Since I was a freshman in college, God had been making the World Race known to me. At this point in my life I was not walking closely with God so I knew for a fact that I was not ready for such an extended mission trip. I began to pray for God to prepare me for a World Race, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be going on one anytime soon, I wanted to be prepared. It wasn’t until the second semester of my sophomore year in college that I truly began to walk with Christ. Before then all I wanted to do was fit in with the crowd around me, but that never seemed to work out. It wasn’t until recently that I understood why that happened. A friend of mine has been studying about the time we spend in the wilderness. She asked me “Steph, has there ever been a time where you felt completely isolated or alone?” The first thing that I thought of was my entire freshman year of college. During that time, instead of letting me fall into the hands of the wrong group, the Lord kept me isolated. He fought so hard for me and continued pushing me away from them until I found where I was supposed to be. Eventually I did. My sophomore year I joined a Christian organization on my campus and fell completely in love with Jesus. In the spring and summer of 2016, I was blessed with the opportunity to go on three different mission trips. I went to Beach Reach in South Padre Island during spring break. On this trip, I helped drive college students around the island (to help prevent drunk driving), did outreach in which we fed students, and shared Christ with them. I then went to North Africa where I did outreach with natives in the area, and learned about their culture and again shared Christ with them. My last trip that summer was a service mission trip to the Dominican Republic. My team helped build school desks and other classroom furniture for a school there. Coming back from each mission trip I knew my heart lied in the mission field. Again, the Lord brought someone who would talk to me about the World Race, but I pushed it away. This time I knew I pushed it away because I thought since I was kind of a new Christian, I didn’t know enough to teach others and I was afraid of the unknown. A couple of days after, I was reading my bible and stumbled up Jeremiahs story. In the first chapter the book of Jeremiah, God is speaking to him and tells Jeremiah that he must go. Since before Jeremiah was born God had called him to be a prophet. Around the age of 20, he became hesitant of Gods’ plan for him. He claimed that he was too young to go out and speak for the Lord. Without hesitation the Lord replies,
“Don’t say, ‘I’m too young’, for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don’t be afraid the people for I will be with you and will protect you.’”
I can’t help but imagine how exactly this conversation went on. When God showed up and told Jeremiah what he had to do, he probably said “Lord, I can’t do this! I’m too young! I don’t know what to say! I’ll be alone! There is no way that I can get this job done! I’m sorry, I can’t do this!” While Jeremiah was going on and on, I can hear God answering him saying “You can do it. This is the perfect time for you to go. I will give you the words. I will be with you the entire time. Jeremiah, I trust and believe in you. Everything is going to work out the way I want it to.” Finally God had to figure out some way to get Jeremiah to calm down and believe Him. He reached out and placed His hand on Jeremiahs mouth and said, “Look, I have put my words in your mouth! Today I appoint you to stand up against nations and kingdoms.” The Lord went on to teach Jeremiah that He will never fail him. As I read this story, I couldn’t help but think this is me and God right now. I’m freaking out about being called and God is constantly saying, “Steph, calm down. I got you. Just trust in me and everything will be okay.” Even after learning to all of this, I still pushed the World Race to the side because I “wasn’t ready.” In January of this year I received an email from the World Race and the first question in the email was, “If you haven’t started an application, why not?” Let me just add that I hadn’t received an email from them in a couple of months, or if I did they were going directly into my spam folder. This was definitely the Lord reminding me that this is the next step that I need to take and He wasn’t going to stop pushing me until I took it. So I did. Within the matter of 2-3 weeks, I applied, interviewed, and got accepted to go on a World Race route. If you don’t consider this a God thing then I don’t what is. It is amazing how God will take your own doubts into consideration and use them to strengthen you. He placed Jeremiahs story in my life to show me that I was not alone. It taught me that even when we are doubting our capabilities, He has complete faith in us. God calls every single one of us to proclaim His victory everywhere we go and to everyone we see.
“Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all people.” (Psalm 96: 3)
As Christians, this is a privilege to shout from rooftops that the Lord defeated death, but most of us fail to realize that the very place we are in now is our mission field. We must realize that our mission never ends and it never changes, the only thing that changes is our destination.
