When I was 13 I went on my first mission trip.
My youth group went to a small town in Eastern Kentucky to do a backyard Bible club at an apartment complex and a youth revival at a local church. At this time, my life was not centered on Christ. I had fun on the mission trip, but I remember thinking, “This missions stuff is great and all, but it is just not the life for me.”
In high school I was a hardcore rule-following-good-girl. I understood that I had accepted Christ, and that He had made me clean, or at least clean enough to get into Heaven one day. I had not yet begun to grasp the depth of God’s love for me. So I lived to follow the rules, and do what Christian girls were supposed to do, in an effort to please God and earn His love and grace. I didn’t party and I made straight A’s. I put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself.
Because I wasn’t even asking God about His will for my life at this point, when I graduated I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I ended up at community college because I thought it would provide me with the security and stability I longed for. I figured I would find someone to marry, at least a man who would go to church, and follow all the rules with me. I might live in a trailer or small house on my grandparent’s farm, and I’d find work as a secretary or receptionist (I’m a boss at fast typing).
I was 19, working a part-time retail job, and into my sophomore year of college, when I finally got it – that God didn’t want me just on Sundays, or just during Bible study, or just for following rules. He loved me, and He wanted all of me, every little piece of me. I began to cultivate my relationship with Him. I read Genesis. I was in awe of the way Noah, Abraham, and Joseph trusted in God with complete abandon. I thought, “I just don’t know if I could do anything that crazy, even if God told me to.”
Well, God did tell me to. At least it seemed crazy to me then. He revealed to me the gifts and talents that He has given me, and confronted me with the truth that it was all for Him. I felt Him pulling me towards Himself, and pulling me toward vocational missions and ministry. My initial thought was, “No way! That is not the security and stability I am looking for, Lord!” But God said to me, “LeAnn, I have so much more in mind for you than you have for yourself. I know what is best for you because I created you. You need to trust me.”
So I surrendered to His will. I transferred to University of the Cumberlands, where I could study religion and church music. Through my involvement in campus ministries as a student and now as an intern, God has affirmed my call to vocational missions and ministry. Nothing fulfills me more, and I could not imagine myself doing anything else.
Now when I think about my old dreams of comfort and security, and never leaving my hometown, I just laugh. God has given me new dreams of wild adventure and an abundant life in Him! I have learned that my security is in Christ. He is the only thing truly secure in this world.
A life lived trusting God, and in complete surrender to Him, is full of uncertainty, struggle, and sometimes pain. But it is also full of joy, peace, healing, love, and freedom. It is so worth it.
“I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.” John 10:10b
