They put down a life in the big city, an education, chance at big money, a good social life, comfortable living, for the sake of following God’s leading in their lives. They went back to life in the jungle after seven years in Bangkok to bring the gospel to a place that had never heard it before. Now they live a quiet life, full of hard work, to bring the gospel to the rural villages in the Kanchanaburi province. It was a shining example of two people who have given their lives to Jesus, they laid down what was very important to them, for that which was of utmost importance.
I have been feeling that same calling on my own life. The world race began as an initial sacrifice, laying down a year of my life in order to seek God. But I am realizing that it means so much more. God’s calling on my life is to now take what God has shown me and to show others. To take other young men and women and wake them up to who God really is. I don’t really know where that will take place, or all the details of it, but I do know that God is pulling me out of old mindsets, putting me in a position to build God’s Kingdom instead of my own.
So now God is asking me to lay down all the things that I feel like I have a right to have. He is asking me to lay down security, making enough money on my own to cover all of my needs, to trust Him to provide. He is asking me to lay down my own agenda, planning my own life to fit every desire I have. He is asking me to lay down a family, which has been the hardest thing for me to lay down. I truly want to have not only the family I already have, but also my future family. A wife, kids, having boys to teach baseball, all of those things. I have told God, “You can have all of me, just let me keep that.” But this last month, God kept saying, “Will you give that up too?” So I finally prayed to God to take even that too. And I laid down my desire for a wife, marriage, a companion, for Him. For one, He is worth it. God is so much better than anything else I could ever have apart from Him. And two, if God chooses to give those things back to me in the future, it will be so much more beautiful and valuable. I would see my wife as the most amazing gift I could ever receive, rather than something I was entitled to have. So although it has been hard, it is a lesson in trust. I am learning to trust my Father with everything. I am learning what trusting the Lord means.
