“What after all is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through who you came to believe as The Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:5-9
World changer. Gods own hands and feet. These are words and titles you hear spoken over you again and again as a racer and as a missionary. All with good intention, meant to encourage and empower. But if we are not careful, all of a sudden we start to think that these people NEED me. That God couldn’t do this without me. Like he owes me something. Look at me, what I have to offer, look at all I have given up to be here. And then we just stop there. We start to think of ourselves as the hero. So it has taken me several months on the race and I am still learning what it is to move past this way of thinking. I can see that the work I am doing might not be so glamorous, it may not make me feel like a hero, and that’s okay. Because I’m not. When I don’t get assigned the ministry I had hoped for, it is simply a reminder that this trip is not about me.
“Remember, our message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are are the messengers, errand runners from Jesus to you. It started when God said “Light up the darkness!” And our lives were filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful. If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious message around in unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us.”
– 2 Corinthians 4:5-7
The reality is that I am only in each of these countries for one month. I am not going to save that country, and they don’t need us to come in and save them. I am merely an instrument, Jesus is the one doing the unbelievable things. He is the one that is going to use the ministries we are working at to advance his Kingdom.
It is a hard pill to swallow, especially doing short term missions, that the people I am serving don’t necessarily need me, even though The Lord asks me to go. But it is the answer to the question of what happens when I leave each place in four weeks? What happens to the children at SCH? What happens to the preschoolers at the carepoints in Swazi? God was God before I got here and he will be God when I go home too. I have to trust in faith that The Lord will use me, my team, and my squad to make his name known and glorified. And sometimes it is just enough to say that God is in control and He is good.
We come into these ministries and I am realizing how little I have actually sacrificed. I am away from home for 11 months. The woman who started homes for abandoned special needs children has made her life in India. She has invested absolutely everything.
So if the work I did in India could allow for a foster mom to have a couple hours to herself, then that’s enough. And if I could help Nolan every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to keep practicing his sight words, then I know that was a blessing to Nikki, his foster mom who works day after day with him so that he can have a way to communicate. And if we could serve our contacts in Romania by sanding and painting the staircase at the children’s center because they couldn’t afford to hire someone and were too busy running their organization, then that’s enough. And if we could help our South African hosts reach the community of Jbay by being apart of the ministries they set out for us like helping Hilmary on her horse farm, then that’s enough.
We have come to the nations to spread the good news of Jesus Christ by serving the ministries we are apart of, to bless the long term missionaries and amazing men and women of God.
So I am learning that it matters how we go. Are we going to be able to pat ourselves on the back and get good pictures to take home or are we willing to do what The Lord needs us to do even if that looks different than what we expected?
