This blog is the sequel or follow up blog to another blog I posted while in Ukraine by the name of Overload. If you have not read that blog, I would suggest you go back and read it real quick to get the context.
In Ukraine I felt overloaded in a very extreme sense. I could not recall almost anything. I could only remember distant memories in my past, but no current events. In escence, I was running on Autopilot. Obviously, I have sinse gotten my head back together. At the time, I did not know why God was sending me through this trial and what I needed to learn from it. All I knew was God was still good. Sinse I’ve been home, I realized further why I was so overloaded.
As I went along the World Race, I saw amazing and terrible and beautiful and aweful things. And my heart cried out for each of them, saying “when the World Race is over, I will go back to that place and continue my relationship with the friends I met there and finish the ministry I started and solve the problems in that area, once and for all.” Every month, it was different place with different people and different ministries and different problems. But the PROBLEM was that there was enough places and people and ministries and problems to last me 11 lifetimes.
I tried to say which one I would go to first or focus on the most, but I felt a unique longing for each individual one. And the more I thought about them, the more I realized I did not know where to start and the there was no way for me to finish. So there I was, stuck in the middle of all these causes (I hate facebook causes!) and then I learned about the beggar pimping that goes on. In Ukraine (and many other countries, including the US), human trafficking goes beyond sweat shops and the sex industry. In Ukraine, you can sell your grandmother to a beggar pimp. Think about it: you can’t support her, he says he can if she goes out on the streets and beg for change all day long and gives him the money. On top of that I also learned that people will often rent out their infants and children to these very pimps, drug them up on God knows what so they look more docile, cute, and poor.
And people give even more money because there was a little one there, too.
I think that is when my head started shutting down. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. (kindof a big straw) I could not think about the problems and the people and the…. anymore. It was just too much. I saw no hope for humanity, no light at the end of this blackest of tunnels, and no way I would ever be able to make a difference…… alone. That was it. I was trying to rely on my strength and my goodness and my whatever to solve the problems I had seen and reach the lost that I had to leave at the end of the month. I was not giving these things to God. I was stroring them all up in my heart and trying to take personal responsibility for the ending of these injustices. With the intention of doing Kingdom work, I was playing God. And he saw that. So he started to erode my memories and feelings so he could get my attention.
(This next part is a little confusing in thought, so bear with me as I try to put it into words.) He had to remind me that He has not called me to solve all the problems or even any of the problems of the world or even my family. He has called me to be obedient to my place in the body. And although we often do work toward the freedom of the captives, it is neither our responsibility nor our authority to do so. We may want to do something for the kingdom, but if we do it without God’s blessing, we are wasting time and hurting the name of Christ.
Now, I believe that God will put a specific cause on your heart that he wants you to work on, but if we take singular responsibility for its “failure” or “completion”, we will not only be ineffective, but also overloaded. It is simply too much weight for our shoulders. We have to do what we can (or what God allows us) and leave the rest up to him.
I still realize the problems of the places I’ve been, and I know there are millions more I may never know about. But I know that my allegience does not lie with any cause, but with Jesus. I know that I would love to see even one problem find solution in Christ, but I do not require it. I know he deal with each one in its own time. My job is to do what I can with where He has put me. I am now reloaded and ready for war on….. whatever He comands.
