Growth

I am beginning to change goals with our blog. Instead of constant ministry updates, there will still be highlights, I want to open our lives up to you. The changes God is making in us to prepare us for the things he has for us. I will become increasingly open and honest about things, hopefully people like this.

One reality I am being confronted with now is how much of “ME” I want in the equation. Often as we raise support, go to the field, plan we look at our gifts and abilities and how God might use them. We communicate with people passions, interests and ideas we think God might use to reach people. At least for me, I am realizing we are often looking not at what God can do, or desires but what we can do. By no means do we intend to do this. I came desiring to mix wood working skills, passion for the poor, ability to teach God’s word. I had ideas of how God can use it, but I am afraid, even more than I realize, what I wanted was to justify the calling. It leads you to be in a hurry to accomplish things rather then resting in God’s purpose. I do believe those ideas are from God, or at least some of them. God doesn’t waste things and abilities he places in your life. Those things will come.

The problem is when you are concerned with what you bring verses God, not only are you limiting an infinite God to your very finite abilities. You become in a hurry to continue to justify what you are doing verses being patient and waiting on the Lord. We need to plan and look forward. God expects us to be a part of the equation. However, it’s in His place and His time. For me this led to assuming everywhere we have gone is where God wants us to put down roots and begin the work He has for us. I remember talking to my friend Adam a couple months ago. Saying “lets just start, you have to get going sometime. Let’s get money together, start a school for the poor, get busy”. Thankfully God loves me. After that He began to reveal to us, I believe, His desire to use the local churches here, Brazilian Christians He desires to give dreams and passions. Eyes he wants to open to the need around them.

For us, He began to show us there are many places in the world with far fewer Christians. We see many tribal people here, we thought and it may still be, that we need to get busy with them here and we do. We feed, love, and pray for them. However there are many people in this area beginning to notice them, trying to reach them. What about those people who still live beyond civilization. Who will go where no one else wants to live. Maybe we have to be willing to go where we can not possibly be the big part of the equation. Where no one will notice us, where a trade school and a discipleship center exists in total obscurity. The point isn’t to get ahead of the Lord and run towards something. The point is to see God is always moving us towards something. All of us. We don’t know where this will end but are beginning to pray about doing a school of frontier missions, as we shared with many of you we might. We are beginning to plan a trip to the north of Brazil and possibly one for me(Ben) to Africa to Guinea Bissau. We believe God is calling us to the less reached of the world, I don’t know if there is a country on earth without a missionary. We don’t know what all this means but we know it means our main priority is to prepare. To learn language, to love Jesus, to love those around us. I never believed I could learn a tribal language. I thought I would really have a difficult time learning Portuguese. I am learning quickly, having fun, and have studied very little. I think I could learn a tribal language and I am looking forward to trying. In fact the school we are thinking of doing later this year or next teaches you to learn a language with no structure. Good for me because I hate grammar and hate rules.

Like us, look at your life. What is God preparing you for. Sharing with a neighbor. Adopting a foster kid. Serving at a nursing home. We have the privilege of a call to full time foreign missions. This means we get to use all our time to read, grow, work with people, but we are no more full time Christians then you. A friend commented to me that he wished it was easy and clear for him like us. It isn’t easy, it is hard, I no more know what God has for me tomorrow or even today then you. God is a great, he is a mystery. I highly recommend a book, Radical, taking back the church from the American dream by David Platt. It is one of the best books I have ever read to expose our cultural assumptions to the truth of the gospel and God’s word. It is blessing my life and opening my eyes to the bigger picture of the body being involve in God’s mission for the world.

We are not more a part of God’s plan to glorify himself then any other Christian. God has intended for all time to create the earth. For man to fall. For the flood. To raise up Abraham. To give the law through Moses. To expose the world to His glory through Israel's constant captivity and redemption. Ultimately through the redemption of people to Himself through Jesus. Amazingly by using us to love others showing His glory to the planet. All of us.