I have a secret. Sometimes during my day I read and re-read some of the comments that have been left on previous blog postings. When I re-read what I have written, it’s mostly in an attempt to edit myself. But when I read what you write, it’s because I feel God has used you to encourage me again and again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the comments left on my “trust” blog. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of hits on my blog pages would be cut in half if my hits weren’t counted.
A couple of months ago, I read a book about needs and how to get those needs met. You take a test and find out what your top four needs are [mine were not surprisingly: the need for clarity, need to be accepted, need to be appreciated and need for control (yikes!)] and from that you go about figuring out how to meet those needs yourself and how to get others to help you meet those needs. Pretty much what you have to do is ask people to help you because they are not mind readers.
On this very site, the August team (and other teams, too) have a special section that is meant especially for our personal prayer requests. It’s been a great way for us to encourage each other and lift each other up in prayer. Along with your comments, I have gotten so much encouragement from my teammates and am so thankful for the encouragers on the team. Sometimes I need to read some of these things that have been written several times a day. My teammate Nikki Medders is a great encourager and a simple text message her way immediately makes me re-focus on what is really important. Sometimes catching other teammates on Facebook at just the right time does the same. When you’re the only one you know in your city who has this daunting task of figuring out how to ask people to donate $15,000, the only one around you who has to figure out how to get enough money for what seems like a million shots, malaria pills and camping gear, then at the same time have all of these personal things go completely crazy on you, it’s pretty easy to feel alone and just throw your hands up and say “I don’t want to do this anymore!” It’s clear AIM staff knew we’d all be needing a bit of encouragement as we go through these preparations when they set up this part of the site and when they told us to have an accountability partner and a prayer team.
Every single team member is going through his/her own difficulties, anxieties and stressful times. Why? Well, maybe Satan is throwing things in our path to try and get us off track. Maybe we’re being tested. Or maybe this is what the life of a Christ follower is all about: abandoning the things that we once saw ourselves as and letting our lives as we saw it be completely destroyed for God’s glory. At least that’s the case for me.
If you click on my “About” section, the first line is “I’m a 26-year-old newspaper reporter…” After Friday, my last day as a newspaper reporter, what will I replace that with? It’s been a lot harder than I thought it’d be to let go of an identity that I have apparently made for myself over the last several years. I have always thought that I looked at my job as just that…a job, but the realization that I have to let that go in a few days has made me see how volatile making an identity for myself, instead of allowing God to make my identity, really is. We have all been called to leave what we have made our little worlds out to be and live as Christ followers, nothing more, nothing less. And we need each other for encouragement as we are broken, little by little, to turn it all over to God, the only one who will never lay us off, forget about us, abandon us, and the only one who unconditionally loves us not because of what we do, what title we have, how much money we have or what we own, but because that’s simply who He is–love.
So from here on out, I ask that you fulfill this need: please continue to pray and encourage, not just for me, but also my new family–my teammates– as we strive to be Christ followers, nothing more, nothing less.
