Dear 10-Year-Younger Me,
I see you resting, sitting on the mkeka of your front porch, sweat dripping from your face as the African sun beats wildly on the sand, your cup of tea rests on top of your pregnant belly. You watch your neighbor pounding rice, children chasing a baboon off their yard and the men across the road constructing a table. A woman walks by, carrying firewood on her head, she calls out a greeting.
You walk to the duka every day, treating the sick even as your swollen feet protest in the tropical heat; sharing stories of the Bible and prayers for their healing, you tend to the needs of both bodies and souls. You’ll be heading on your bike shortly to meet with a new believer for discipleship and you’ve gone over the language of today’s stories a hundred times in your head.
Yet, you struggle to know if you’re being effective, you long to know you’re making a difference. You doubt the results as fruit in numbers is lacking and hostility toward your faith continues. As each day stretches you farther than the one before, you wonder if that tension will eventually cause you to snap.
Your Most Important Work
While questions linger in your mind about your purpose and what the future holds, the Lord is going to teach you more about your most important work, and that is abiding daily in Him. It will be a word that will both convict you deeply and propel you onward.
It will shape your ministry, and your faith, as you come to understand your 6-8 are the most important hours of your day spent digging in the Word and on your knees in prayer. Each day may not bring the same emotion, some days it’s tough, but it’s the time remaining in him where his means of grace is doing a good work in you.
Because there’s a stormy season coming.
A time when your world will crumble, you’ll feel on the verge of cracking. I can’t tell all now because you probably won’t believe it. But this daily practice of abiding is going to be the foundation which will hold you up; the time you’ll spend knowing and experiencing more of the Lord is going to build your trust in the sovereign One who holds all things in his hands. You are going to be swept away by His grace when you feel weakest, find a calm knowing in your most painful surrender, and discover His sovereignty as a lighthouse in a storm.
So, as you watch village life unfold before you, remember the Lord has you here today. Even now He is doing a work in you and around you. Don’t lose focus on what’s before you. Strive to be faithful in each moment, whether it’s capturing thoughts of worry, or the walk down to the well with neighbors.
Your prayer becomes“that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 1:11-12).
Soli deo gloria-Glory to God alone,
Your 10-Year-Older Self
*What would you write to yourself looking back 10 years?
*What pieces of learning, circumstances or people have shaped your spiritual growth today?
Feel free to share in the comments below!!
Thank you. I needed this reminder today. Although I am probably another decade older than you, with all the storms and on-field and off-field trials that come with the years, I still need to remember that these days when the basics are a slog…this is obedience and faithfulness and He is doing good in me right in the midst of this quiet little morning.
Good question Amber. Wow, I‘m going to have to ponder and reflect on this.
That God loves me unconditionally and wants a relationship with me.