Trust in God Alone

This break has provided an excellent opportunity for me to pray and reflect on the previous semester of mission work. I've been able to see the blessings and the hardships of those times, and to take a step back to see what exactly happened.

Now that I look back on the past semester, I feel at peace about it. I did what I did, and there's nothing that's going to change what I did. I could have done better if I were someone other than who I am, but the fact is that I'm me and not someone else. The biggest struggle for me was my team. It was more my failure than theirs, because I allowed them to distress me. They have no power to hurt me. Yes, they could have me fired, but I don't think they want that. They could kill me, but they're certainly not like that. The extent that they caused me worry or anxiety is the extent that I allowed them to. I sought to be affirmed and loved by them. I wanted their approval. Then, when torrents of criticism, icy coldness, and negativity came blowing my way, I was deeply hurt. Really, all that negativity came from within me, and I allowed it to be incarnated in their actions. If I had only surrendered complete trust in God, followed him, and sought his love and approval, then all of my anxieties could have vanished.

The biggest blessing of the semester was the students because, from the beginning, I knew I did not have it in me to work with them the way they needed to be worked with, so I entrusted them to God. They matured and deepened in their relationship with God, and I knew that little of it, if any at all, was my doing. I entrusted them to God, and He took care of them. I will not be guilty of false humility by making it appear as if I did nothing valuable, but my joy is not in seeing praise for my successes, but in seeing God work through me and sometimes in spite of me.

There are goals I have for the coming semester.

The first is to do whatever I can, through God's help, to make our team life better. Like I said, it was the number one hardship for me. I want to form real relationships with my teammates, or at least try my best. My success will be measured not to the extent that our team is happy, but to the extent that I entrust our team to God. He is the answer for our team's troubles. He allows nothing bad to happen from which he will not bring a greater good.

The second is to do less, and be more. That is, now we're obsessed with doing, and not with being. Even prayer feels like a task. Even sleep feels like a task. I had little rest last semester. Right now, I'm exhausted. My success will not be measured in what I do, but who I am. I don't want the men I work with merely to do a bunch of stuff. I want them to be men who know they're loved by their Creator.

My third goal is to know, as much as I can, of God's love for me. For, if we fully knew His love for us, we would be perfect. How could we sin? How could we do anything to displease Him? It's when we forget about His love for us, or when we stop believing it, that we mess up. It's then that we start making false gods and seeking inordinate desires.