There are so many people, ideas and events throughout my life that have offered me profound inspiration. These inspiring circumstances came upon me in a wave of enlightenment and left me a changed individual. I thought that I would dedicate a few upcoming posts to some of the things that throughout my lifetime of defining moments, were more than a mere passing thought…they were impressed on me with sincere revelation.
So to begin I will start with an individual whom I came into contact with at a young and vulnerable age.
The Missionary:
For those that are or have been foreign missionaries at some point throughout your life, there was probably a time when you made your way to a local church in the states to process some of your many spiritual travels with some local people. It’s such a familiar scene- the card table set up at the front of the church with the printed, tribal linen cloth spread over as a makeshift table covering. The artifacts and souvenirs scattered around on the table like a bad craft show and the foyer littered with fuzzy photographs of the world traveler awkwardly smiling at the camera with lanky arms draped around the indigenous people. The screen is set up and the slides of pictures are ready to roll before the congregation so they can bear witness that the traveler was actually doing something with the money donated to them.
If the above description has ever been you, know that first of all, you’re not the first missionary to have ever gone through this process when visiting a church to reminisce about your adventures. The congregation probably already has a good idea of what you might have to speak about and show them.
Second of all…in being faithful to your divine calling and “going to the ends of the earth” it could surprise you that you just might impact the most unlikely of persons….even a child perhaps. This is where one of my first inspirations came from….The Missionary.
He and his wife had lived in Brazil for most of the years that I had been alive up to that time…I’m pretty sure I was about 12 years old when I first encountered them. He had come to serve in the church as an interim pastor first and later gave his missionary spiel to the congregation. I had never heard such a personal presentation from an individual that had actually lived there and formed relationships with the indigenous people that he witnessed to.
I remember distinctly sitting in the hardback pew, transfixed on every word that was spoken. In that hour-long presentation I was transported to a world very different than my own comfortable lifestyle…it was a world of rice and beans, of alley-way soccer among the school children and of political red tape in need of cutting whenever there was a discrepancy in foreign documentation.
This was the first time that I ever experienced a spiritual force other than the superficial self-talk that I was used to telling myself. For the first I heard an inner voice telling me that I was going to do something great with my life…something that would have an impact on my world. At the time I was picturing myself picking my way through crowded, unsanitary streets in Rio…nowhere near what I find myself doing today. At that moment in time, with my 12-year-old ears impressed beyond comprehension at the testimony I was hearing…
…I was inspired.
God used that moment and went on with that initial spark of inspiration to begin a work in me that has spiraled beyond all that I pictured myself one day doing. When at the time I originally believed my calling was foreign mission work, the Creator prodded me in directions that I never would have taken on my own. Knowing that a calling has been inspired is the first step…acting on the inspiration is the second.
In the years that passed since the missionary, before I began to act on inspiration, I have witnessed the carrying out of missions throughout every faucet of my life. Today while I may not be waking up in a grass hut on the banks of an African river, nor will I be strolling the outdoor market in Sao Paulo to form relationships with the farmers…instead I daily sit across from a hopeless parent and hopeful child in a therapeutic setting….listen….and offer my own version of hope. An occupation that seems so trivial and simple was at one time something that terrified me to the core. I have the missionary added to my list of people to thank…because of his testimony, a sense of boldness had been inspired in me that waited many years to surface.
The process of allowing Christ to cultivate this boldness has taken me to places that I never would have imagined.
So…take some time to think about those that have inspired you. My list is long, this is only the first one that I’ve written about….but they’ve all served to be one of the defining people that made me the flawed person I am today….and for that I am forever grateful and indebted to that inspirational person….The Missionary.
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Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
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