What an odd life, being called to cross-cultural ministry. The image of missionary life that I have been exposed to through the church is one of great purpose, cost, and intensity. I haven’t been introduced to the reality of slowness, waiting, and the mundane. It seems that such a “big call” shouldn’t include long periods that just feel static. Such a call should continue to be demanding; it has such a high cost, shouldn’t I always be giving? Why would I get to be comfortable and receive more than I need when I’ve said yes to give up all that I’ve ever known?
These are the questions I have been wrestling with over the past month and a half because I have found myself in such a place of abundance and comfort. I continue to live at home, fully provided for by my family, while I simply wait for the government to process my paperwork and visa. I do not need to be working to pay the bills, I do not have the pressure of building my support team or doing other pre-field work – I am simply waiting with little to no demands on my time.
And it is one of the hardest seasons to live in.
Don’t get me wrong, it was fantastic at first and still remains so on certain days. But in the majority of my days, I feel a subtle restlessness deep in my spirit that tells me I need to be doing, I need to be working, I cannot continue to just be.
Why does my spirit tell me this? Why do I, and I believe we as human beings, have this deeply rooted discontentment that propels us to perpetual work and achievement?
As I have considered my own heart and life in these past weeks, I've identified these three (negative) reasons – 1. We desire community and relationship which, in part, comes through acceptance, and so we continually work to prove ourselves acceptable. 2. We feel guilty. We don’t think that we have earned or deserve to live at ease without working or giving. 3. We have a very real enemy who knows that work can quickly become an idol that separates us from the one, true God.
While one or another of these may sound more on point or seem to be at the heart of my struggle, the more I have considered them, the more convinced I am that they all work together.
I don’t view myself as worthy to receive this time of rest and life without demands – I feel like I need to be proving myself. To my supporters who continue to give during this time of waiting, to my friends who are watching me enter this type of life after college, to my family who I again live with, and to the Lord who is the one who called me into this. So here I am, trying to prove myself worthy out of this sense of guilt over an undeserved gift, a sense and striving that I believe is highly influenced by the enemy.
Now, the enemy does not have the power to know my thoughts, only my God has that power (Ps 139:1-6; Heb 4:12), but he does have power to influence my thoughts and this is the primary method of his attack.
I have to take a moment to confess – to confess my forgetfulness. At the beginning of my journey to cross-cultural ministry I was counseled to prepare for an increase of spiritual warfare. Then, at cross-cultural training, we spent multiple days on the topic of spiritual warfare, discussing how much of it occurs on the subtle level of thoughts and lies. And yet, in the past few months of being at home (in a place of comfort and familiarity - where we are often most vulnerable!) I forgot to be on guard against these attacks.
And so, as I have lived in a season of abundant blessing – that no, I do not deserve, but that the good God who loves perfectly has desired to give me – I have fallen prey to lies that seek to separate me from the One who is giving me this blessing. The enemy has not had the power to remove the blessing from me, but is working as hard as he can to remove me from the Source of the blessing – from what is infinitely more valuable than the blessing.
Instead of rejoicing in the goodness and generosity of my God who is giving me time to rest before entering the next chapter of service, I have fallen prey to the lie that I cannot be pleasing or honoring the Lord if I’m not working. If my days are not full in the way that I see as a measure of good work, there is no way that they could be full of the work God currently wants me pursuing. Oh, the pride! Who am I to dictate the work God needs from me? To say He even needs from me...
I am one beloved child of God, called to specific work in His kingdom, but first and foremost called to know, love and enjoy my God. To live life with Him. Trusting that He is the God I say, wholly sovereign and good, I can then trust that the life I am faced with – whether it be one of large demands to give and work in explicit ways to the growth of the kingdom or one of slow, mundane routine that seems to have no consequence – this is the life that God, in His sovereignty, would have me lead for this time.
If I trust that God is the one who has called me to cross-cultural ministry and has orchestrated all things to get me on board and prepared to go, then why do I not trust that He has just as much orchestrated life so that I have this time of slowness, waiting, and rest?
As a follower who has said yes, it is now my job to continue forward, walking into the uncomfortable unknown of a comfortable life! To trust that this time has purpose of which I am simply unaware. To continue to seek to know my God, the one who has given me this time, and not try to work myself out of it because, in my evaluation, it isn’t enough.
And so that is what I have chosen to fill these days with – seeking to know the Lord. This means my days are full of reading the Bible, prayer, investing in relationships with family and friends, taking care of my physical, mental, and emotional health so that I will be ready when the time to go comes, and saying yes to unexpected opportunities for work and service as the Lord brings them.
Praise be to the God whose ways are higher than my own, to whom I can submit in trust.