Relentless: Part 2

 When I started taking the steps towards missions like He had called me, He showed me that I needed to go to New Tribes Bible Institute.  The summer before I started at NTBI I went on my second trip to Nicaragua. It was there that God gave me a passion and love for the people that I cannot explain through words. This is when I really started to understand the call He had put on my life several years earlier. I think that I was finally ready to trust Him in this crazy plan He has for me.  While I was there I saw God work around me, but I also felt Him moving through me and I think this is when I finally started believing He could use me.

 The next two years after that I spent at Bible school soaking up His Word and continuing to serve Him as I was there.  Between two semesters I took my third trip to Nicaragua and it was while I was there that time that God showed me that He wanted me to be there for more than just a week at a time.  I had some suspicions that this might be what He was asking of me so while I was there I was praying (and had some friends praying with me) for God to show me if He was taking me there in a more permanent way.  It was my last day on the trip and I was feeling pretty down because He had not given me any answers for what I was asking. I started to try and accept that though He was still calling me to do missions, it was not going to be in Nicaragua.  As I started talking and sharing my heart with Donna (missionary in Nicaragua), God told me exactly what I had been waiting for all week that He was in fact calling me to Nicaragua.  Through the rest of the day He showed up in conversation after conversation telling me that this place is where He wanted me…and I couldn’t have been more excited! 

The next year I graduated from Bible school and took what I hoped and prayed would be my last week long trip to Nicaragua.  While I was there I became even more convinced that this place was where my heart belongs. I wish I could explain the feeling I have when I am there, I wish you could understand why I feel so strongly about this.  All I can say is that I have no doubt in my mind that this is God.  There is no better feeling in this world than knowing you are doing exactly what He is asking of you.  I have found my sweet spot and I am aiming myself towards it.

This fall I took a Spanish class and started some crucial conversations that set the course of my life for the next year or so.  I talked to my friend, Donna, and asked her what the real chances of me getting to spend more than just I week in Nicaragua were and what I could do for the mission there.  She asked me to pray about where God would have me put my focus on while I was there. He showed me through lots of prayer that I should be working with the teens. In December I had another conversation with Donna and told her what God was telling me and we talked about how I could really do this and how much it would cost to do so. After that conversation I started planning my summer of 2016 working with teen girls.  My goal while I am there is to reach out to the girls and get them excited about coming to church and knowing Christ.  I am also hoping to get to spend some time at each of the churches that are planted through Familia Avance Nicaragua and get a better idea of how God will use me there in the future.

   

God is already working out so much of this for me and I could tell you story upon story about His provision in this season of my life. The truth is that I am not at all equipped to do what God has called me to do. What gives me hope is this: when I look at the examples of who God used in the Bible I would see a bunch of unworthy people, people who most would say should never be the faces of Gods ministry but that is exactly who He chose; the broken, the outcast, the defeated, the prostitute, the murderer, the imperfect, ect.  I am convinced that the reason God chooses the people He does is so that His light could shine even brighter in the darkness.  Because if He chooses the "unqualified" there will be no question to who the glory belongs. There is a quote that I love that says "God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called" this reminds me that even though there might be some obstacles (oh yes there are) and some things I need to learn (hmm...like a whole new language?) God is going to give me what I need to do what He is asking.

 “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9   This verse is not really saying that my weakness somehow gives God strength He didn’t have before, its saying that when I am weak God’s strength is shown more clearly because there is no way I could do it without Him!  I guess what I am trying to say is that I may not look like the best person for this job, and that is probably true, but I know that with Christ all things are possible if I walk in obedience to Him. It is not me doing the work but Christ in me.  I am just a willing vessel for Him to fill up and pour out on those in need of His love.

 "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."                                                                                                                  1 Corinthians 13:1-3