Do you remember your new missionary orientation? Earlier this month, a new group of candidates went through MV orientation. Below are my thoughts on what the week stirred in me, as well as one of the candidates.
First Love
by Josh Hire
There was a worship song that came out a while back. It started, “Take me back to my first love, the awe and wonder that once was.”
I’ll be honest, I didn’t like it.
I don’t want to go back. Back to when I was an immature Christian, back to when I was just discovering Jesus. I understand so much more today. I love him even more. Don’t I?
Why would anyone want to go back? I thought.
But then I was helping with new missionary orientation last week, and I remembered something. As I spoke with some of the candidates, I recognized something familiar. It took me back to my orientation. Do you remember yours?
Remember your calling? The beginning? The moment? Back when you had the option of going left or right, up or down, forward or backward. It was all so disorienting. And forward meant going into the unknown. You had no idea what forward meant. It was potentially scary because it led to who knows what. It also brought with it adventure, surrender, maybe even poverty and pain.
But somehow you were willing, because it wasn’t so much about the journey and the unknown as about who was at your side, who you were doing it for.
And you were so passionate, so willing, so surrendered.
Remember?
I saw it last week. I got to hang out with people in the middle of that moment, and they were so refreshing to be around.
For some of us, those moments were a long time ago.
A lot has happened since then. Some of it has been disappointing. Some has been beautiful. A lot has been difficult. Somewhere along the way, that passion may have drowned in unending responsibilities and routines. But the Lord is still calling us. For some, it is to stay the course. To be faithful.
For others, he is calling us to step out. To move. To trust. To go.
Or to return.
That was me.
I was clearly called to leave Peru.
Yet I wanted to hold on. “God, this ministry is so beautiful, so meaningful, so important. How can you be calling me to something else?”
I wanted to stay.
We had community and friendships and were seeing God move in incredible ways. But he said go. So we obeyed.
And it wasn’t easy.
My kids grew up in Peru. For them, it was leaving home. And returning to the U.S. was almost as much of a culture shock as when we first went to Peru.
Yet obedience doesn’t always mean going forward. Sometimes it means returning to the country you once left. That sucks.
When we first went to Peru, I didn’t know what following Jesus would mean. I just knew I wanted to follow him. Leaving Peru brought me back to that same place.
And then last week I hung out with the new missionaries. I saw an excitement, a hunger, and a twinge of fear in their eyes and heard it in their voices. But also an overflowing passion.
There it was in front of me. Like looking in a mirror. I recognized something of my own first love in that passion. For me to just surrender. To follow. To obey. To tell everyone about his great love. It was so refreshing.
Suddenly that song had a new meaning for me. I found myself listening again, and I heard the words differently.
“Take me back to my first love, the awe and wonder that once was.
You are more than enough.
All I am, I surrender. Here and now and forever.
You are more than enough.”
He is enough.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” —Psalm 73:26, NIV
Kindled
by Brendan McCarty
It’s amazing how God calls each and every one of us into His service. He calls all of us to go and serve, to fulfill the Great Commission. Some may only be able to support, whether financially or in prayer. Others God calls to move to some place distant and unknown. But He never takes us somewhere He knows we could not handle. He uses our strengths and our weaknesses for His benefit and to further His kingdom.
That’s exactly what God is revealing, unraveling, really, in my life moment by moment. For most of my life, God has led me in ways I would never understand. He was always the one leading and nudging changes, but recently He flipped the script on me, asking me to take a leap of faith. To step out and follow Him in whatever He is preparing me for.
The Lord made it clear through a recent mission trip to Uruguay with my wife and a small team. The trip was focused on visiting and supporting local pastors, encouraging them and showing our love for them. It was my first international missions trip, and let’s just say I fully expected to bless the pastors with whatever we could, but I did not expect anything in return.
But of course, God returned it tenfold back into my life.
When we returned, it was very clear that I needed to go through the MV orientation. I didn’t know much about what I was about to step into beyond a week in the office. I had no idea what courses we would go through, what I would learn about the other candidates, or what God is continuing to reveal to me.
While the trip to Uruguay further sparked my passion for those revelations, orientation poured gasoline on the fire.
A large part of that fire came from all of the time spent with the other candidates, MV leaders, and team during the week.
It also probably didn’t hurt that my wife and I were hosting my fellow in-person candidates at our house. Part of the work the Lord is doing in my life, our lives as a couple, is that we have been called to care for missionaries in our home when they need a place to stay.
So we picked up the two candidates from the airport and brought them back to our home. We all went into MV together each day for orientation. All this time God was drawing us closer to the passion He has ignited in each of us—all week long. We grew in our own ways, as a small group, and as part of MV, because the Lord brought us together for this specific week.
Each and every day, going to MV, going through orientation, and returning home, we were connecting, learning, and growing. The amount of love from the MV staff for all of the candidates and me was incredible. All of us are following God, and he had called us and laid the path for us to be there.
When God calls you somewhere, and you follow Him with faith, love, and trust, He always lays the path ahead of you, whether we see it yet or not.
So much happened during orientation; it’s hard to cover it all here.
I learned from other missionaries who have been in the field, hearing their stories of hardships, joys, and the moments of life change when people surrender to the Lord.
Then we dug into the meat and potatoes of different worldviews, spiritual warfare, and cross-cultural prep, on top of finances and fundraising of course.
I got to hear some very basic ideas that would explode into deep conversations about different challenges in life, like how you need to approach someone from another culture. It was a huge reminder that not everyone we talk to is from our same mindset, let alone speaks the same language.
We gathered each morning to share what words and ideas God was giving us to think about or contemplate. No matter who felt led to talk each morning, it encouraged one another and helped each of us grow.
Let’s just say that a phrase that the Lord gave me back in Uruguay has now been expanded on by my pastor, by my wife, and thankfully now by missionaries preparing to go out into the field.
My phrase has grown from a simple seed into a mighty and strong Cedar tree that God is still growing at this moment, as it says in Ezekiel 17:22-24:
“‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.
“‘I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’”
I know that God is calling me, but into what I do not yet know. I trust in God and the vision He has given my wife and me. He used MV’s orientation to stoke the flames of calling, direction, and passion further in my life, and I look forward to finding where He takes us next.
Where He takes all of us who are called into His ministry. And I pray I won’t let the fire die out anytime soon.