The Road to Gaza: Part 3

Picking up where we left off...

I was sitting journaling just a couple days after my weekend of list-induced paralysis.

I do wonder if grace dealt with and led me to give up those other externals I'd so clung to, so that eventually I'd be able to give this up?  Suppose He knew all along that overseas ministry wasn't His long-term plan for my life, and He brought me through those other experiences so that I would be willing to even consider giving this up?  I don't know.  But when I think back over my grace story, and how it seemed to grow bigger and bigger, it wouldn't surprise me at all if maybe it was leading up to something even bigger - something this big.  My mind goes to all the little events in this grace story, and I realize that many of the significant ones happened because of my time of MTC - either people I met there or issues I had to work through.  And then the thought came to me, "Suppose this isn't really about missions?  Suppose it never was?  Suppose this is about grace?"  It would be just like God.  All this time I was pursuing missions, thinking that's what I wanted, thinking that's what He wanted from me, when in the end...what I need, what He wants to do, is all...grace.  Just pure, simple grace.  It's so clear now that it's hard to believe I never saw it before.

The whole time, I had been seeing the issue as "Missions".  Am I supposed to be serving God as a missionary (in full-time ministry overseas)?  If not, where does that leave me?

But I realized that "Missions" was not the ultimate issue.  Missions (as we generally use the word) is only one aspect of God's plan, of what He's been doing through history.  The big picture is actually grace.  It's what He's about.  It's His heart.  It colors everything He does.

On a personal level, I realized that meant that He was far more interested in me understanding, experiencing, and living out His grace more and more deeply, than in how I had planned to serve Him.

On a grander scale, though, I saw that God's grace plan wasn't just evangelization, cross-cultural church planting, or Bible translation (or the stuff that supported those things).  His grace plan was so much bigger, so much more amazing than I had ever imagined.  Yes, it was His Word being brought to those who had never heard before.  It was in churches being born in every nation, every people group.  It was also His children growing to know Him deeper.  It was His truth being lived out authentically before a watching world.  It was each disciple, each follower of Jesus, bringing others to follow Him.  It was all about a big God who, from the beginning of time, has continually reached down with love into an undeserving world.  That is grace.  That is His plan.  And that's what I get to be part of.

I asked myself: Do I believe He's sovereign?  Yes.  So then, who am I to say which aspect of that big picture I should be involved in?  If He wanted me to live out the disciple-making-disciples principle back in the States instead of here in West Africa, was I going to argue with Him?  Was I going to say that serving Him in West Africa was a more important part of His plan?

If I truly believed that God is sovereign and that He had this whole thing in hand, then it wasn't up to me to try to meet the staggering needs here (or anywhere else overseas).  It was simply my job to follow Him.  To trust Him to be God.  To trust that He is at work all over this whole wide world of ours.

And if He's working everywhere, that means He's working in the States, too.

And if He's working in States, that means He has placed people there - His children - to be a part of His plan.

And if He wanted to place me there, at least for the time being...

Was it any less a part of His big plan, His grace story, simply because it seemed to be less a part of the Missions aspect of that big plan?

So I prayed, Okay, Lord.  If this is what You're wanting me to see, then I'm going to start walking in this direction: going back to the States indefinitely.  But You know that with all my heart, I want to follow You.  So if this isn't Your will, if You want me to stay here, please, please, please show me clearly.

I literally felt like a weight was lifted off my chest, like I could breath easier.  Like the fog had finally cleared and I could see.  I had the peace, the joy, the deep assurance that I'd been longing for - for months.

But God's plan is usually more about the journey than about the destination.  And the journey, it seemed, was just getting started...