Challenge to Change

How can I best capture October 2014 in one word?

S t r e t c h

It's another one of the Christians' favorite words, no doubt. (Don't forget this handy resource for many of the rest.)

My sister got married last weekend. It was a good and exciting thing, of course, but I think I 'zilla-ed out more than she did during the few days leading up to it. When things weren't getting done the way she wanted or 1am ticked by and the "To Do" list seemed only to grow or anyone so much as thought about saying words to me within an hour of my waking the following morning, the snappy and selfish and First World entitlement complexed Reagan monster flared up, and I found myself continuing to repent and ask questions like, "Who am I? I thought I was over this."

Behold my alter ego. 

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This is a post from the "Missionary-ish Tales" E-News.  Read the rest here, or subscribe to the monthly e-mails here.

In the Quiet

When was the last time you let God meet you in the silence?

Maybe you were out of words.  Maybe you were out of ways to fix, to solve, to do it on your own.  Or maybe you were just weary in your body, your heart, your mind.  You didn’t have any fancy prayers to conjure up for Him, so you sat still, waiting with only minimal expectation.

Maybe you lay on the floor, face down, candle burning in the background to offer some sense of presence and scent of comfort.  Maybe you even whispered, “I’ve got nothing, God.  I need to hear from You.”

And maybe He spoke.

In that moment of surrender, maybe He affirmed things He has already said before, like Humble yourself, therefore, under My mighty hand, that I may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on Me because I care for you.

In My presence, there is fullness of joy.

Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins maybe blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from My presence…

And maybe refreshment did indeed come.

God has drawn me lower than my knees more often that not this month.  And while the literal posture of submission isn’t always comfortable, it inevitably reminds my spirit who’s in charge.

And, you know what?  That’s a really good thing.

Because, seriously, how often do we find ourselves praying for things we only sort of believe God cares about or will follow through on?  Or feeling like His attention is better directed elsewhere, that we shouldn’t take up too much of His time?  Or praising Him for being such a great Creator and for saving us from eternal punishment, but not believing in His intimate love for His creation and his ability and desire to save us from anything else?

Most of us have frequently heard of the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) method of prayer.  And although some may get hung up on whole “formula” sort of approach, I think there’s something to it, and especially to beginning our conversation with the Almighty with adoration and praise. 

Because, really, our view of who God is and how He relates with us directly correlates with how we view every other aspect of life.  Adoration and worship must be a part of our prayers to keep us in perspective. 

Praising God for being sovereign leads us to believe that He sees and orchestrates the bigger picture.  Praising Him for being faithful reminds us He will keep His promises to us.  Praising Him for creating the world affirms that He will sustain our needs. 

Knowing and recounting the works and character of God fan the flame of confidence that He will continue to be exactly whom He has always been.

How it actually went down

…Or maybe if I check Instagram one more time, I'll feel better about myself, since my internet presence and likeability reflect my real life power to please the masses.

It's a lie I've believed more times than I can count. 

There's always something, you know? Some way we compare ourselves to the ideal, to each other, to our selves who are becoming. For many, it's the dollar value of their occupations, the final settling down of the restless dreamer, the arriving at a longed-for destination, the ring on the finger. The inner voice of failure arises when we see our youth kids get engaged before we do or find ourselves at a job far from worthy of our ACT scores. And when we see "everyone else" get there, that magical land where the grass is greener, we sink and sulk and strive to be as good, holy, and finally trusting enough as they must have been to have the desires of their hearts – our hearts – fulfilled.

Because, of course, that is the Christian formula for happiness.

A couple months after I announced that I would be heading out to the world, I got a message from a friend who has followed my blog for awhile. He asked me how I got there, how my longing and doing finally converged, how it all came together and my calling became a crystal clear path before me.

The assumption was well-intentioned but a little… well, skewed.

I sort of laughed as I replied.  It made me feel like one of those happily married people I had so often envied, heart panging every time I scrolled past one of their #besthusbandever  posts.  People see me and think I have arrived?  Seriously? 

Because here’s how it actually went down.

