excuse #11

continuing the excuse list from keith green's "why you should go to the mission field" article - #12 says, "I'd go to the mission field, but...."

"But I don't have any special talents or abilities that would qualify me to be a missionary."

here's keith's reaction to that:

"Then you're just the person God is looking for! Sure God can use nurses, teachers, accountants, and mechanics on the field, but it always blesses God to greatly use the one who seemingly has nothing to offer. It is this person who has the opportunity of purely representing Jesus in the endless "common" tasks that are part of the daily life of a missionary. "When I am weak, then I am strong." (II Cor. 12:10; also see I Cor. 1:26-31)"

my thoughts: yet again, it still all gets down to obedience. it's not your place to tell God "you don't know what you're doing telling someone like me to go to the mission field." qualified or not - that's not the question. the question to me is more in the order of, "ok, i'll go, Lord. when and where do you want me to go and what do you want me to do while i'm there?" there's almost a swing the other way for some of us, too. like we're so ready to go on a missions trip we can't stand it and we aren't really listening to hear what God is saying about the "when" part of the question. doing the right thing at the wrong time is often just as bad as not doing the right thing at all - sometimes worse.

it's all completely, totally, 100% a matter of obedience. obey His command to go. obey Him about when and where. don't worry about the rest. just obey. you might find that He holds you back for 20 years and then opens the door for you to go and do something great for Him in downtown london. or you might hear him say to go and give the rest of your life to serve some obscure village in the himalayas. leave that to Him to decide and you just obey.

that's our job. OBEY.