Recently I remembered that I have a blog, not one that I update regularly, but a blog nonetheless. This convicted me to update that blog, which I am now in the process of doing… enjoy! But on a real note, I actually didn’t have an Internet connection last month while in the outback of Australia, which is why I never posted about what I was doing there. So let me fill you in on what God showed me while I was in Australia for the month of October (2012).
First of all my team and I flew into Darwin, OZ with 5 other teams from our squad, assuming that we would be working in/around Darwin like the other teams we were with. Little did we know that our contact actually lived an hour and a half away (by car) and so we wouldn’t be working in Darwin at all that month. Not only that, but he had also planned a trip on short notice that would take us into the Australian outback! He decided to take us to Alice Springs, which is the very center of Australia and 18hrs from where he lived. One thing led to another, and 4 days after arriving on the coast of OZ, my team and I were as deep in the outback as you can go!
While we were in Alice Springs we did a variety of things, including: cleaning a church (inside and out), cleaning a chapel at the Salvation Army, sorting clothes and toys at the Salvation Army, and reaching out to Aboriginal communities. The biggest thing I learned during this time was that ministry has many different faces. 99% of the time MINISTRY doesn’t look like what I think it does. I’ve come to realize that most of us have abused the meaning of the word and associated it with “spiritual outreaches” that we are comfortable with… but guess what? We aren’t asked to define what ministry is, or to go out and find good things to do, we are told only to believe.
Check out this response Jesus gives to some people who asked, “What is the work that God requires?” In John 6:29 “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’” How cool is that?! All we have to do is BELIEVE in Jesus and HE will do the work. This was such a good reminder to me this past month in Australia. Every time I went into a situation and wondered “is this menial job really furthering the Kingdom?” I was reminded that my job is to believe; His job is to pour out the Spirit and change the hearts around me.
So wherever you find yourself today, in an office, at school, or deep in the jungle of Africa… your job is always the same. Believe in “the One sent” and allow God to direct every situation through the work of the Holy Spirit. Going into Vietnam this month I am still holding onto what I learned in Australia. It is especially easy in a closed country like this to be discouraged at the lack of “ministry” opportunities. But guess what? God isn’t bound by my ideas of what ministry is this month. I am called to believe. Everything else, absolutely everything, is in His hands.
In the Love of Christ,
Tanner
