Have you ever found out that something is actually the complete opposite of what you thought it was?
I can think of one recent instance in which this happened.
I am currently in San Pedro, Guatemala with Adventures in Missions’ Ambassadors program, and we have been doing some amazing things here with the help of our leaders and our host pastor, Antonio. Antonio is a long-time friend of one of our leaders, Gary Lengkeek, and he speaks very little English. Aside from directions as we have traveled through the villages along Lake Atitlan and the occasional conversation in Spanish with Gary, we haven’t heard him speak much in the past week. Because of this, we all just assumed he was a quiet guy.
Yesterday evening, we went to Antonio’s church to sing to and worship with his congregation. At the very beginning of the service, a man began singing in a beautiful, deep, loud, operatic voice. Lo and behold: It was Pastor Antonio. Throughout the service, he and his children, Pedro and Nancy, led the most soulful worship session I have ever witnessed in a regular church service. Needless to say, we were all pleasantly shocked.
Going into this trip, I didn’t have very much faith that God would do cool, uplifting things with and through me. My amazingly gifted and spiritual parents have raised me in church, so I have seen some ridiculously awesome things happen in God’s kingdom. At training camp last weekend, multiple speakers told stories about healing the blind, meeting people God had shown them years before in prayer, barren women becoming mothers, and understanding and speaking in languages they didn’t know. I had begun to think that I wasn’t called to do great things in the name of Christ, but I know that this thought process has only been the enemy trying to discourage me from trying to do these things.
Earlier in this trip, I was standing on my street corner in Guatemala with 24 people I had only known for a week, singing “Good, Good Father” to a bunch of locals buying their groceries. I realized then, looking into the confused faces, that feeling so at home in a crowd of strangers in a foreign country was my faith in the works. Before I left my home in West Virginia, I prayed and trusted God to keep me safe and happy while I was on this trip, and he has went above and beyond.
I haven’t healed anyone or anything cool like that, but the simple fact that people were smiling and laughing at the silly gringos and asking for more songs was the only affirmation that I needed that my God is powerful, and even with a little faith, crazy things can happen.
I haven’t given a man his sight back. God hasn’t let me meet the people he puts in my head yet. I haven’t laid hands on a woman whose only dream was to be a mother, pray for her, and see her holding her own child in her arms a year later. Maybe I will never see these things happen or do them myself, but I know that God’s plan for me is equally as important as that.
I encourage you to put your faith in God. (All of it! Don’t hold out on Him!) You might just find yourself praising Him on a street corner, or a church, or even a school with people who don’t speak the same language as you. In those situations, language isn’t a barrier.
