Eight ... nine ... ten! I proudly texted my family to herald my single-handed conquest (well, the dog helped some) over ten cockroaches one memorable night. Cockroaches had previously been an enemy often met with a scream. My poor husband had grown increasingly desensitized to my cockroach scream despite its similarity to a person being electrocuted.
I’ve never braved sudden change or welcomed new things. Growing up in a close, loving family, I gravitated to comfort zones. New foods? No thanks! New experiences? Not without much fear and trembling. Time away from home? Not without homesickness … even at camp or a friend’s house. I once told my mother that she would know I really loved a man if I was willing to marry him even though he planned to leave our hometown! My ideal prescription for life was to serve God near family in the city and church where I was comfortable. Those were legitimate places of service after all, right?
How does God place a timorous spirit like me in a distant land, grow a bug-fearer into a (somewhat) formidable slayer of cockroaches, and transform a selective eater into a (semi-) daring sampler of foreign cuisine and a lover of something as foreign as couscous? Wouldn’t it be simpler to send those who savor adventure and know no fear? God still delights to use the weak things of the world to accomplish His purposes.
By God’s grace, in kindness and mercy He directed my steps to key experiences and opportunities and began to reshape my thinking as I entered young adulthood. The Lord used the familiar truth of Proverbs 3:5–6 to open my eyes to my lack of trust in God’s direction for me. As I surrendered my future to the Lord, He began to open door after door before my startled eyes. The Lord allowed me to see how He had been guiding and shaping my path in specific ways long before I knew what He was doing.
God has placed me today in a strange, new land despite fears and reservations and has helped me to love and enjoy living there. I will readily admit that it is not easy to live far from family, adjust to a radically new diet, acclimate to the bugs, and acculturate to a new country in many ways. God’s grace, however, ensures that I don’t have to do any of that in my own strength. When necessary changes in our new “home country” overwhelm me, when we miss an important family event back home, when our language teacher introduces us to snail soup, when the cockroaches threaten to evict us, when fears arise that threaten to choke the gospel words that I need to share, ... in every situation, God’s grace abounds. I am certainly not adequate for these things, but I am learning that my sufficiency is of God (2 Corinthians 3:5).
Paralyzing fears had surged through my homemaker heart as I anticipated the changes we would face without the various support structures I had enjoyed my whole life. Since arriving, the Lord has repeatedly shown how the place of His appointment for me is the greenest pasture possible for me spiritually. We live in a very dry city surrounded by tens of thousands of people who walk in darkness that at times is almost palpable; however, life here by God’s appointment has shown me that He truly is a stream in the desert for His children. God mercifully teaches me many sweet and precious lessons not in spite of where we are called to live, but because of it.
I don’t know what good works the Lord is currently preparing for you, but I encourage you not to put God in a box. Don’t look at your personality, preferences, or propensities and think, “I’m not like those heroes we read about in biographies! I’m not like John Paton or Ann Judson or ...!”
God has called us all to share the Gospel. The question we must face honestly and answer submissively is “Where and how does He want me to serve?” God may want you to serve Him full-time as a layperson in America or overseas; He may want you to serve full-time in a Christian ministry. Even though at our best we follow God imperfectly, He has many means at His disposal by which to direct our steps. If we are humbly seeking His will, He will place us right where He wants us—even if that might sometimes surprise us!
Many of you are familiar with John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the powerful scene when Christian and Hopeful cross the river of death to enter the Celestial City. Serving the Lord overseas is not an actual river of death, but taking that step may often involve many “deaths.” As someone who has by the grace of God been helped into and through some of the tributaries of that final river, I want to leave you with Hopeful’s words to Christian, “My brother, I feel the bottom, and it is firm!”
Photo by Srattha Nualsate: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-cockroach-13060854/