Each week we feature a devotional, book review or testimony written by a woman in our ministry. It’s Global Missions Week at Johnson Ferry ~ Move Conference! With our focus on missions, we have a “special edition” for this week’s Devotional Spotlight! May you be encouraged reading Susan Forsling’s mission trip testimony!
Is the Lord tugging at your heart to serve through a local or international mission trip? We have two upcoming opportunities for you! Our Spring Event, “Hearts for Community” is April 10-11 (registration opens for this local mission project on Sunday, March 16), as well as an international mission trip to Thailand, July 15-25. If you would like to hear about our trip to Thailand, join us for an informational meeting THIS Sunday, March 2 at 4:00 p.m. in room 108 (registration is not necessary…just come and hear about this amazing mission trip!).
“Missions-Impossible”
I confess. Just a few short years ago I was quite jaded about my role in global missions. Perhaps, it was because I did not grow up in a Christian family and had never really seen or known a missionary. While I knew and understood the great commission , somehow I thought that I had an exemption.
I guess I just thought that there was a missionary gene that was not in my DNA or to use church parlance, evangelism was not my spiritual gift. And of course, there was the rationalization that I was doing my part to fulfill the commission by teaching. Teaching is part of making disciples right God? And by the way God, you do know I have a demanding full-time job, a family, and that I am caregiver to a mother who is ill? With this mindset, global missions Sunday became a good day to get some things done around the house.
Yet one Sunday, God had other ideas and I awoke to a conviction that worship was not about me, but all about God. So off I went certain that the service did not hold much for me as I was recovering from collarbone surgery and was therefore safe from a call to missions for another year. As I sat in the pew and began reading about all of the trips our church had planned, my eyes kept going to the Kenya mission trip that the women’s ministry would take that fall. I heard God say to me in the quietness of prayer: Susan, do you think I healed your collarbone so you could get back on your bike? GO!! Little did I know that my dear friend was a few rows back praying I would hear a call.
This jaded woman was called; five trips later, and two more in the planning stages, she is now committed to taking the message of hope that is the resurrected Jesus to broken women in remote parts of the world. How did that happen?
Scripture tells us that “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the time of Christ.” Philippians 1:6. I became convinced that part of the good work that God wants to do in you and me, is to burden our hearts for the least of these who have never heard of Jesus or never made a decision to trust and follow Him. Sharing a message, seeing a person come to saving faith in Christ, and then, praying with a new believer has brought me an indescribable joy and a confidence that I can boldly share my faith.
Mission trip to Kenya
I also became convinced that part of the good work that God wants to do in you and me is to show us that we can and should use our spiritual gifts in ways we never thought possible for His kingdom. I never imagined that my gift of teaching would be used to help 1st graders in a Thai school learn the English word friend through a hand puppet named Squirmy so that they could understand that Jesus wants to be their friend too.(Oh if my friends at the office could see me now I mused) I never imagined that my experience as a trial judge would give me a platform to share a message of forgiveness and hope to death row prisoners in Nairobi or that my gift of public speaking would allow me to deliver a sermon at a small church in rural Kenya . And, I certainly never thought my passion for cooking would lead me to make hundreds of peanut butter sandwiches for hungry orphans.
“Squirmy” the puppet ~ ESL Teaching in Thailand
Praying over female prisoners on death row in Kenya
Finally, I became convinced that part of the work that God wants to do in you and me, is to unite us in fellowship in the body of Christ. In the months of planning and preparing for these trips, time after time, under grace filled leadership, God took a group of women with diverse backgrounds, personalities and talents, and built a team to do the work that He had planned for us. So many of my closest friends on this earth are women I partnered with on the mission field. We laughed, cried and loved together as we watched God work.
Marsha and I making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for precious orphans
Are you jaded? Are you rationalizing all of the reasons that you are not called to go on a short-term mission trip? Are you leaving the great commission to others? I urge you not to miss out. Open your heart and mind to the call of the Lord to do a work in you and then, trust in that call. For, “Faithful is He who calls you, and He will also bring it to pass.”
