We’re still in that bubble at the beginning of the year where people are envisioning and resolving and dreaming of all the possibilities that 2022 might hold. But sometimes, we struggle to take that first step. We know the end goal we want to achieve but how do we get there?
Maybe we’re afraid of doing it wrong or making a mistake or failing. Maybe we believe we need to sit back and let God work. Maybe we’re waiting for a sign that never comes so year after year we press toward the same goal but we never get any closer.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that it’s not passive. Yes, we need to be wise and sometimes steps are slow and steady instead of fast and furious. But we need to keep showing up and doing what God has called us to. Often that means just doing the next thing. And sometimes we don’t know exactly how the next thing is going to help us or serve God but we keep going.
When I was going into my last year in high school, the seniors had the option of taking one university class for credit. Most of my friends were taking History of Civilization which was a class famous for the amounts of reading you needed to do and dates you had to memorize. I wanted to do something different. I decided to take a language since I knew my major would require two years. But which language?
My mom had been working with a lady from the Ukraine and I loved how the Russian language sounded, not harsh like German but fluid, smooth. So with no reason but that, I signed up for first year Russian and bought my textbooks. I’ll be honest and say it was hard. I spent hours in the language lab after class listening to phrases and repeating them into a microphone and practicing writing in a different alphabet.
I enjoyed the class, my teacher made it interesting, but it was hard. There were times I wondered why I was doing this and if I’d made the wrong choice in choosing this class, this language. At the beginning of second semester, our teacher gave us a heads up: our final for the year would be to recite the wordless book with at least two Bible verses per section. It ended up being two pages of Russian text to memorize and we had to understand what we were saying enough to answer questions our teacher asked about the Gospel.
During this same semester, my senior class was preparing to go to New York City for a missions trip. It was a busy few months but just before finals, we loaded into buses and drove to Brooklyn. One of the afternoons, we held a children’s club at the church and we shared the Gospel message using wordless books. Just before we started, several classmates excitedly ran up to me and said there were two Russian children in the back who didn’t understand much English.
With nerves rattling, I approached and introduced myself and asked if I could explain this book without words to them in Russian. They sat by me while I slowly staggered through every section, every Bible verse I had spent the semester memorizing for my final. They left the kids club with a Russian tract, a wordless book, and the gospel. I have no idea if they ever visited the church again but a seed was planted by a very overwhelmed and nervous high schooler.
It’s an extremely humbling experience to be used by God. To take your simple efforts and things you’ve unknowingly been cultivating and have God use them in ways you never imagined. When I set out to take Russian, I never dreamed that nine months later I would be witnessing in another language to two children who knew nothing of the Gospel. When my teacher assigned us that final project to work on, I had no idea my missions team would be sharing that same material in the children’s program. But God…
I often think when we set out to make resolutions and reach our goals, we only have that in mind: our goals. Our desires. Our purposes. But how much richer our lives become when we set our priorities on God’s desires for us. What he has for us this year, this month, this day. And while we can’t anticipate everything God has for us, we can practice faithfulness, right here, where he’s placed us.
It’s impossible to know how God will use what we’re doing today for the future. But that’s okay. We don’t need to know the ends and outs of what God will do or how. We just need to be faithful where we are. We need to be praying for opportunities and studying the Bible so we know what to say when the need arises. How will you be faithful today?
Photo by Charles Black on Unsplash