I am struggling. This month has been spiritually hard for me. I’ve had thoughts like: Why am I here? Why has God brought me to this race when I feel like I’m not even making a difference? I can’t communicate with the people without a translator, I don’t have any spiritual gifts to offer mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, and when I pray I feel like God doesn’t hear me. Yes, I’m doing good things, and I find joy in helping people, but where does that leave me spiritually? I thought I would be actively living out Acts performing miracles in Jesus’ name, but instead I do things that I could be easily doing at home. The power of Jesus lives inside of me…where is that power being acted out? I pray for the sick and they are not healed. I see people hungry, yet I can only help feed them for a little while. I see people have peace and joy about their pain because they trust God. Where’s my trust? Where’s my confidence in what I’ve always been taught at church, but when it’s in my face, I question God? Thoughts like that are straight from the lies of hell, but it’s so hard to break those thoughts. I know God is not my magic genie that grants my every prayer, but when it comes to helping others, I am questioning..How is He even helping?
This is a sample from my journal after a visit to a church member:
I thought I was going to lose it. We visited a home and they led us to a back room where a man in his forties lay in a hospital bed. He fell off his parents’ roof about a year ago when he was trying to fix it and fell on his head. He had to have surgery and it’s a miracle he’s alive. However, he’s now paralyzed and has to breathe out of something from his neck. While we were there he would try and breathe in then have to cough a lot. He then looked like he was crying either out of frustration, pain, sadness, or maybe all of those things. He was crying, but no sound came out. His dad would look at his son with compassion in his eyes and rub his arm to console him. The man looked like a little boy when you saw the plea in his eyes as if to say “Please take this pain away.” We sang a couple songs, read a verse, and prayed over him. As we were saying goodbye to him and his parents, he could barely raise his hand to shake ours. He kept crying off and on when people said goodbye to him. When I came to him, I touched his hand, and he fell apart again. I wanted to just hug him and take his pain away. I was really struggling after that because it made me think of not only him, but also so many other people sick in this world. Where was God? Why didn’t He heal that man with our prayers?
Today I finally broke down and talked with one of my teammates as I just fell apart. I feel worthless. I’m not making a difference anywhere. My prayers don’t mean anything. I don’t have spiritual gifts. Where was God in people’s pain? She reminded me that our ways are not God’s ways. Yes, we would have all loved to see the man healed that day. Maybe that’s not God’s will right now. Maybe all he needed was a group of Christians from another country to pray and show him that God is still with him in this hard time…we don’t know. And we don’t have to.
Processing this with her I realized that our purpose is not to go around healing, clothing, and feeding people. Yes, we have the privilege to do that while we’re here, but the point is to bring them to Jesus. What we want to do to help people may not be what they need. What they need is their heart right with God. Sometimes that may take a healing or prophesy. Other times, that may be praying over someone or giving them a simple hug and smile. I may not have the gift of healing, tongues, or prophesy right now, but I have other gifts I could use for His purpose.
My teammate also pointed out how much I have grown. At home when things get hard, I put it away and not deal with it. When I hear of the horrible things going on in the world, I “put my head in the sand” and pretend it doesn’t exist. Here, I have to confront things head-on. When my team notices something bothering me, I can’t hide from them and put my issues away, I have to talk about it. We are helping a ministry with preventing sex- trafficking next month. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. I have to educate myself in how it works so I can better understand where these girls are coming from and relate to them the best way I can.
I am broken. God is building me up. It’s hard and messy, but despite that, I feel like I’m on the right track. I know He wants to use me for greatness, but I don’t see it yet…
This morning I asked God to talk to me today. I wanted Him to reveal himself to me in some way. Twenty minutes later, a church member led our team with a devotional using this verse:
Isaiah 61:1—The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring the good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
Later that day I came across Isaiah 55:8 during my quiet time: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
Maybe the majority of this journey around the world needs to be allowing the small things to make the biggest difference. Maybe what I consider “small” is so huge in someone else’s life. I need to trust God in what His plans are for the people I meet this year, not my own plans for them.
