In Kenya, God Taught Me About Faithfulness

The last country. The last month. The last blog from the World Race.

I don’t know what I expected Month 11 to feel like. I guess, for the longest time, it was too far in the distance to feel like it would ever become reality. And even now, as I’m less than a week away from flying home to America, it doesn’t feel real. The World Race is almost over. And yet, even though it felt like I had already seen and learned everything before this month, the Lord still had so much more to show me in these last few weeks.

Over and over, God’s faithfulness has continued to blow me away. Even in this last month, God proved Himself faithful beyond my wildest expectations (see my recent blog “Just Say Yes” for evidence of this!). I fought to end this Race well and to go beyond my limits for the final month, and the Lord was faithful to not only sustain me, but also to give me some of the most unbelievable experiences of my Race right at the very end. I thought I was done being surprised by the Lord. I was wrong.

But as I spent time this month processing through all of my amazing memories of the Lord’s faithfulness, I realized something felt off. Even though I knew the Lord had done so much in this past year, I still felt strangely unsatisfied. Did I really get what I wanted out of this trip? Did the Lord really do much of anything in me this year? Did I really “just say yes” to God? And then the biggest question came:

God has clearly been faithful to me. But have I really been faithful to God?

The Lord let me wrestle with this question for a couple of weeks. But by my final week in Kenya, He spoke to me. And His response, which came through a miracle that didn’t quite happen, took my breath away.

In Kenya, God taught me about Faithfulness.

I’ll admit, I didn’t have very high expectations for this last month. The week before traveling to Kenya was a weird one. The atmosphere of our squad’s final Leadership Development Weekend in Kampala, Uganda was strange – many were sick, travel plans were up in the air, and a few squad mates were going home. That last day in Uganda, I was lamenting to my parents about just how much I was dreading the next month. About how tired I was of transitioning and changing and moving. About how ready I was to come home. Sure, I was excited to finally go to Kenya, but I was even more excited about what was on the other end.

But the Lord showed Himself faithful. After our first couple of days in Kenya, I saw my fatigue lift, and I found myself falling in love with Kenya, our hosts, our ministries, and our final days on the Race. We had only three weeks to serve there, and so our two teams (mine and the team we were paired with) dove into all kinds of different ministries – assisting teachers in a school, caring for babies at an orphanage, digging fence posts on our host’s new land plot, teaching Bible stories for Vacation Bible School, preaching to a rural Bush tribe, and praying with inmates at the local prisons. My desire for the month was to keep saying “yes”, to utilize whatever energy I still had, and to press through to the end. The Lord told me during the first week that ‘faithfulness’ was going to be this month’s theme; “Faithfulness, Lord – see? You’ve shown me your faithfulness; now I’ll show you mine.”

And so I pressed through in ministry. I committed to showing up contributing whenever necessary. I read my Bible, I prayed, and I thanked God for all of His blessings. But even still, something was off. Whenever I thought through the things God had done in the past year, I kept going back to my initial expectations for the Race. Expectations that, I realized, still hadn’t come to full fruition.

I thought there would be more miracles. I thought I would experience Him more. I thought I would come home with a deeper hunger for Him.

I thought I would come out of the World Race a different person. But here I was, at the end of 11 months of serving the Lord, and I wondered if anything really changed. I didn’t really see any crazy miraculous healings or demonic deliverances or spirit manifestations like I thought would happen. I saw a lot of hardship around the world, but I didn’t feel any sort of pull to return to those countries and bring forth change. I knew the Lord taught me a lot over the past year, but I still felt confused by His voice, and many of my personal struggles still hadn’t gone away like I hoped they would. I knew that in a couple of weeks, I would have to answer the myriad of questions I’d be getting about how the World Race changed my life. I wanted to say it did. But really, I wasn’t so sure.

Clearly, the Lord called me to this Race, and clearly, He placed me in every ministry location for a reason. So why didn’t I see the miraculous? Why didn’t I supernaturally encounter the Lord? Why didn’t I see life change? Surely the Lord wanted me to see these things. So what went wrong?

I contemplated fudging my answers. I thought maybe if I oversold some moments, people would think that God really did change my life. I could highlight a couple of big moments, spout a couple of missions buzz words, and pretend like that was my experience for the whole 11 months. I feared disappointing those that expected more exciting answers. But no matter the way I looked at it, I felt like I had missed the boat. And if the Lord in all His faithfulness wasn’t to blame, then maybe I was.

During our second week in Kenya, our hosts took our two teams three hours north to minister at two small prisons in the mountains. We were prepared to come into both prisons and perform a skit, share a short message, pray for the inmates, and pass out bread and milk. Our visit to the first prison went smooth – the skit was effective, the prisoners were receptive to the message, and our teams got to pray with dozens of men to receive healing and salvation. It was a real victory for the Kingdom, and we left ministry that day grateful for what the Lord had done. But during that evening’s devotion, when each of us shared what the Lord had been doing on our hearts that day, I heard how the rest of my teammates felt the Lord during ministry. And as I thought back to my own experience serving in the prison, I realized that while I knew what we were doing was purposeful, I didn’t feel the Lord’s heart during it. Even though there were clear signs that the Lord was moving in the hearts of those around us, it didn’t feel like He was moving in mine. And I realized that this had been the case for the past few months. I had been serving faithfully in ministry, but I didn’t really feel the Lord in it.

