Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? Then I said, "Here I am! Send Me"!

Good morning!....okay before I get into the meat of this post I really need to get something off my chest! This morning when I got off work at 6 am after working a double I walked outside, ecstatic to be heading home after a loooong shift, with a song in my heart...sadly I was not prepared for what would happen next! As I opened the door to the outside I was met with blast of frigid air...and then as I walked out to my car I realized I could see my breath! It is September 15th...I have no buisness seeing my breath! As terrible and unbelievable as that is there is more...when I got to my car I found it was covered in a very thick frost/ice which I then had to scrape a small hole to see out of with a CD case! Folks I am sad to say that winter has come to this frozen tundra and I for one am none too pleased! 


Now that that is out of the way I want to share the truly amazing things God is doing in my life! Wow...where to start? "Let's start at the very beginning....a very good place to start." A little over a month ago...actually maybe two months ago now. Wow time flies! My dad called me and told me that God had laid it on his heart for me to think about pursuing and old dream of mine to do missions. As a young girl I had an extremely strong desire to pursue missions and really felt the Lords call but sadly through my teen years due to many different reasons the dream went on the back burner. So, I must admit to having very mixed feelings about this. On one hand there definitely was a spark of desire to do missions, but on the other hand I had been struggling with apathy in my faith and I had a plan mapped out for myself that did not include going overseas on missions. I was going to pursue a degree in criminal justice and become a crime fighting something or other. Mercifully in His infinite wisdom and kindness God had other plans for me. I prayed about it off an on but did not sense any real strong inclination to pursue it beyond mere thought. And then Aug 14th 2011 God turned my life upside down. I had worked an overnight into Sunday morning and was planning on sleeping all afternoon and then attend the evening service at Bethlehem Baptist Church. As 5 pm rolled around I found myself lacking a desire to go due to tiredness and the fact that I would be by myself. But I decided more out of duty than desire to drag myself out of bed and go to church.


As soon as I stepped into the auditorium I felt a strong sense from the Lord saying get ready this service is going to change your life. I was really excited and surprised, this kind of thing doesn't happen very often to me. I sat down and offered a short prayer to God asking that He would give me the grace to receive from the message. All through worship I felt His hand on me, every song seemed to be specifically for me and then there was a time of silent repentance before the Lord which was amazing. So now I was prepped... I was ready to be ministered to by the Lord. John Piper came up and preached a message I will never forget! It was as if God had crafted this sermon specifically for me...and who knows perhaps He did. There were two halves to this sermon out of John 10:16 (which incidentally is my blog verse at the top) the first half was on assurance of salvation and the second was on missions. It could not have been more perfect! As Piper spoke on assurance and read the verse..."My sheep hear my voice and they know me." I felt so strongly the Lord saying you are my sheep...now live for me!! It was such an amazing confirmation for me, as I have struggled with assurance of salvation my whole life. "And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day!" =) I felt such a passion for God ignite in my heart that all I wanted to do was give my life to serve Him. And then Piper preached the second half on missions and that clinched it. I knew in some capacity I would serve Him overseas! 


I think I will stop there (I need sleep..and you need a break from my ramblings) later today I will try to post how the Lord has brought me to Africa Inland Missions and His amazing sovereignty through it all! 


"A true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that is cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ" - George Whitfield