Michigan

Throughout the history of the Church we see it spreading through multiplication – not just addition – it grows where people make sacrifices and give their hearts to Jesus. We read about this in the book of Acts.

The Risk

For my part I felt that God had given me an incredible vision for my home.

Michigan was where my family was,  it was where all my relationships resided. Everything from the roads that we drove on to the kinds of grass that grew along them helped me know who I was. I won’t even get started on the fields and trees. A year before I couldn’t even imagine leaving my county let alone my country for a foreign land – missionaries were the crazy ones. Now, I was one of them.

I was considering leaving all of this again so that I could bring something back. Taking the discipleship training school with YWAM was incredible. I wanted the people in Michigan to experience that too. And, I wanted to be a missionary.

In the back yard of my family’s home I prayed again.

Before me was the opportunity to take a school that would help me become a pioneer – someone who would go where there wasn’t already a YWAM base and start one.

My friends had invited me to come back to India to take the school, it was their second time running it and the first time it would be in India. For twelve weeks we would learn from speakers that had already pioneered. We would work together to build our pioneering projects and then we would head out. It sounded kind of easy, but in reality pioneering something new is at least as difficult as they all said it would be. I didn’t know that yet.

At some point during my night of prayer I felt God say to go for it.

Looking back on that night I can say it changed my life, and I am grateful for that.

The Sacrifice

The Church, in its many forms, has consistently grown when people who love Jesus give up what they know for what they do not. It grows when we take risks. It grows when we hear God say to do something that doesn’t make sense, but in our heart we know it is Him saying it and we do it anyway.

We do not always get to conform to the culture around us, hardly so at times, and we will be considered crazy. That is not a bad thing because so was Jesus, and He turned the world upside down by listening to His Father’s voice and doing what His Father said too.

Now, I am not in my home state of Michigan.

I am in Utah, the home of many other people. I have been setting out on this path for the last nine years to make it back home to do what I headed out to do. During that time God has been faithful. He has shown up in the nick of time and provided for us. He has been faithful to give me time to learn and the time to enjoy the people around me. I have a family that He has given me.

Utah is the home of other people, but I remember my heart for my home and it has multiplied to make room for this place too. It has multiplied to make room for India. It has multiplied to make room for the Syrians who I first started paying attention to five years ago.

As often as I hear His heart break my heart multiplies to make more room for His.

When we make a sacrifice God is faithful to multiply it.

The Response

What is on your heart that you are carrying with God?

How is He telling you to go for it?

There are no small sacrifices in the kingdom of God – He is faithful to see it. If you stay true to His path He will keep showing you where to go next. If this is the life that God has called you to then I challenge you to take that first step with Him – it is worth it, and even more, He is worth it.

Discipleship Training School – Apostolic Catalyst Training School