Day 60 - to go or to stay

I received a card from my friend back home today. She included a group picture of my church's Spring Conference in her card. I must say that I miss them. A lot more than I ever imagined. My friend wrote in her card about the committment she had made at Campus Challenge 2 years ago. She finally accomplished what she wrote. I was her accountability partner. I had completely forgotten about that. I still have the commitment cards, hers and mine, in my Bible. I put it there so that I would always remember it when I open my Bible. But both God and I know that it has been years since I've picked up the Bible to read except when I needed to during service. Plus, I use a different Bible now.

I'm such a failure. I've failed God and my friends. We wrote a lot of things on those commitment cards. I don't believe I've accomplished a single thing I wrote on mine. All I ever do is make broken promises to you, Lord.  I know it's in my sinful nature to fail and disappoint you, so why do you continue to entrust me with your tasks? My task was to commit to those around me, yet here I am in Calgary far away from them...thinking about leaving them.  My dream has always been to be an overseas missionary. To go out there and suffer for Christ and do something with a greater cause than my own.  But lately, I've really been thinking hard about why I'm here in Calgary.  I don't think God has called me to overseas ministry.  I think he wants me to stay home to witness to my friends and family. The cause is just as great and even closer to my heart. Perhaps, leaving home this summer has made me draw it closer, I feel a stronger connection to home, being responsible and accountable to it.

I mean serving overseas in developing countries would be a huge jump out of my comfort zone, to be away from luxuries and modern technologies would be, in most people's terms, suffering.  But to me, being able to travel and experience other cultures and bring them the awesome news of Christ's love just cancels out all this so called suffering. To me it's not suffering because as much as I love modern technology and certain luxuries, I know I can live without them.

No, my real suffering is not being able to leave but serve God here at home. Which should at the same time give me great joy because I will be with those whom I love and who love me in return.  I've always believed that as Christians, we're all called to be missionaries but some people are meant to be overseas missionaries and some are meant to stay.  I just always thought I would be the oversea ones because I have this free-spirit which yearns to fly away.  What's really been hitting me hard is the question I've had in my head for a while now. How can I witness to people overseas when the people right beside me, here at home, haven't even heard the gospel yet? How can I help strangers in far off places when I haven't even helped my own friends? 

I know I always have the option not to stay and just go, I've done it lots of times before but realizing my failures once again this time has made me decide that it's time to stop messing around.  I will choose what God has revealed to be my task and I'll obey...at least for the time being, until the day I fail him again...afterall, it's in my nature to...

And who knows, maybe overseas ministry is in my future but I know for sure that at least for this coming year, God has called me to stay.