The newly accepted ReachGlobal missionaries
The interviews and application process are complete. We are now officially missionaries with ReachGlobal! Our newsletter will be sent out in about a week filling everyone in on what is next for us. Thank you for all your prayers and encouragement! Jamie and I are super excited about where God will take us and about being a part of what He is doing around the world. God has been preparing us for years, and He is still working on us daily.
This time, to save money, we decided to drive to the interview in Minnesota instead of flying. Before we headed out God brought to mind one of our last blog posts about everything being for the glory of God’s name. I really felt the Lord telling us, “You can pray for safe travels, or you can see what better things I have planned. Do you desire safety and comfort over the opportunity to have My name glorified?” So instead of praying for safe travels we prayed, “Lord, in whatever happens we ask that you would glorify yourself and allow us to be excited about what you are doing.” Thirteen hours of driving later we were sitting on the side of the road with a smoking engine. Of course the VERY FIRST thought into my head when I saw the smoke is, “I should have prayed for safety."
Instantly God really began working on our hearts reminding us that He is sovereign and in complete control. “Take comfort, I am going to glorify My name through this,” He constantly whispered to me. It turns out we could not have broken down in a better place. We had just gotten out of 2 hours of bumper to bumper traffic in Chicago, and the next day’s drive was through the Wisconsin and Minnesota wilderness where towing companies would be limited. We broke down about a mile from an auto repair shop; and a rental car company was across the street. Also, we had gotten a financial gift the week before we left that ending up covering the cost of our car repair. God is good.
As we were waiting for the tow truck, Colossians 1:13 came to mind.
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.
What were we rescued for? For comfort on this earth? For an easier life? For safe travels? Or were we rescued for His glory and our own good (which many times we don’t understand)? As we sat waiting, I had complete confidence that God would use this ordeal for His glory, but I began to feel regret for years of misguided prayers. I wonder how many times God wanted to glorify Himself through my life and yet I prayed contrary to what He wanted to do. A passage that comes to mind is Acts 9 when Saul is blinded by God on the road to Damascus. God tells a believer named Ananias to go to Saul and pray for him. Ananias was afraid to do this because Saul was coming to Damascus to persecute Christians, but God tells him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake" (Acts 9:15).
God is beginning to show us all the hard times that will come as we serve Him, but He is graciously weaning us into it. God used mono to guide us back to Pennsylvania and teach us about listening to Him, and He used our car breaking down to teach us about trusting Him. For years I have been more interested in being comfortable than glorifying God, and now He is showing me that a false sense of comfort isn't true security. Storms and hard times are meant to blow away the sand so we see that there is only one true rock on whom we can rely. We wouldn't have wanted our trip to go any different than it did, because now our journey to the mission field is more securely placed on the only secure Rock.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Psalm 46:1
No comments:
Post a Comment