What a Difference a Week Makes!

What a difference a week makes….

Last Wednesday was hard because even though I knew the Lord wanted me to travel teaching Bible in other Countries, the door just wasn’t opening.

The truth is there were opened doors, but not many that fit the kind of ministry I felt God was calling me to [1]. Adding to the frustration, a ministry that would have fit perfectly recently brought someone in who met it’s needs (a few months earlier it would have worked out).

On Tuesday (July 28) I asked the Lord for guidance because it was getting kind of frustrating. His response was “keep pushing.” 

Now I have no problem with continuing to communicate and push towards a goal…but that Tuesday night I needed a reason to keep pushing.

See in most cases we push towards a goal when there is hope of accomplishing it.  In my case this wasn’t true, so there was a strong temptation to just “cut my losses” and pursue a new ministry opportunity. Yet knowing God’s way is always better than mine, I committed myself to pursuing that opportunity.

The next morning (July 29) I spent time praying that the Lord would give me wisdom about the ways that I was supposed to keep pushing, and sent an email to a missionary on that field. A response got me excited…but it was to let me know they were still praying about an opportunity [2]

Around 1:00 that afternoon I was getting ready to leave the house but noticed that the email program on my laptop had been shut down. After checking for emails I found one from the missionary saying that something had just come up, and he wanted to call me at 1:30!

Roughly twenty minutes later he explained over the phone that another missionary on the field was having to return to the US because of physical problems. He literally walked into this missionaries office less two hours after getting my email asking if there was anyone who could take over his ministry!

The next day I spent over an hour on Skype talking with the returning missionary about the ministry, and how the Lord could use me there. I couldn’t help but wonder during that conversation what would have happened if I stopped pushing.

If that email had not be sent Wednesday morning

The missionary wouldn’t have remembered me when his co-worker was going back the States

And the returning missionary wouldn’t have known I was extremely interested in helping on that mission field

The truth is I came very close to giving up on that mission field but am really thankful I didn’t…because it reminded me how God works when we are faithful to Him.

 

 

[1]: lasting six months, focused on discipleship, meeting a real ministry need

[2]: I have great respect for this missionary because he was honest with me about there not being immediate needs, but still prayed about whether there were some ways the Lord could use me there