Finding God in the Wilderness

After my 13th day in Africa, my 11th in Lira, I can certainly say that Africa is nothing what I expected. So far, it has been a little difficult to organize our ministry and I don’t try to pretend that we have it all together. We have been working with Victory Church and doing a lot of cool stuff, partnering in various ministries with them; many of us have gone to worked in primary schools, secondary schools, a school for the deaf, agriculture, Compassion international, an AIDs/HIV support group in the church, and even a day program they have for children at the church on Saturdays. However, dipping our feet in nearly every bucket, a lot of us feel like we are not focusing our efforts yet. We had a meeting yesterday to discuss our vision and what we think are the needs here and it felt to very clarifying. We all know we have awesome opportunities here, but we are just trying to figure out how God wants to use us and where He is leading us-many of us keep questioning, why here? We are doing things, but we don’t really feel like we are doing anything yet. But it’s challenging us to trust that God wants something bigger for our summer, and it is exciting to watch that grow and be revealed.

Last spring, I struggled a lot with trusting that God was in control of my life, that He wanted what was best for me, and that He was still faithful. During May, I really got a lot of answers for that, and really saw God come through with incredible, and unfathomable faithfulness that made me ashamed to even question. But since I’ve been here, it’s now trusting God not only with His character, but also His sovereign will, His purpose, and His ability to speak to us-actually, my ability to listen.

Yesterday, a new friend I’ve made here, Patrick, came to our hotel, to talk about music and God. He asked me why I thought that God told the Israelites to go a longer route when escaping from the Egyptians through the Red Sea in Exodus: I think it’s no accident I read that story the day before. I showed him how the bible says that God led them, not through the Phillistine country which was shorter, because He feared they would give up and turn back if they faced opposition. It’s funny how that begins to apply to our team, and it’s amazing to imagine all of the details that He divinely appoints, even that He leads us away from so that we don’t give up and try to go back to the familiar.

Then he asked why God led them through the wilderness for 40 years, and next thing I know, we were talking about Job. He had never heard or read the story of Job, so I explained that Job was a man who won God’s favor, and because of his faithfulness and obedience, God richly blessed him. God gave him more than he needed, and Job still woke up every morning to pray; he even prayed for atonement for his kid’s sins so they might be blameless before God too. Until one day, the Devil told God that Job only loved God because of the blessings He had given him, and God allowed the Devil to test Job to show Job’s heart was really in it. He lost his family, his livestock, he got sores all over his body, and he was in misery, and God did not answer him or explain why this was happening. To make it worse, his friends were trying to convince him he deserved it or he did something wrong, but Job wouldn’t believe it and he stayed faithful to God without slandering Him. Finally, God spoke and He didn’t apologize, He didn’t justify His decision, He didn’t even explain the torture was from the Devil, He simply said, I am God.

And to that, Patrick gave me an incredible metaphor that I’m sure will stick with me for the rest of my life: It’s like if you have a friend who has always been kind to you, always given you good things, always loved you. If one day, they hurt you, or they do something you don’t like, or they leave you for a while, you wouldn’t deem them a bad person. Would you suddenly betray them, despite all of the wonderful things they’ve done for you, despite your wonderful relationship? I realized, I would of course forgive them. How much more is this true for God? His faithfulness and His goodness endures even when we can’t see Him working, even when He can’t feel Him moving, and even when He doesn’t act the way we want Him to. And it’s good that we can’t put our God in a box like that. It really challenged me to remember all of the incredible things God has done, and not to doubt all the things He will do.