No More Wavering

Wow, if I had actually posted in the last 2 weeks, it would have been on my lack of prayers for the nations and prayer in general (I'd also explain why, but it may come later), focusing on God's glory for motivation for missions instead of on having compassion for people, and my fears I have in thinking about going somewhere as a missionary. I'll talk about the last one here, but the others I'll have to wait.

Well, Monday we had an amazing speaker who spent 20 years in Papua New Guinea. 6 years they learned the language and for 7 months they presented the gospel. It took 6 1/2 years before anyone could become a convert. But by then so many desperately wanted what God had for them. They understood the Old Testament as a whole and when the missionaries finally got to Christ and his crucifixion, the people of the tribe understood that Christ died for their sins. It took 7 months of weeding out and separating them from their old tales, but they got it. 1hr and 40 min on this topic. Wow. I was moved to tears out of awe and joy and other positive emotions of how the church planting occurred in this tribe by these missionaries. I wish all could have been there to hear of such an experience as his.

So now, I see absolutely no reason not to plan on leaving. My reasons for staying (or, rather, resisting leaving), I've realized are weak. Absolutely weak. For example, some of my fears are: not wanting to leave the nice routine that I can establish here, or family, or friends; not wanting to live among big bugs that are absolutely disgusting; not being able to learn a language and being humbled in the process of trying; not wanting to suffer in any way; not wanting to leave warm showers; not wanting to change my diet, or clothes, or culture in any way; now wanting to get a foreign disease and possibly not treating it as I would here; and the list goes on.

I realized this week that it is immeasurably greater (like the Christianese?) to go and leave all of those fears behind for the sake of reaching nations. The speaker made it come alive as he lived it and absolutely loved it. Sure he had hard times, in fact quite a bit of them, but he counted it as worth it. Also, he was a Southern Californian surfer who didn't want to leave, didn't have the calling and was bad with languages. Nothing should hold us back. And it reminded me of all of the missionaries and martyrs and everything who counted their suffering as being completely worth it. None of them would have traded that time for the luxuries that I have as I write this on my nice PC. So I am determined to go unless God holds me back.