Have you ever felt alone? Have you ever been surrounded by people that love you and are top notch friends but you still feel alone? Maybe you feel like you need some alone time, which helps for a while but still does not satisfy you. Let me tell you that you are not alone! I felt this way a week after I arrived in Nepal. Don’t get me wrong, I love it out here. The mountains above and the valleys below, I wish you could all experience this beautiful placed they call Pohkara.
Sometimes I feel close to breaking but I know God would not want me to do this. I have the position of team leader and have been feeling like the ultimate middle man. Some of these thoughts that I share with you are not easy to talk about but I want to share them for two reasons. To let you all know that it is ok to not be ok, that ministry is tough and it is not this glamorous thing a lot of us are posting on social media. And two, because I think most of you have been in a place of loneliness. I’m here today to let know I understand how you feel.
Are you someone who thinks they can do most things on there own, the independent type? Or do you think you can delegate things out pretty well? For me, I think I am both. God has really been teaching me in the past few years to start being more of a delegator and less of a doer. God has placed 6 wonderful people on my team that are more than capable to everything I do on a daily basis. So why is it hard to delegate? I think the answer is that we are all volunteers. I have been told multiple times by my team that I need to stop taking on every detail by myself. I have even been told that I have been micromanaging my team. These are things I am trying to work on but I need help!
Every other week my team and I go through this study called Journey Markers. These are studies put together by the World Race to help our team go deeper. This week we talked about a cycle that all Racers go though. The cycle consists of three parts
1.Abandonment
2.Brokenness
3.Dependence
As a team we talked about what stage of the cycle we are in and for me I think it is obviously the brokenness stage. I have abandoned many comforts by saying YES to come to the Race. Abandonment was something that was sort of natural for me, but brokenness is not. It is something that is hard to admit, but when you are vulnerable about your struggles, God can turn your mess into a message. In the book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge say that “until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant; our strength will be our own.” The thing that I don’t want to overlook is the stage of the cycle that is right around the corner, Dependence. The Journey Marker stated that with dependency “we have a decision to make. We can return to our old ways or we can begin a new pattern of choosing to put our full trust in Jesus.”
I have been writing this blog for over a week now. I struggle to write blogs because I can’t reference things from the internet. But that is what happens when you ABANDON wifi for the majority of two months. I also have a hard time sharing this because my brokenness only lasted a few days and now I’m at a place of trusting Jesus with my brokenness. I have had many great talks with the people around me about my struggles and these talks have really helped me.
So I would encourage you that when struggles in you life come to the surface, bring it to God first and see what He is trying to teach you. Then once He has helped you form an opinion on the matter, bring it to your friends and family. Let them hear you out and help you with it. Remember, it is ok to not be ok! You don’t have to have it all together! I know that I sure don’t! There is always room for growth and increasing your dependence on God.
-Joe
PS. I’ll be in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for the whole month of December. Vietnam is a closed country so pease please please be praying for my team as we try to minister to locals through coffee shop ministry. My next blog will be more uplifting, I promise:)