The next day, we went to the second prison, a little smaller than the first. I was pretty tired from all of our time spent in the car, and so as we entered in, my flesh was wanting to get in and get out. But then, I remembered what I had shared the night before. I knew that this day was one of my last opportunities to see the Lord move in our ministry, and I didn’t want to waste it by simply going through the motions. And so, before we started our presentation, I prayed a quick prayer. “Lord, show me your presence here today. I want to believe that you can do something here today that is greater than anything I’ve seen before”. I didn’t know if I fully believed it, but I prayed it anyway.

Our second presentation went off without a hitch – the skit went smoothly, the message was communicated effectively, and over a dozen prisoners came forward to receive prayer. Our team was encouraged by another fruitful prison outreach, and I thanked God for moving once again. But as we finished distributing food and began to pack up, I noticed a young man sitting on a mat by the doorway of one of the cells. I asked a guard about his condition, wondering if he was paralyzed. The guard confirmed that he was, and had no mobility from the waist down. And so, I gathered a couple of teammates to pray over the young man. I believed that God could heal him that day. But as per my many experiences of praying for healing on this trip, I was prepared to see nothing happen and just walk away.

We prayed over this man for a couple of minutes, and then we asked him how he felt. And to my surprise, he said he felt better. We asked him what he meant by that, and he began to move his feet and legs around slowly. Mobility was coming back. And so we began to pray again, this time even more fervently calling out the enemy, commanding healing, and speaking the blood of Jesus over him. He said that he was feeling even better, and began to bend his knees and move his legs up and down. So we asked him if he wanted to try walking. He said “yes”. Two of my teammates took his arms and supported his weight as he attempted to make small steps. And sure enough, he was starting to walk.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. The man couldn’t either, as his eyes widened and a huge grin spread across his face. The Lord was actually healing this man right before my eyes. I had seen it before in the “Holy Ghost” movies, and I had seen it before in church, but I didn’t believe that God was actually going to finally perform a miracle through me right then and there, on one of my last days of the Race. It was all so perfect. The Lord knew I wanted to see a healing on the Race, and He wanted to test my faith to see if I really was going to believe for a miracle even after going ten months of not seeing one. And even better yet, the men in the prison would undoubtedly see this miracle happening around them, and those that didn’t believe in Jesus from our message would be convinced enough to believe after seeing this incredible healing. I could feel a spiritual fire come over me, one like I hadn’t felt since Training Camp. My heart was beating. “This is it, Lord. He’s gonna walk. And you’re gonna prove yourself faithful once again.”

As the man, propped up by my two teammates, began to baby step across the courtyard, the rest of the team continued to pray and speak life around him. We watched intently, believing that his footsteps would increase in speed and strength, but after watching for five minutes, we realized his steps were not improving. The man was set back down on the mat, and we asked him how he was feeling. He expressed less enthusiasm, stating that he felt pain in his legs. We prayed for him again, fervently believing that we would see him walk before we left. But after praying for a couple more minutes, our hosts called for us to leave, and the team said a quick blessing over the man before heading back to the car.

And that was it. A crippled man who sort of walked. That was the most miraculous healing that I saw on the World Race.

I couldn’t believe it. I was so close to having an amazing testimony of the Lord’s power from this trip. I so believed that God was going to do it, and I was willing to stay all day praying for it until God pulled through. And yet, there I was driving away from what could have been one of the most incredible moves of God from this entire World Race experience. I wanted to be grateful for the healing we did see, but I still felt like it wasn’t enough. I was upset with God.

I was coming home with nothing. So many Racers came home with stories about how God blew their mind, but what did I have? A couple months of teaching English, some moderately effective outreaches, and a half-healing. “Was that really it, Lord? This is the best you could do? I sacrificed a year of my life to serve you on mission! I believed that you could do the impossible from the beginning! I thought you were going to totally change my life after this year! What did I do wrong to miss all of this?”

I wondered if I just hadn’t been listening to God this year. Maybe He had been asking me to pray for all kinds of healings, and I just wasn’t obedient. Maybe He didn’t trust me with these kinds of miracles, and instead placed me with some of the easier ministry assignments. Maybe He gave up trying for greater things with me, knowing that I likely wasn’t going to come through on his high expectations. I thought going on the Race would make me want to give more of myself to Him, but moments like this, where He didn’t come through in my moments of bold faith, made me want to run away from Him.

And so I began to fear going home. I worried that I would disappoint everyone. I didn’t want to just come home with cool pictures of my adventures and not talk about what the Lord did. God’s faithfulness had been evident in providing me with lots of fun adventures and fulfilling inner desires, but as far as the work of the Spirit went, what much did I have to say? This entire year of serving the Lord was coming to a close, and I was finishing the Race feeling defeated. I couldn’t believe this was how it would all end.

