The surpassing greatness

The other day before rehearsal at Blackhawk, one of the leaders read off a list of attributes and names of God and asked us to pick one or two that seemed to be most important to us these days. For the past two weeks or so, the attribute of God that has consistently come to mind is GOOD. There are a lot of other words I could’ve chosen, many of them deeper or more complex, but let me flesh this out a little.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything but I figured I should probably tell some of the stories of how GOOD God’s been to me through this support raising process and throughout the past year in general. It would not be glorifying to God for me to keep these stories to myself, so here it goes…

For those of you not aware, I will be leaving in mid-August to do a year of ministry in East Asia, but in order to go I have to raise $36,000 in support. This has been a very up-and-down process for me and my attitude and excitement seems to change with the weather, but I certainly cannot complain, God’s been extremely faithful. It seems like every time I get down about things and start to doubt whether He can come up with this money, He gives me EXACTLY what I need in the form of an encouraging conversation or a substantial financial commitment from places I never expected.

I could talk for hours about all the things God has done in my life over the past year, but there is one story in particular that I want to share regarding the support raising process. This story comes from an interaction that I had with a man that I had never met before, but a friend of mine told me he might be interested in hearing more about my ministry.

So I sent him a letter and followed it up with a phone call. Unfortunately, after a pretty awkward phone conversation, he told me that he had not had a chance to read the letter yet and to call him back a week later once he had a chance to do so. A week later I called back and he still hadn’t read the letter but allowed me to tell him more about my ministry. I was stumbling over my words and thought for sure that nothing would ever come of it, but a week later, I received an envelope in the mail with a $1000 check.

A few weeks later I was returning home from lunch and there was a large box on my doorstep. I NEVER get packages so figured it was probably for one of my roommates, but sure enough, it was addressed to me.

As Amy and I started to unpack the box, we found two books on world missions, a 160gb iPod with my name and Philippians 3:7-14 engraved in the back, and several other accessories for the iPod! Needless to say I was already in disbelief, but I turned the iPod on to find that it only had 30gb of free space. The rest was full of sermons and talks by hundreds of different people along with several video sermons.

No note, nothing. But the return address on the box…

My referral friend from a few weeks earlier, still never having met him.

As superficial as it might sound, this was the one bit of encouragement or confirmation that I felt like I had been waiting for throughout most of the summer.

I never felt like I had a strong CALLING to East Asia. God never wrote it in the sky that I was supposed to go, I never saw Him in a dream, and I didn’t really have a huge preference to go to one country over another.

Instead, I think I’ve realized that it’s more out of OBEDIENCE that I’m going than anything. From Genesis to Revelation, God commands us to GO and shows us His plan for reaching the nations, and I want to be a part of that.

So not having a strong calling and starting to see just how much I would have to give up and other opportunities I would leave behind to go to East Asia, it made me start to wonder if I had made the wrong choice. Was I even supposed to go to East Asia?

Earlier in the day I had reached the 50% mark slightly ahead of time, and then to have this box show up on my doorstep essentially felt like God saying to me, “Hey, let’s celebrate this. We’re halfway there and I’m going to take care of you, this money is going to come in.”

The week after this box arrived, I saw $6000 come in, or about 16% of my total goal.

***

As I think back on the past few weeks and more than that, even specifically the past year or so of my life, it blows me away to see how GOOD God has been to me and how He has poured out blessing upon blessing on my life.

On July 11th of last year, things were not looking up for me. I was at the peak of a pretty rough summer and a season of brokenness, had no idea what I was going to do with my life (I guess that hasn’t really changed!), and seemed to be struggling to even keep my head above water.

I remember one of my first weeks back in Madison being at church and hearing a sermon about pain and suffering. To close the service the band played the song “You Never Let Go” for the first time. As we sang the bridge, I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on - and there will be an end to these troubles but until that day comes – still I will praise You, still I will praise You, I did everything I could to fight back the tears.

Fast-forward about 351 days later and I was onstage singing the same song at Blackhawk, again almost in tears, but this time because I couldn’t help but be THANKFUL in God’s presence for the ABUNDANT life that He has lavished on me and for how GOOD He has been.

I’ve been blessed with good health, I have loving and supportive family and friends, in five weeks I get to spend a year in East Asia with some of my closest friends helping to bring God’s Kingdom to earth in this foreign country, I’ve been given so many awesome ministry opportunities in the past year, and I’ve been blessed with an AMAZING girlfriend that I only like more and more every day!

But I realize that in life there will always be ups-and-downs. And despite how good God appears to be at times and how far He seems at others, I can rest in the truth that He is good ALL the time because of what He did for us nearly 2000 years ago.

And the greatest blessing of all is to continue to get to know and be in the presence of a God like that.

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” (Philippians 3:7-9a)