How did I get HERE? Here… in my apartment writing this blog. Here… with a peace that really does transcend all understanding, as I abandon my own plans for my future and step into the plans that God has for me. Here… ready to give up the comforts of home to step into the unknown clinging only to God’s promises.
It’s something I’ve thought to myself a lot lately. Simply put, it has been the Lord’s plan all along. The Lord has changed my heart and changed my will to align with His.
I clearly remember the first time God really pulled on my heart for missions abroad, and it terrified me. It was 2 and ½ years ago and I was spending some quiet time alone with the Lord in a Barnes& Noble in Myrtle Beach, SC. It was towards the end of my summer at the Leadership Project (Campus Outreach’s summer project), and my thoughts were probably prompted by one of the recent talks. I asked myself ‘what is the one thing I wouldn’t be willing to do for God?’ And I immediately pictured myself in a tent, in a foreign country, not knowing the language, and a return to America nowhere in sight. After a shutter, my thoughts quickly resolved that the Lord must be testing me (like Abraham in Genesis 22), and I must simply be willing to go but the Lord would never actually call ME to such a place. So with little worry, I began a regular prayer of, “Father, please work on my heart to make me willing to go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING for you.”
It was about six months after this when I heard about the World Race for the first time. A friend of mine knew a recent Furman graduate going on the Race and was going to hear her speak about it. She invited me along because she thought it was something I’d be interested in, but it was totally God’s plan for me to hear about the Race that night. I went back to my dorm room, got on the World Race website, and spent about 3 hours reading racers’ blogs. The Lord really used this to continue to break my heart for the nations. As I continued to pray that He change my heart to make me willing to go anywhere, I also began to pray for Him to raise up willing laborers to go out to all nations on His behalf.
Looking back it’s almost humorous that those were both the prayers of my heart, yet I wasn’t connecting the two. The Lord is so faithful and really changed my heart without me even realizing it. About a year after that afternoon in B&N, my prayer was something like 'Father, I am willing, send ME!' Not only was I willing to go, but had a growing desire to go, and now I can’t think of anything that would make me happier than to go to the ends of the earth preaching the gospel, sharing God’s love, and blessing others as He has blessed me.
It’s funny really, how often the Lord chooses to use YOU to answer YOUR prayers! Are there prayers in your life to which you just might be the answer?
