So I’ve been out of Ireland for about two weeks now and am just now writing only my second blog post about my month in Galway, Ireland. I know I should have written more; I want y’all to know what God is doing on my trip; I want God to use my blog to reach the hearts of those who read it as they read the amazing stories of God’s miraculous works all around the world. But unfortunately, I just didn’t feel like I had anything like that to blog about, and I didn’t want to put out on the internet what I actually had to write.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that we didn’t do ministry during our month in Galway; we had plenty of ministry opportunities while we were there. To recap, we worked with a local church called Discovery Church. We passed out 10,000 free worship CDs to the community, which I have absolute faith that God has already used and will continue to use to reach the hearts of Galway; we helped put on a worship conference that God used to work in powerful ways in the lives of the people there, myself included; we had several days of going out and just simply talking to people and sharing the love of Christ with them; we worked with a local café ministry called An Thobar Nua (The New Well), and I know that our time there both blessed the workers and blessed us; we cleaned up the city, did face painting, painted a room of a house, and cleaned out a shed. We did ministry last month. The problem wasn’t a lack of ministry opportunities; the problem was a lack of my heart in the ministry we were doing.
You see, as you probably know, before coming to Ireland, I had spent two months in the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Two months of living in poor, third-world countries where I lacked the comforts that I was used to in my life. By the time the end of the month in the Dominican Republic was coming up, and I knew I would be spending some time in Ireland, I was ready. In fact, I was so ready for a taste of the western world again that I was even excited about the three or four hours that we would be spending in the Orlando airport. And so we got to Ireland, and I was back in the western world. Yes! All is right again! Or maybe not. The problem was that I had forgotten that along with the comforts of a place similar to home came the struggles and temptations of a place similar to home. Yeah, I was back in the Western world, which meant that I was back in a world that ran after absolutely anything and everything except God to find pleasure and satisfaction. Materialism. Alcoholism. Lust. Partying. The list goes on. These are all common struggles in this world. And as I settled back into this world, a lot of these struggles and temptations became my struggles and temptations also. As my time in Ireland went on, I found myself more and more wanting to live for myself. I wanted to buy new clothes so I could look good to these people; I wanted to go out and party; I wanted to meet girls; I wanted to live a life that was all about me. And for the majority of the month, I did. Yeah, I knew I could fight it, and for brief periods of the month, I did. There were a few two to three day periods where I would get refocused back onto God and fight the battle against these temptations. But then I would slip back into the flesh-pleasing atmosphere of the western world and would start to waste my life again.
Not exactly the typical missionary blog posts that I expected to be writing during my trip. I mean, I sure as heck didn’t leave my family, my friends, everything I know, in order to live that kind of life. And for you financial supporters out there, I know you sure as heck didn’t donate your hard-earned money in order for me to live that kind of life. But while I am often tempted to look back at that month as a month wasted, it wasn’t. In Romans, Paul writes that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). And this situation is no exception. Despite how much I may have been ignoring God and even rebelling against Him throughout the month, God was still doing a work in my heart. By the time the end of the month came along, I was ready to get out of that world; I was ready to live another month in a country where comforts of normal life are stripped away, and I am left only with God. God used that month to serve as a great reminder that only He satisfies; I was created to live for Him and going against my created purpose never will feel right.
Philippians 3:7-9A
So this blog idea wasn’t originally going to be a two-parter. I mean, I’m now in Moldova. I got out of the westernized world and back into a country “where comforts of normal life are stripped away.” End of story, right? Wrong. As I spent my first week in Moldova, I learned that the lesson went deeper than I realized . . .