I went on the World Race and came home a wreck.  Not because I hated America or because I had a distinct calling to start an orphanage in Africa and didn’t have the funds or balls to get over there yet, but because I knew the world was broken and lost and I had no freaking idea what to do next.  I mean, I knew I’d be going to Alaska again, so that became sort of my lifeline for a few more months.  On the Race, the biggest “future life work” hint I took away was that my heart came most alive when I was in evangelism/church-planting/Gospel-discussing kinds of ministries… but no more of this short-term missions business.  The place I observed the most spiritual darkness and need to be reached was India, and that was the country I liked the least, so obviously that made the cut for my limited search criteria once my feet hit American soil and I started scouting out the next big thing.  (You know us Christians, always feeling like we are called to only the hardest tasks...  Scratch that, I can only speak for myself… maybe.) And not that I thought that I was some big BA missionary who had it all together, but I figured… What else am I supposed to do with my life?  This is all I care about.

Anyway, I didn’t find anything that stuck.  Plus, I was dealing with whether I was feeling led/feeling like I wanted to commit to a romantic relationship, and… well, you know how that goes.

So I went back to Alaska as a summer staff member at Echo Ranch Bible Camp.  As I toiled in the Lord’s work on the last frontier, I asked God to open a door.  You know, God, for some long-term church planting-ish thing in India (or anywhere else in Asia, if that’s cool with You).

The next week, Justin, Director of Recruitment for Avant Ministries, showed up to be the camp chapel speaker for a week, and we became friends over controversial theological conversations and mostly-agreeable mission trip stories.  He told me I seemed like I would be a good fit for Avant’s short-cycle church planting Thailand team because I “have missions experience” and “take God seriously” and “want to go to Asia”, so I should check them out.  My reply?  “You’re a recruiter.  Of course you’re saying that.”

I spent half the summer researching missions opportunities in India and the other half wondering about Thailand and the whole 5-7 year thingy and the entire summer freaking out about not having a plan.  I battled bouts of anxiety and loneliness and knowing I wasn’t being present where I was but not feeling motivated to be anywhere but everywhere else.  The more I researched, the more overwhelmed I felt, and the more I just prayed for a blazing, this-can-only-be-from-God kind of sign. But pseudo-signs came and went the whole three months long, with little confirmation or peace or whatever seal of approval with which we so often seek to stamp our big decisions.

I got home.  Still no burning bush or writing on the wall.  I job hunted.  I job landed.  I online dated.  I put missions on the back burner.  I took missions off the back burner and decided, What the heck.  I might as well go to their orientation thing and confirm that we are definitely not what each other is looking for.  I was brutally honest on all my personality/emotional & organizational assessments, determined to display the same amount of I’m seriously not good enough for you guys in my interviews with the staff once I got there.

And I did all those things.  And guess what? 

“We really appreciate your honesty, Reagan.  And if you feel okay about going through with it, we will go ahead and appoint you as an Avant missionary.” 

I freaked out all two weeks long, simultaneously loving all that I was seeing and inwardly dying over the (non-Holy Spirit inspired) conviction that, if I really signed up for this thing, I WAS GOING TO BE SINGLE FOREVER. 

But I decided to trust God who appeared to be showing me an open door.  I wrote, “I think I’m going to marry Avant,” in my journal.  And I took the leap.

As I have progressed through giving others the news, asking for their prayers (and their money), I have held this opportunity with open hands.  It’s not the time frame I was looking for.  It’s not the location I was looking for.  It’s certainly not the marital status I was looking for.  On my own, I am not cut out for this.  I have never lived in another country for more than a month.  I have never seriously tried to learn another language.  My spoken words are quick and choppy and mumbled and jumbled and don’t always know how to present Jesus in all the right ways.  I can be painfully sarcastic and heartbreakingly uncompassionate.  And yet, it appears that God has called this mess of a human to the nations, because it’s not about my missionary prowess, but about His miraculous power.  And if that same power that raised Christ from the dead really does live in me… then maybe I have a chance after all.

And so maybe all that makes it a little easier, this mindset of You can take it if You want, Jesus – it’s not mine to cling to.  And I wonder if that was always meant to be the point of a calling, the pinnacle of “arriving” – that it is He who calls and He who directs us because it is He who created and He who knows us…  So when did it ever just become about our passions and the line of work that makes us happy and what everyone else has made of themselves and what we surely “deserve”? 

