Sometimes to me the answer is so simple that I don't even know how to answer it. Of course it's because I want to help people and love them and show them Jesus. I want to go, and to me it just makes sense. But lately that question has caused me to really think deeper about where I'm going and why.
There are people who are poor, physically and spiritually, right here. There are people who need love right here. I don't need to cross an ocean to love people. God needs people here, to shine the light of Jesus to people don't know about the depth and power of His love, right here. As I keep thinking, I wonder, do I have other motives? Am I going for the excitement of a new adventure? Because I want to go somewhere new? To see and experience things that I wouldn't be able to by staying here? I pour out my heart to God because He knows my heart even when I am confused by it. I want to be honest before Him and I want my motives to be pure. I want Jesus to be my reason for going and nothing else. The more I think, the more questions I have. I question if I'm really even needed overseas, if going even makes any sense at all, if maybe there's a chance that this is more my desire than it is God's.
In the middle of me telling Him all this, an amazing thing happens. In all His wonderfulness, like He always does, He meets me right where I am. There aren't words to express how thankful I am for this, that my God knows me and my heart and understands all of my doubts and questions. Even more than that, He answers me. That yes people are needed right here where in Buffalo NY, but, He tells me, someone needs to go to the far places too. Why me, I have no idea, but He tells me to trust that He has a plan. To trust that He has put these desires in my heart, the desire to GO to third world countries and spread His life-changing Love there. It might not make logical sense, but when has God ever been worried about making sense?
So, I will have faith that He has a plan. I will follow Him halfway around the world because God has set my heart so on fire to go that I feel like I couldn't say no even if I wanted to. I want to be where He is leading me, and to know more of Him. I want to know the poorest of the poor, to learn from them and love them and see Jesus in their faces, because whatever we do for the "least of these, " the outcasts and the forgotten, Jesus says we do for Him. This and the words of Jesus will be enough for me to go, His command to go and make disciples of all nations. And I will go with the confidence and comfort that my Jesus, the One who loves me with a never-ending Love, goes with me, as He adds..."For behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20
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