Sometimes the Lord orders certain events, conversations, and occurrences in our lives to teach us a lesson. I've heard them before referred to as "teachable moments." I personally got used to thinking of them as "Divine Appointments"--alarmingly clear instances where God in His sovereignty appoints something to happen at a particularly impactive or significant time your life that really grabs your attention. In these moments, when we see (by faith;) the hand of God sewing one thread after another in and through our lives, we must not write it off as merely circumstance or luck. Take some time to reflect on what God is showing you. Here is what I have been reflecting on recently...
1. In a recent Staff Meeting at church, we had the Summer Interns join us. They gave a report of their summer internships and were asked a particular question: Where do you see yourself in future ministry to Christ in His church? Oddly, each one of our interns shared their respective passion for the lost to come to Christ, namely those unreached by the gospel.
2. In my subsequent one-on-one discipleship time with Dale, he followed up the morning's staff meeting by asking me what I thought about the interns' comments. For nearly 2 hours, Dale and I talked about Missions and what we'd like to see done for Christ in this dark and Godless world. It was quite possibly one of the most uplifting conversations I've had in some time.
3. The night of these conversations, one of our college students came to our door wanting to talk further with Kathy about Missions and her future plans. They talked of the great possibilities to serve Christ globally and locally.
4. Only days later, I was having lunch with my cousins. They grew up in a wonderful family devoted to Christ's cause. They spent most of their younger childhood in Indonesia translating the Bible into an unknown language in the jungle village of Obogui. Their family returned to the States after they had close encounters with malaria and desired US schooling. Now they live and serve in the Antelope Valley. We spent almost our entire lunch talking about what a return trip to the tribe in Obogui would look like if we were to go back.
5. When I returned home, I received my monthly issue of The Voice of the Martyrs magazine in which our brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer death and persecution tell their stories of what the Lord is doing in China and other hurting countries.
6. I was so moved by some of the stories in the magazine that I used some ladies' testimonies of faith to intro our ROCK group Bible study. We were just beginning the section in Mark about suffering on Christ's behalf and the gospel (8:34–38). It was a blessed time in the Word that evening as we all were challenged in our faith.
7. The next day, Kathy and I decided to go to the beach to spend some time together. Sure enough, after walking up the coast we ran into a young man and his friend that we knew from Master's. We stopped and talked for about an hour. And what do you know, he was sharing his testimony about his heart for China and how he is going to seminary (Master's) in order to be trained and to return to the mission field. Now he is in my Greek class.
8. Upon returning home, I had a great talk with my good friend. And what does he want to talk about other than a good friend of his who is serving the church in Africa! He shared stories, pictures (thank you FB!), and desires to see Christ's church strengthened and the lost reached in such difficult fields of ministry.
9. I met a new guy to our college ministry on Sunday evening at softball and one of the first topics that was brought up as I was trying to get to know him was that he was planning on going back to Taiwan for another short-term missions trip. At this point, I had to tell this young man of all the things that were recently happening that seemed to be pointing to the topic of missions. We had a great conversation, as we watched our college teams hammer some other teams:)
So I pause in weeks like these...What do I do? How do I respond? Answer: the same thing I have always been trying to do--serve, proclaim and glory in Christ Jesus with all my heart and might and see where He leads and guides His church. I pray that God leads and guides Valley into the lives of the lost on a daily basis and that we cultivate a missional mindset about ministry in this culture and the next (see Acts 1:8).
Let us not forget the biblical evangelist/church planter, the Apostle Paul's, words in Romans 15:20 which say, "and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation."
Let's "Go!"
