Spring Tour Thoughts

The past week I have been working on reading Jack Miller's The Heart of a Servant Leader. The past 2 days I have tacked on the Jars of Clay book The Narrow Road as well. Both books deal with missions work. The first is a collection of letters that Jack wrote to fellow church workers and missionaries, the second the story of Brother Andrew, noted found of Open Doors International. The Jars of Clay on is going down very easily comparatively (I'll be done by tomorrow). The Jack Miller one I can't seem to go 30 pages a day there's so much content that I'm underlining/dog-earring to come back to. I highly recommend them both, they've garnished a lot more of my attention than half my physics textbooks combined.

While reading them both I am struck by an overwhelming sense of.... inadequacy? pressure? ineffectiveness? impotence? mediocrity? (Thank you thesaurus) I'm not sure the word I want here. Hearing the stories of these people who have done amazing wondrous things in the mission field, and then to think that we at CTI claim to be on the mission field, and yet we... I am not in tune with God's will daily. How can I have the power to go into missions after this year (I'm currently enrolling in an M.A.R. program through Reformed Theological Seminary)? As these thoughts go through my head, I'm reminded of one fact, that I can't. It's impossible. And scarily enough, that's the most comforting thing to hear. It's impossible for me to do any of this on my own. It is only through the immeasurable power of Jesus Christ that we can get up in a foreign country and preach His word. It is only with Him by our side that we can continually fly/travel with our gear and not have it seized at a border or seriously broken in ways that we can't fix. Only His power has kept our gear lasting twice the normal wear and tear age, with more than double the normal wear and tear. Only His power can use a sound tech with a traveling band to connect two family members in different institutions that haven't been able to find each other in 10 months. I could go on. The truth is this is exactly what we've been writing about all year. It's not our power. It's God's strength, and that is all the more evident when we realize that we can't do this on our own. It's impossible. We may not feel like we have the strength/faith of Paul, but at the end of the day everything he had came from God too.

If you take anything away from this, hear this. No matter what happens (in our economy, in a war-zone half a world away, in the family next door, in your own life) let God have His way with you, and work through you. If you are considering something like CTI, or another missions oriented group, do not let anything short of God's word stop you.

-Ed