A friend of mine we’ll call John was recently expressing to me how he felt called to missions but realized that the one place he did not want to go to was a primarily Muslim country. He said that going there just seemed much too frightening for him and he just did not want to go there. He’d looked into Christian missionary organizations, but he steered clear of any that would end up sending him to a Muslim nation.
A few days after expressing these fears, John came to me and told me an incredible story. After speaking to me, he’d continued to pray about where God wanted him to go as a missionary. One of John’s friends had prayed with him and during their prayer asked him to explain if God was giving him any images as he prayed. Indeed John had seen himself as if he were in another country that had sand everywhere and it seemed to be in the Middle East. From observing the area around him, it seemed like he was surely in a Muslim place. He felt lonely there and that he could not bring Jesus into the lives of these people. His friend told him to close his eyes once more, but to this time envision that Jesus were walking through the streets. When John did this he realized that he no longer had the same feelings of inadequacy and doubts. He was able to that Jesus’ gift of eternal life was available to the Muslim world too.
The thing that struck me most as he concluded the story was that he felt that the entire time when he was afraid of going to a Muslim country it was because he had not believed that Jesus would be in that place with him. John had been believing the lies that Satan was telling him; lies that distorted his perspective and caused him to doubt the sovereignty and omnipresence of God. He was trying to describe the feeling as living as if everything were fine but not realizing until he was liberated from his bondage that he had been living with the underlying belief that Jesus would not be present in a Muslim nation. He asked me if there were any lies of Satan that penetrated my life; any lies that I’d been unconsciously believing about God’s character, His goodness, His will, His plan for my life, His power. Were any of these lies holding me back?
“What lies have you begun listening to in your own life? “
After being asked that very question, I began to see that the world around me had indeed succeeded in shaping my view of God. Because I sometimes feel as if I will never be fully understood by my friends, I think that God also does not fully understand me and so there are things that I choose to not bring before him. Because I do not fully trust the Holy Spirit within me, when I see a person on the street that I feel called and led to pray for I will walk past them for fear of how they might think of me if I were to approach them and share with them about Jesus. Because I don’t fully trust God’s plan for my future, I continue to stress about what courses to take, what activities to be involved in, what friend to invest in. I have been listening to too much of Satan rather than too much of God. It’s not easy to suddenly change my thinking because quite honestly, I have never seen these doubting thoughts of mine as something displeasing to God. But I now know that He longs for my complete obedience to Him and he desires for me to find peace and joy as I rest in His plan for me. I just pray that He’ll keep reminding me of His truths. Truths about his love, truths about Jesus, truths that will change my life, if only I’d quit being so stubborn and die to my puny self so that the mighty Lord of my life may be glorified.