But then the Lord spoke.

I was listening to music while staring out the car window, and suddenly the Bethel song “Faithful to the End” came on. I was familiar with this song, and was already thinking of using it as a theme for my Kenya montage video. But this time, I felt the Lord speaking to me through the lyrics.

“And I will sing of all you’ve done,

And I’ll remember how far you’ve carried me.

From beginning to the end,

You are faithful, faithful to the end.”

And it was in those lyrics, as I felt my heart remember His faithfulness, that I heard Him say to me:

“Jonathan, nothing was wasted. I’ve been with you this whole time. You have been more faithful to me than you realize, but even more than that, nothing you have done this past year has earned any more of my love. I didn’t ask you to come on this adventure to get work done for me. I asked you to come on this adventure because I’m in love with you, and I wanted you to go on this journey with me.”

And that was it. That changed everything. The Lord didn’t want me to come on the Race to prove anything to Him. I had nothing to earn. I already had everything, and the Lord wanted me to see that.

He showed me that in this man’s partial healing, He really was faithful. I wanted to see a healing for the story, but the Lord wanted to use this healing as an opportunity to show this man He loved him. That people cared enough about him to stay and pray over him for almost an hour. That He saw this man, sitting on a mat in a tiny prison, and said “I see you, and I want you”. We wanted to see his body healed, but the Lord wanted to see his heart healed first.

I realized that my biggest fear was that God was still disappointed in me. That while I spent this year living on mission, I still wasn’t faithful enough to God for Him to be proud of me. But in this moment, the Lord was showing me that His faithfulness to me was because really He loved me. He wasn’t angry or disappointed at me. I was never going to run this Race perfectly, and the Lord was faithful to care for me and move through my “yes” no matter what.

All of a sudden, I realized just how much the Lord did do this year. In Costa Rica, when I was asked to preach with the little Spanish I knew, He gave me the words to say. In Belize, He led me to three Rasta men and allowed me to share the Gospel with them. In Thailand, He led three of my English students to Christ through our Lifehouse Everything skit. In the Philippines, He allowed me to encourage one of the street boys to use his passions for the arts for Christ. In Rwanda, I got to disciple two teen boys because He brought them to me. And now, in Kenya, God asked me to pray for a paralyzed man’s healing, and He brought mobility back into his legs. I thought I had no stories to tell. As it turned out, I had hundreds.

It was then I discovered that this whole Race wasn’t about seeing a lot of crazy miraculous things happen for the Kingdom. It was about witnessing God’s radical heart seek out the lost and the hurting, and being His hands and feet in showing those people His love. So many of the moments when God showed Himself faithful were moments where He asked me to say “yes”. And every moment was miraculous, because each moment allowed for the Lord’s power to be shown through me.

In each moment, God considered me faithful, because I allowed Him to prove Himself faithful through me. And that, for Him, was more than enough.

It’s bittersweet writing this blog, knowing that this is my last blog from the field. As much as I’ve been looking forward to the next season, there’s a part of my heart that will always belong over here – sitting in the dirt, praying in poor villages, riding in sketchy buses, preaching from a pulpit, playing with children, living with little and loving from an overflow. Sure, it’s comforting to know that the pleasures of the American life are within grasp, but I’ve realized just how many pleasures are outside of these comforts, in the world that for so long has been outside of my box. But even though I’m saying goodbye to the World Race and to the amazing memories of this trip around the world, I’m not saying goodbye to the Lord. I’m not saying goodbye to adventure. I’m not saying goodbye to “more”. The Lord still has so much more left ahead of me, and the World Race was never going to be the peak of what God could do. In fact, maybe it’s only the beginning.

And so, in these final days of the Race, as I go into Final Debrief and prepare to say goodbye to my thirty-three remaining squad mates, I’m holding on the faithfulness of God. Every day, a new memory comes to mind, and every day I’m thankful for the journey He has taken me on. Sure, I haven’t been the perfect missionary. I haven’t always been obedient to His voice. I haven’t always taken every opportunity to serve the person in front of me. I’ve relied on my flesh far more than I would’ve liked to. I’ve had moments of rebellion, of believing lies, and of choosing comfort over Christ. Sure, there were a million ways in which I could have done this Race better. And sure, there’s a lot more growing left in me from here.

But regardless of everything I’ve experienced in this past eleven months, this whole trip was never about what I did, or what I saw, or how I changed the world. It was never about earning the Father’s love, because called me faithful and loved even before I said “yes” to the Race. It was never really about me. It was about the Lord proving Himself faithful to loving the world, just like He said He would. And whether that was through preaching a sermon, or painting a wall, or digging a hole, or sharing the Gospel, or giving out food, or teaching English, or singing in worship, He did just that.

The Lord has been faithful. He could’ve been faithful without me. But He chose me to be a representative of His faithfulness to a hurting world. At the end of this long journey, I rest in knowing that the Lord has called me faithful. Because no matter what, He calls me loved.

And right now, that’s enough for me.

“I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that you love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in Heaven itself.” Psalm 89: 1-2