When did it ever become about measuring ourselves against ourselves or others, completely disregarding the reason God created us in His image? 

What if we just asked God to show us where He is already working, where He wants us to join Him… and quit worrying about whether it’s good enough?

Time in a Bottle

I have three months left in America.

Three.

People keep asking me if I’m excited about moving to Thailand, and of course I am…  but THREE.

It’s almost like an itsy, bitsy, mini-experience of what being on your deathbed must feel like.  What do I wish I would have done?  What do I regret?  What do I need to make right before I leave?

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This is a post from the "Missionary-ish Tales" E-News.  Read the rest here, or subscribe to the monthly e-mails here.

When God's Will Gives You Lemons

Honk if you love planning.

Or if you love when plans exist.  Ones that are relatively foolproof and give you peace of mind from any stray detours that may pop out of nowhere because not only is Plan A a thing, but also Plans B-AA.  The world and all its unpredictables submit to you.

I think Christians, for the most part, feel entitled to have their plans work out.  You know, because we’re “in the will of God” or whatever.  Like we forgot all the times in the Bible when Paul was in God’s will when He shared Jesus with people who didn’t know Him, and then he got stoned/beaten/imprisoned/killed.  Or when the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah spent 40 years warning his people what would happen if they did not give up their sin and turn back to God – and was completely ignored.  Or when the Israelites asked God if they should go to war, and He tells them yes. They follow through… and are annihilated. They ask God again, with tears and offerings, and He confirms that they should fight a second time. Again, they are horribly defeated. They ask Him again, earnestly seeking Him once more, and He tells them to go and fight a third time. This time, they nearly wipe out their adversaries.

We talk a lot about the idea of failure and "was this really God's will, since it's not working out?" kind of stuff.  We sit on the floor with faces in our palms, tears in our eyes, fire on our lips, asking, “What the heck, God?  I thought this is what you wanted me to do.”

And sure, sometimes we take a chance, and things fall through.  Sometimes we hear God wrong (or "hear" what we want to hear).  But sometimes, and perhaps a lot more often than we suspect…  The will of God looks to us like a catastrophic failure.

I don’t know if you guys know this, but missionaries have actually been in Thailand for a really, really long time.  Yet, somehow, the percentage of Christians remains below 1%.  Of course, we want to analyze all the approaches to evangelism and church planting and what those guys did wrong and how we can be the miracle cure to the vast shortage of Christ followers.  And there’s validity to a lot of that, probably.  (Well, besides us being the miracle cure.  We’re not that cool.)

But… maybe those missionaries weren’t all necessarily doing it “wrong”.  Maybe, for whatever purpose that only He can see for now, for whatever greater thing there is to come… God designed it that way.

I mean, that sounds really harsh.  Like God doesn’t give a crap at all about us or what we think.  And that is a lie.  Somehow, this mysterious God of ours simultaneously loves each of us fiercely and cares about every single detail of our lives – and His "ultimate goal is to uphold and display the glory of his name."  Small picture and big picture.

The truth is, sometimes, our perspective is just small.  

I wonder what it would be like to stand back and ask for His perspective.  If we surrendered our false genie gods and prosperity gospels and said, “Lord I don’t get it, but I have to believe You do.”  What if “living a better story” quit being about how dazzling our repurposed efforts looked and, instead, had only to do with seeing where God was working and joining Him in it, for His glory, no matter the cost?

That’s what my teammates and I are trying to wrap our heads around:  the idea that, in spite of our beautiful and God-inspired vision for Thailand, we don’t know what will happen.  Because people ask us about the strategy, the grand plan, the So what are you guys going to actually do? all the time.  And honestly?  Our plan is to ask God.  To see where He is already working.  And then to join Him in it.  No matter what that ends up looking like.

Have you ever been there?  That place where you thought you heard right, you truly believed God led you somewhere, and it didn’t work out… only to see Him bring it all together later?  Or maybe He hasn’t – not yet – and you’re wondering what’s going on.  Tell us about it.