My Personal Testimony

I had to write my personal testimony before I left. Here it is so far:

My personal testimony starts like so many others. All the way through high school I lived in this bubble of comfort in which my faith was rarely confronted and if it was, I didn’t accept the challenge. I was told in church and in the few spiritual conversations I did have that I was a sinner and that Jesus came to save me. I blindly accepted this as truth and thought nothing of it. I had little to no understanding of the true impact that sin had on the people around me and how powerful the sacrifice Christ made really was. I floated by in this sense of simple acceptance until about the time I was a sophomore in college. During my first few years of college, I was exposed to a variety of personalities and characters. Through friendships with these people, I truly realized that not everyone believes what I believe and that it has a real effect on how they and I lived. These people challenged me like never before and made me reach a low point in my faith. I got to the point that I started laughing in church. It started to make little sense. I needed to figure out what I really believed and why. I faced the challenge head on. I dove into the bible and several other resources. I needed to find out if I could make any intellectual sense of what I had been blindly accepting since childhood. I asked many questions and doubted almost everything. I faced many mental obstacles in my faith but came out the other end with a new sense of beginning. My mind seemed to open up to what was really going on in this crazy world around me. I started to see God’s word in everything. It became so evident how applicable it was to everyone’s life. It was so clear that the words of God are truly powerful and could have a real impact on people’s lives everywhere. This was the stuff that changed people’s intentions and motivations. It was at that point that I said to myself that accepting God’s love and grace was truly important. I decided to finally accept the truth that it is our purpose to let the love that God shows me flow through my entire body into all those around me. We must love others like God loves us.

 

Honest Doubts & Spiritual Restorations

I must warn you that I am not the type of person to butter things up. I tell things like they are and am very straight forward. I think that honesty in relationships and communication is of the utmost importance. I feel as though I have a relationship with you, as a follower of my trip, and therefore must maintain honest communication throughout this process of preparation and even upon my return. I believe that doubts create questions and questions create answers. These answers are the cause of much of the strength I have through my faith. They keep me on my toes and keep me thinking about if what I am doing is really in line with what God is wanting me to do.

My mind likes to over-analyze everything. This has been the case since I can remember and can be a benefit at times and a detriment at others. The financial aspect of this trip through Campus Crusade is entirely based on support raising. So, due to my nature, I have thought about the concept of it and if it truly is biblical of me to ask people to send me their money so that I can go on a trip to Asia. In my mind I would much rather do hard labor, or fund-raising projects, or somehow make myself suffer in order to pay for this trip on my own than ask other people to possibly take a hit to send me. No such system is in place for such kind of support though. When I would tell people of my worries about the concept of support raising, an answer I often got was "you are not trusting God." While I do understand why I got such responses, I felt as though making my self suffer requires just as much, if not more, trust in God. I would be trusting Him to heal my own mind, body, and financial situation in time after working towards what I think is His plan for me. I thought, "Is that not trusting Him?"

In addition to that, something that was repeatedly told to me is that through asking for support, I am providing people with an opportunity to fulfill The Great Commission in the only way they can at that time - through financial support. This concept was indeed, again, something I struggled with deeply. I did not want to believe that people would feel as though they can join me on a trip solely through giving financially. I felt as though I was not giving them an opportunity to fulfill the commission, but was instead asking them to send me on a vacation in which spiritual self-growth may occur. I am always afraid of being selfish and I felt very selfish for asking this of anyone.

I did not only feel selfish because of the financial aspect either. I also felt as though the reasons for my going were inherently selfish. If I dug down deep, the initial reasons for going were seemingly selfish in my mind. Many of reasons I wanted to go were because:

• my roommate went last summer and thought it was awesome. It radically changed his life and outlook and I wanted to have a similar experience
• I went to a winter conference with Campus Crusade for Christ in which they repeatedly reminded us of how amazing and important it is for us to go on mission trips as Christians
• I thought it would be a fun and interesting experience
• spiritual self-growth is something I crave and I thought that going on a mission trip would satisfy that desire to grow personally

As you can see (and I saw), all of these reasons are based around the concept of "I." Therefore, I felt as though it was selfish of me to want to go. I would often hear fellow mission trippers say "I really feel called by God to go on this mission trip," but I had no idea what that meant. What does it mean to be "called?" I thought at that time that "I am only going because other people hyped it up and I want to selfishly increase my own understanding of my own relationship with God." It seemed to me that someone could use the concept of being "called" to achieve any selfish thing that they wished as long as it was in the name of Jesus. The thing that kept me going was that the people that claimed to be called were being completely sincere.

As I discussed in my first paragraph, doubts create questions and when those questions are presented in the right mindset, answers of the utmost healing will come. Today I got my first support checks in the mail. Along with them were letters supporting me with many of the answers I was looking for. These answers did not come as blatant statements within the words of the letters, but instead as personal mental epiphany's from the meaning behind the letters. It has been revealed to me that people really are interested in seeing what God is doing in other areas of the world and are more than happy to provide me with their support for the shear joy of being able to observe it even if it is through my eyes and mind. Just as importantly, it showed me that these people are also truly interested in seeing what God will do in my own life and how He will use me over the course of this trip! 

 It always seems as though once I get one answer, they just keep on coming. I remember when, a while ago, I told one of my best friends about the doubts I was having about my intention to go to East Asia and he said to me, and I paraphrase, "doing God's work can and should be fun, interesting, and personally satisfying." This did not provide me with an answer to my doubts at that time, but as C.S. Lewis said "if you picture time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn." This reminds me that the timing of His answers is in His hands. The answer that I now understand is that all of those reasons that I initially thought were selfish are all things that God craves for us to experience while doing His work. We are to be Joyful in his refuge.

           "But let all who take refuge in you be glad;

let them ever sing for joy.

Spread your protection over them,

that those who love your name may rejoice in you"

 -Psalm 5:11

 Thank you Russell for providing me with this much needed earthly answer and thank you Lord for timing the understanding of it so perfectly.

These answers do not necessarily eliminate the doubts because, as a human, my mind will wander in that direction again, but they provide me with a foundation that God can build my house of continuous spiritual restoration on.

I must humble myself and not rely so much on my own strength.

Thanks!

Thanks for coming to my East Asia Trip Blog! I will be posting thoughts and comments on my preparations for leaving and will post a report of the overall trip when I return. I will be leaving Dallas, Texas on May 22nd and will return July 2nd. I expect this to be a life-changing trip for me and many others.

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The Great Commission

 

Matthew 28:19

This is what we are called to do! 

Lord, be the layer of my path and guide me on the journey to know you as deeply as I can.