On Going to Egypt

In August of 2001, I lead a two-week mission to Egypt with nine high school and college students. I still have really mixed feelings about the trip. On one hand, I was really hoping to “do” a whole bunch of stuff for God and His Kingdom – I wanted to be able to come home saying how we had given testimonies and prayed for hundreds of people and people cried, fell down, and gave their lives to Christ (we didn’t see these things didn’t happen). On the other hand, now I see that God doesn’t always let us see what he’s doing even though he is always working and moving.

So with these things in mind, I go back and forth on whether or not the mission was a “success”. I really don’t like the idea of God using me to “do his thing” and not letting me see the fruit that comes from it. …Holy crap, that sounded insanely horrible. Like I said, I go back and forth. As lame as this sounds, it’s hard for me to believe that (even though I know He’s sovereign) God is working and moving when I can’t see Him doing it. This is really the big thing God taught me from this experience. It was extremely humbling to learn (really in front of my entire church) that God is the one in control (not me) and that He sometimes blesses us with getting to see the fruit. I guess taking God’s character and sovereignty into consideration, the whole thing was a success. God used us to do what he wanted to do. What if we would have said, “No” and not gone to Egypt or if we got mad and started saying, “That’s it God! We’re not making another move until we see some results!” God would have accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, he would have just done it without us.

This fact is what made the experience so humbling. I think I am so awesome but I’m wrong. God isn’t lucky to have me working for Him – I’m lucky to be included in what God is doing. The good news is that he includes us just simply because he loves us and he wants to be with us.