As Christmas season approaches, I want to write several posts about reflecting back upon the things God has done in my life. This post was inspired by a sermon by Eric Ludy titled “Defining Moments of Obedience” where he chronicled 17 moments of his adult life that made him who he was. They were not easy moments to go through at the time but were necessary to form and shape him. It got me thinking. What moments of obedience have I been through to put me where I am, and what decisions have I made in following God that have brought me here?
I began to make my list and I came up with ten big ones. To give them a fraction of their due justice, I am going to split them up over this week and next. I did not include my coming to the Lord in this list because I was a child at that time and, while very important, I wanted to emphasize on my decisions as an adult. The five decisions I will describe this week are: 1) embracing the mission field, 2) starting a fencing ministry, 3) my call to start writing, 4) attending the Urbana Conference, and 5) witnessing to a co-worker. Then next week, I will write about five more major decisions I have made which have helped shaped my life. This list is not comprehensive, but as you read my story I would like you to think about your life and what major decisions you have made which have brought you to where you are.
1) Embracing the mission field. I grew up on the mission field. I was six years old when I went on my first mission trip to Juarez, Mexico, and I would be involved with them through International Family Missions for the next 22 years. I was 16 when my parents, my brother, and I moved from Colorado where I am 5th generation of Boulder County, to El Paso, Texas where I still live. Some may say that I had no choice but to go. My parents were the missionaries but I was along for the ride. However, I still had to make a choice, a choice some missionary kids make and many others reject. I chose to embrace God’s calling ME to the mission field. I know one missionary kid who outright told his parents, “God may have called you to the mission field but he didn’t call me.” I had to choose if I was just to be baggage or an active participant. I chose to be active.
The decision to be active was life-changing for me in more ways than I can really remember. I used to be someone who was absolutely dependent upon a rigid schedule. I have on record for throwing my worst temper-tantrum as a child when my babysitter put me to bed 30 minutes LATE. If plans were to change, I needed to be forewarned or I would throw a fit. Summers were difficult for me because I did not have the routine. When my parents took me on my first mission trip it was a disaster, according to the “experts.” I lost 18 months of development in one week. My parents recognized what God was doing and they would take me again and again and again.
By the time of my move to the missions facility where my parents were responsible for the maintenance and behind-the-scenes work, I was getting used to a life where things did not go as scheduled nicely. My decision to embrace this move has greatly taught me flexibility and adaptability, and without this experience, I likely would not be able to handle things like college, driving, or living on my own. There is a big part of that story I don’t have space to include here.
2) Starting a fencing ministry. I wrote about much of what I do with this last week, but it was something God simply laid on my lap. My uncle and I were waiting for a mission team to return from Mexico to our campus and he made a comment about taking my swords over to Mexico as a joke. I laughed, I told the joke to the team directors, and they took it seriously. That week I did my first demonstration at a children’s home and it was a huge hit. God began talking to me about how to use this, and what I shared last week is just a snapshot of what God has done with it. How has this affected me? I stutter when I talk, and this gave me training to speak publicly and now I have five professional conferences as a speaker under my belt to go along with numerous other speaking opportunities. The obedience to start using fencing as a tool for ministry and giving the sport God gave me back to God has been a great part of my development.
3) My call to start writing. I never saw myself as an author for most of my life. I would often write stories in journals and it would typically be the same story rehashed and re-written over and over again, and it was terrible. Don’t ask for those from me because I no longer have them. But in November 2006, a friend of mine wrote a fictionalized autobiography and asked me to critique it. I absolutely loved it and when sharing with him my thoughts, he suggest I try writing. So I did. In three months, I had a 280 page action/adventure novel. It was an okay story needing a lot of editing, but I discovered a joy in writing. I am using the core concepts from that initial draft in a current massive story that is taking on the size and scale of Lord of the Rings. Since then, I have published one book, Call to Arms, and I have several others written and I just keep going at it.
4) Urbana Conference. Urbana is considered the world’s largest mission conference in the world. I went in 2006 and 2009, with 23,000 and 19,000 college students from all 50 states and most countries around the world. While there was little I learned from the conference itself that stayed, two things (one from each) did. In 2006, I received my primary calling, to go into full time ministry with youth. God still has not fully revealed what it will look like, but every decision I have made has been with this calling in the front of my mind. This was confirmed when I was a counselor at a youth camp the following summer, and then in 2009, the calling began to take shape. It was there I met Steve Lillis, whom I wrote about last week, and that contact lead to another which put me on the course initially towards coaching, but then towards teaching. Now I am seeing that coaching fencing is to be a part of this ministry God wants me to do. I am waiting for his timing to get it started, but it was going to the 2009 Urbana Conference that sparked it.
5) Witnessing to a co-worker. In May 2007, I went on a week-long retreat right after final exams. I was fast moving through my first draft of Call to Arms (I would have 250 pages in six weeks, even with finals and this retreat) and during that retreat, God made a very strong impression I needed to witness to a co-worker of mine. It would be my last summer at that job at a local grocery store and I had gotten to know this guy over the previous six years. He had taken an interest in my writing skills because I could depict battle scenes with epic detail, so I used my first draft of Call to Arms as a means of witnessing to him.
My co-worker read my draft, and things started to go crazy because I had stirred up a demonic stronghold which had been lying dormant in his life. The full story takes an hour to share in person and I’m not about to do that here. Suffice it to say, this demon began to manifest itself through him, I received very demonic messages through e-mail from him, and my faith was attacked and shaken to the core. I did not have the ability to drive out the demon and I know much more about why now. But that encounter was a sifting of wheat and I am stronger in my faith because of it. When editing Call to Arms, I needed to scrap the entire draft because the story was just that bad, and in the re-writing I took this whole encounter and plugged it right in. I truly do make use of a warning a T-Shirt I have that says: “Be careful what you say, or you might just find yourself in my next novel.”
These are five decisions I have made which have had a significant impact on my life and have made me who I am today. Next week, I will share another five. What decisions have you made that have shaped your life today?
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