“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, and we will do this or that.”  (James 4:13-15)

As I begin planning to deploy teams to Brazil and Cabo Verde, West Africa in 2013, it gets downright exciting!  Emailing Travel agents to get airfare pricing, talking to people about joining one of the teams and then putting these plans in our GMS Newsletter…WOW!  Add a few cups of Starbucks Bold coffee and you are almost there without even getting on a plane!

But wait!  Is it the Lord’s will for us to go? What dates? Who should go?  As I started to do some “pre-planning” for these trips, these verses in James came to mind.  The context is “boasting”, not necessarily “going”.  It’s hard to not “boast” in what we are called to do!  After all, we are going to the Nations…exciting and somewhat “gamy” places, seeing unique things and most important, on the front lines of “…making disciples…” in faraway lands, remote villages, giving a drink of cold water to a parched people.

I have learned over the years in Mission work, if there is pride, God will purify it!  I have seen it happen over and over again with trip planning, people, finances, etc.  I’ll never forget the second world mission trip I went on.  I was a super hero now since I had one under my belt already.  I had this notion of “they need me” rather than, going to serve others.  We were in a very poor interior city and on the sixth day of a ten day trip, I became deathly ill, losing 26 lbs. in 48 hours.  I could not eat, I was in excruciating pain and at one point was rushed to the hospital because I was fading.  I did have enough “energy” to see the environment of the hospital to declare, “I would rather die of what I have than die of what I will get if they treat me here!”

For three months, doctors chased my symptoms…from everything like Parasites to a Brain Tumor.  They never did find anything.  I just thought this was going to be my quality of life now, not knowing how I would feel from day to day.  I was just grateful for being able to have one more day to serve the Lord in whatever state I was in.  It was THEN, I remembered a prayer I prayed to God one night in my living room several months before I went on this trip, “…do whatever it takes to make me a man of God,”  Hmmm, I went to be needed and came home being emptied of that boasting.

Whenever I go now, I remember that trip and those days…they cause me to “serve” and not be heroic or do things in order to bring glory to what I or we are doing.  We go simply because we are called to go and train workers, grateful and seek to serve others that need to hear the Gospel message or encourage those on the front lines.

Lord willing, we will go to Brazil and Cabo Verde, West Africa to simply serve those who need to hear the Gospel message and empty ourselves in labor each day as we walk side by side with those that live in these Nations…to the glory of God!  Also, I pray we infect workers here that go with us to become “global” in their mindset towards the Gospel and the Nations.  From one Believer to another…Missions is not going to “do”, it’s going to “be”.

Rb