Ruined for Comfort

“I was forever ruined for comfort and convenience, and luxury, preferring instead challenge, sacrifice, and risking everything to do something I believed in” – “Kisses from Katie” by Katie Davis

This quote sums up the way God is using Africa to change my team. When I arrived in Ghana, I was mentally prepared for all the things that I would see and from the moment I stepped off the plane there has not been anything that has greatly surprised me about the African culture. The severe poverty that surrounds us matches up to the metal pictures that I had created in my head from books and previous exposure to Africa. But this doesn’t make these realities any more difficult to see. It also doesn’t change the fact that these things are wrong and a terrible result of sin. In my head I have always known about unreached people groups and the destitute lifestyles that people around the world live in. But the reality of the unreached has been more difficult because now, instead of having blind statistics and detached percentages, the unreached have faces and names. I know their stories and know them.

It’s frustrating to see this poverty.  More than all the huts I wish I could repair, the cuts I wish I could clean, the sickness I want healed and the children I wish I could clothe, I know that these are only symptoms of the true problem. But when all these material things are so obvious it is hard for me to remember that spiritual poverty is actually a much greater priority than the other urgent needs that seem so pressing.

Last Saturday I sat on the back porch holding a four month old baby in my lap for over an hour. This little boy didn’t cry much, not because I was good with kids, but because he was too weak from sickness and malnourishment to cry. As I cradled his little hand in mine, I prayed such big prayers for this future leader. I prayed that God would make him strong and that he would plant churches and be an example in his people group. I prayed that God would protect him and that this child would have the gift of knowing Jesus at a young age. And as I prayed for this little one, my heart began to split for the material things I wish that I could give him.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more”. – Luke 13:48

I don’t think I will ever understand why I was placed in Christian home and my African friends were not. But I know that I have been richly blessed with the best kind of wealth. As difficult as it is to see them physically suffering, I know that my prayers for them must be that they will experience the kind of spiritual fullness that comes from being totally abandoned to Christ,  rather than that they will have material wealth. It is my job, and every person’s job, who has been blessed with this gift to do everything possible to make sure that this prayer, which was not mine but Jesus’, is answered.