This was such a labor of love.
One that challenged me beyond what I felt were the limitations of my abilities.
Has God ever asked you to do something that you felt you just
weren't good enough for?
As in take a step of blind faith to follow His leading?
This was one of those times.
When I was made aware over a year ago that our pastor
wanted another missions drama to follow the
Foreign Food Festival during our Missions Conference this year,
I began looking for a powerful script.
But I could not find anything that really spoke to me.
I prayed and asked the Lord to guide me.
To show me which direction we needed to go with this project.
The Lord kept whispering to me, "You write it."
I looked around and thought, "Come again?
Are you talking to ME?
WRITE?"
So I kept looking.
And praying.
To no avail.
From January to the end of May, my mind was completely consumed with
preparation for our Easter Drama as well as the class I was teaching
at my children's homeschool co-op.
I couldn't get my brain wrapped around writing a script.
I kept having this conversation with God,
"Are you SURE this is what I need to do?
Are you SURE someone else hasn't already done all the work
and I just haven't been able to find it yet?
September isn't that far away!"
Two days after school was out at the end of May, I was driving
the 18-hour road trip to Ohio with three of my kids.
The weather was perfect and traffic was non-existent!
I talked to the Lord nearly the entire trip asking Him to give me a vision
for what He wanted to do with this project.
On that trip, He gave me names and storylines
and a program outline.
But that meant we only had 8 or 9 weeks to pull this all together.
I had to find available cast members,
and all the scripts for all 6 of our characters!
God provided!
Although it consumed my mind for weeks, God brought it all together.
6 different missionaries in 3 different centuries telling their experiences
that catapulted them onto their own personal mission fields.
Each lived with great struggles daily.
I wanted to bring to life these men and women and let them
each paint a picture of what they endured on a daily basis.
Missionary work is not glamorous or exotic in any way, shape, or form.
It's a grind of loneliness, self-doubt, obstacles, illness, spiritual battle,
moment-by-moment dependence on God, and difficult people.
But they each had a great passion for what God had called them to do,
and they willingly endured the heartaches to obey Him!!
God used each of these surrendered people to accomplish mighty things for Him!
As we've been swept into the 21st century,
we still see a great need in missionary work!
The methods and strategies have changed, but the need is still overwhelming.
And no one is more qualified than another to go!
If God could use a fiery red-head from the slums of Scotland to reach
entire tribes in Nigeria for Christ,
so can you!!
If God will take an unlikely child from a jungle tribe in India
to eventually make his way to Great Britain and America to learn
how to translate the Bible into his native language,
God can use you!!
All believers are called to make disciples.
Not just a chosen few.
All.
And it doesn't have to be in a remote jungle tribe.
You can do better at making disciples in your own home and family.
You can take a short-term mission trip.
You can find someone in your neighborhood who needs the love of Jesus.
The Accuser relentlessly hounded me with anxiety over this and
I had to constantly fight off thoughts that this was not going to come out well.
That it would be confusing to people and the message
would be lost in the simplicity of the program.
That one of my characters would get sick.
Most of them struggled with nailing down their script.
That weighed on my heart as well.
On the day of the Foreign Food Festival, everyone was so busy
getting their food, and costumes, and booths ready!
Our dress rehearsal was set to begin at 2 pm.
I had asked all those involved with the drama to be there by 1 pm
so we could begin the only dress rehearsal promptly.
One guy showed up on time.
Things started unraveling from there.
The lighting designer had a dead battery in his car which threw him late
to set up, so he was setting up lights even as we started late.
The sound technician had trouble figuring out which character
got which microphone
as several of the microphones were not working
and all the characters were on the stage at the same time so they couldn't share.
Finally, the guy running the screens couldn't get the video transitions
to load onto the computer and the computer kept freezing up.
He was also struggling to get the script of one of our character's
up on the screens as he simply did not have time to master it
and was going to have to just read it!!
In the meantime, our music minister's wife got a flat tire on her way
to the evening's events so he was with her while we were all trying
to get this thing started.
I realized then that this was going to have to be entirely up to the Lord.
We spent nearly the entire two hours of rehearsal time just troubleshooting
and never once got all the way through it!
My stress levels were through the roof!
"Why did you ask me to do this, Lord, if I'm clearly not cut out
to pull off something like this?"
I had to just let go of it and allow the Lord to bring it all together!!
It was His project, so HE was going to have to pick up all the pieces
and make it beautiful because we all had managed to make a mess of it!
At the time appointed, I went up to make the introduction,
and I was shaking.
I went back to my perch and began praying down God's help!!
I'm really not sure that anyone who was present could tell the struggle
this had been to get ready for presentation.
All I know is that we made it through without any problems.
It was a real life miracle.
The devil fought us so hard to get this thing on stage,
but God won the victory!!
As He always does!!
It was a terrifying ride, but if I learned anything, it was this:
"God is faithful."
He stayed with us through every difficult step.
