This month, I am teaching English and guitar lessons. My only qualification for teaching English is that I speak English well (ish), and I can play all of one song on the guitar.
My teammate taught a lesson in Mandarin last week. She doesn’t speak Chinese.
There’s nothing like your host asking you and your teammate to lead worship during a bible study when didn’t plan anything. What do you do? The two of you break out into a children’s song because that’s the only thing you can think of and you’ve been doing children’s ministry for the last three months.
These are the things we do for ministry. This is our life. It’s a continuous process of saying yes.
-Every single racer on the field had to say yes to apply for race and then say yes again to actually coming on the field.
-Every supporter had to say yes and sacrifice a small (or large) bit of their time, prayers, or finances to keep their racer on the field.
-Every ministry host had to say yes to accepting a team of weird, loud, and often smelly (usually) American twenty and thirty-somethings becoming a part of their life.
This whole world race process is about people on every level saying yes to the unknown adventure the Lord has for them.
That being said, stopping, listening, and figuring out what that means is hard. We’re told to want the American dream and then we’re told to want our own dreams. We make assumptions about what our love ones think we should do (rarely actually asking them) and hold that as a universal expectation. We have daydreams that last minutes and secret longings that never really go away. Between the voice of the world, our love ones, and ourselves, it’s a wonder anyone knows what to do with their lives. It’s a wonder anyone says yes to anything.
And then there’s that other voice inside, the one that whispers you can’t. Call it what you will but this voice interrupts our dreaming, makes walls around the endless possibilities letting us only see the endless limitations. It puts expectations on us that don’t actually exist. It tells us we’re too poor to make that wild intuitive (gut) choice, too dumb for it to work, too smart to ask for help, and too alone for anyone out there to want to help. It’s a wonder anyone steps outside his or her front door.
So how does one make a choice, whether that choice is our life’s pursuit or a simple coffee date, let alone a choice to say yes?
The answer is two-fold. Firstly, in your faith, do you have a personal two-way relationship with the father? I’m not talking about your religiosity—the amount of times you go to church a week, hours you volunteer, amount you tithe. I’m talking about conversation with the father. Do you sit and ask God personal questions and then wait for him to whisper the answer to your heart?
Matthew 7:7-8 says “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to every who knocks, the door will be opened” (NLT).
If you ask the father for answer, he will provide them. Keep in mind though, that if you do not stop and wait for the answer in whatever form it may appear, then its kind of like the asking your mom for a cookie and then taking the cookie before she answers. Yes, you got the cookie (or the opportunity for action) but you don’t know if that was her intent for you.
The second part is faith. Do you truly believe that God is going to keep his promises? Do you believe that he is good and his plans for you are not only more than you could ever do on your own?
For me, this is the hard part. Often I believe the lies that other or I have told for years. The lies that I have assumed are true for years because I haven’t looked for the truth myself. Through this veil of un-truth, it was hard to see the path that God has laid out in front of me. This is why it took me years to say yes to the race. This is why it took months for me to buy in. This is why it has take me my twenty-five years to start the lifelong process of figuring out who I am and what that means.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 is one of my two sister’s favorite bible verse and when you start talking to God about what you want and what he wants and believe that its possible, this verse becomes so much more sweet.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord.
When you know this and have the opportunity to live it, it’s a lot easier to hear his plans. When you live and having a faith-filled and personal relationship, just so you know, saying yes to weird ministry things gets easier.
What are you saying yes to? Is there something you’d like to say yes to? What’s stopping you from finding out if it’s part of the more than perfect plan made for you before you were even born?
