I already shared how God met me on my "personal retreat" with Him in Lakeland FL. (I was attending the crusade meetings in the evening, but the daytimes where a special time with God, and He met me in amazing ways each day.) One of the things he did turning that time was to restore my passions for missions.
Let me expand on that a bit, as there is more to that story. Last year was very mission-intensive for me, and I spent a lot of time overseas.
The last of three consecutive trips was to a trip India for a couple of weeks. I brought some people with me on that trip, and one of them turned out to be very "difficult." She made the trip unpleasant from myself and the team. In addition, we encountered a lot of setbacks and hardships that I wasn't expecting. (Missions can be like that--things don't always go the way you expect--scheduling and accommodations can be frustrating at times.)
If it was just the hardships or just the difficult team member, I would have weathered it pretty well. But the two things together overwhelmed me. It was like strife from without and strife from within, combined with physical discomfort and an extremely grueling schedule. I was so miserable that even while I was still in India, I was promising myself I'd never come back here again.
(I spent the last 3 days of the trip with a different ministry, and those days were much nicer. We still had the grueling schedule and the "difficult" teammate, but the ministry work was powerful and our physical needs taken care of much better.)
If the whole India trip had been like the last few days, I would have never told the Lord what I told Him. But after I got home I told the Lord two things. The first was, "Lord, I never want to go to India again. Never!"
The second thing was that I wanted to take a vacation from missions for a few years because it has been a huge toll on my health, and I was tired of getting physically sick from mission trips. When I first started doing mission trips to third world conditions, I was younger and much healthier. Over time, the trips took their toll on me physically and my health slowly degraded.
Now when I come from from mission trips, I usually get really sick and it usually takes me a couple of months to recover. This has been a bit of a "pet peeve" for me, because God uses me to heal all sorts of sick people on the trips, then I come home and get really sick myself--and He doesn't heal me! I know that it is probably a fallout of spiritual warfare, but I would prefer not to be sick.
I got home from India on Nov 1, and I got really sick again. I was miserable on the trip, and I was miserable from being "sick" after the trip. I decided that I was sick of being sick, and that I told myself that I'd spent more than my "fair share" of time on the mission field. So that is why I told the Lord that didn't want to do any more third-world mission trips for at least a few years.
Of course, if you tell God you won't do something, that is usually the first thing that He tells you to do. So the Lord arranged for me to go on a mission trip to Sau Paulo Brazil, as part of a team that Jim Paul was leading. If someone else had been leading it, I am not sure if I would have agreed to go, because I felt "missioned-out." But Jim is someone who I look to as a mentor and I respect him greatly, so I was willing to go on a mission trip in order to work with Him.
God knew I was burnt-out on missions, so He met me in the hotel room at Lakeland during our "personal retreat," and He restored my vision and passion for missions. That was on Jun 15. I remember crying and telling God that I was sorry that I'd told Him I wouldn't go back to India. I repented and told Him that I'd go wherever He sent me. I knew that meant He'd send me back to India one day--but I excepted that day to be some quite time away. But God had other plans.
On August 2, I got an email from a ministry head in India, a man who I know and like. He wanted to know if I could come to India and minister to his pastors and church planters (over 800 of them). They were in need of training and refreshing, and while he was praying for them, God spoke to him and told him to have me come minister to them. He knew I had no plans to go to India that year, but he asked me to pray about it anyhow. I told him I'd pray, and I did. I thought I already knew what God would say because I already had the mission trip to Brazil scheduled for Nov, and I had other commitments between now and then. There was no room in my schedule for a trip to India this year, so I was pretty sure the Lord would say, "no."
Guess what? All of this was a divine setup designed to get me back to India.
I prayed and asked God what His will was, just like I promised I would. As I prayed, the Lord said, "You know, Teresa, I can always rearrange the timing of the Brazil trip to free you up for India."
That wasn't a yes or a no, so I ignored that and kept waiting on the Lord for a clear answer. I had a suspension that the November time-slot reserved for Brazil was about to open up, but I wrote it off a figment of my imagination. I would go to India if God forced Me to, but it wasn't high on my wish-list.
But by this time, I was really looking forward to the Brazil mission trip with Jim. In fact, it was time to purchase my airfare. The agreement was that I'd take care of my airfare and the sponsoring church in Brazil would take care of all my in-country expenses. If you want a consolidator ticket, you have to purchase them about 4 months in advance to get a good price. The Brazil trip was 4 months away, so I decided I'd better get the tickets. Technically, I was still waiting on God for an answer about India, but that wasn't really important to me. I phoned Jim to ask him what airline he was flying in on, hoping to try and coordinate my arrival with his. This was on Tuesday, Aug 5.
Jim said he'd been meaning to call me. He had recently heard from the sponsoring church. They were having some internal issues, so they decided to push their conference and evangelism crusade back to sometime in 2009. In essence, the conference was rescheduled for next year and my November time slot was now free.
Even as Jim was speaking into one ear, the Lord was speaking to me in the other ear. God said, "See, I told you I'd reschedule the Brazil conference so that I could send you to India!"
So that hunch I'd discounted really was the Lord, and He really wanted me to go back to India this year!
"That's right Teresa." God said. "You know that I must be Lord in your life and in your ministry. And when you put your will into conflict with Mine--well guess whose will is going to prevail?"
So I apologized to the Lord again for having told Him that I wouldn't go to India and said I'd do whatever He wanted.
Then He said, "Teresa, I had to send you back to India after you told Me that, or the enemy would have been able to build a stronghold in you that would have nullified your ability to be effective for Me in India." Then the Lord began telling me some of the things He planned to do there. By the time He was done talking to me, I found myself really looking forward to the India trip. God loves India and has really good plans for His pastors and church planters there!
I will leave on November 11 and return home on November 24, and I'd appreciate your prayers for this mission trip.
Isn't God amazing! Because of Him, the girl who said, "I won't back back to India again" will be going there again, after all. And God has so changed her heart that she is actually looking forward to the trip!
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