Something the Lord has highlighted to me as I’ve been reading through Hebrews this past week is the importance of faith. A simple word we use a lot but a hard thing to walk through and navigate.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). This is one of the first verses that comes to mind when I think about faith and what it is, but what does it mean? We have hope in our salvation and the blessing of spending eternity in His glory, however we can’t see that hope right now. In fact we’ll never be able to see it on this earth, so our faith becomes trust in the Creator and trust in His word. It is trust in the things that we can’t see, yet are deeply rooted in our hearts.
Continuing through Hebrews 11, it tells the stories of great people in the Bible doing great things, like Abraham offering his only son, and Moses choosing to be mistreated with the people of God rather than enjoying the pleasures of sin, but not a single person in that passage lives to see the fruit of their sufferings and labor. Not a single one sees their reward.
Having faith in the Lord in the midst of things I can’t see has become so prevalent in my life here in Ecuador. Lately my team and I have spent our long days at ministry doing mundane tasks, like cleaning, folding clothes, organizing, typing spreadsheets, and other things. It’s easy to get lost in the routine of things every day, and think that the simple things that we’re doing aren’t benifiting the Kingdom in any way, but that’s not true! The enemy has placed that thought in us that we aren’t doing “enough” here, but the Father is revealing to me that that’s not accurate, and He’s replacing those thoughts with Truth. Just because we aren’t always working with people one on one doesn’t mean we aren’t planting seeds here. We may not see the fruit in our ministry every day, but that’s because it’s not our fruit to see! It’s God’s fruit to see! In his perfect timing.
Just like Abraham never saw God’s promise fulfilled in his lifetime, the seeds we are planting here in the activities we are doing and the hosts we are serving for may not grow to fruition while we are in Ecuador. They may be planted for someone else to come along and water them, all so ultimately there will be fruit for the glory of God. Sometimes we don’t see the fruit of our labor because God doesn’t want us to boast in ourselves or anything we’ve done, he wants us to boast in him and how faithful he is.
That’s where faith comes in! I have so much faith in my Father that every shirt I fold or toilet I clean is giving Him glory in His kingdom, even if I’m not the one to see the benefit! Doing mundane things frees up other people who run my ministry to reach out and share Jesus with people in the community, and I’m finding so much joy in that. There is so much joy in the mundane and in having faith, putting everything in His hands!
(p.s. go read Hebrews 11! It’s real good)
(p.s. again. the Race is officially halfway over so I just wanted to give a quick shoutout and a HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported me so far!
