“Be willing to be only a voice, heard but not seen” – George Matheson (Streams in the Desert 2/24)
The past two years of my life have been defined by an all-out, no holding back, reckless abandon to seek who God truly is, who he made me to be, and the plan he has for my life. On this road there have been many turns. Some turns I expected, other turns I had to depend on Christ who led me through the dark. I have lost friends and gained others. I put to death the “old man” in me so that I might take on an identity in Christ. I paralleled my life with the story of Isaiah “The Willing”. Just as Isaiah began to listen for God, two years ago I began to learn how to truly listen to God; to cast aside all the other noise in my life and pray humbly in my closet. One of the first instructions Jesus gave his disciple’s was how to pray ,”But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matt 6:6). I did this for the first time in my life and God began to chip away the story I wanted for my life and replace it with His story for my life. My eagerness to take the first step into an unordinary life was encompassed in the momentous statement from Isaiah 6:8,”Here I am God, Send me to the world.”
Two years later I have found myself literally sent to the world. I have not only been sent half way around the world to India, but I experienced many places of growth and servant hood in my own backyard around the states. I feel my story shifting. What I once thought would be a life of complete separation from the “secular world” has become a life of being a voice to the world for those who the world hates. The women and children the world wants to ignore. The ones for many years I neither acknowledged or cared about. Sure I lived a good life, I was kind and helped others, but at the end of the day who was I living for? Did the love God has for his children burn inside me to the point of sacrificing my own plans and goals?
If your closest friend was suffering from HIV, AIDS, disease, hunger, abandonment or persecution; would you be able to go on living a normal life?
We live in a world virtually connected from small villages to major cities. Anyone who reads this blog has connection to the internet and therefor has a way to be informed about people around the world who need help. People who God knows, people who God loves, people God commanded us to love as ourselves.
The words of Jeremiah are speaking to me in a new light.
Jeremiah 1:6
Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”
But the Lord said to me, “Do not say ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.”
I do not claim to be a prophet. I do not claim to have any power or superior knowledge. If I have learned anything in the last two years it is that I myself am “like all other men.” – Bonhoeffer.
I am a sinner saved by grace.
God is using me to be a voice for those who have none…
