“And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and He will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but He will overwhelm your failures with His generous grace.” James 1:5 TPT. Around about this time in our mission (day 6 of 12 days), Hubby and I have learnt that we can end up on a huge down-a-later… right before our Heavenly Father is about to do something that will blow our socks off … again!
To be honest with you, I’m not sure we would choose to go on these trips purely for the people the Lord sets us up to met – although they are often fantastic people. But I strongly suspect we both do this because we can’t wait to see what He IS going to do next. He is always surprising us – He literally never does what we might imagine at all – nothing looks like you think it will!
I think the reason that many Christians don’t often see the Holy Spirit working around them is because they won’t want take any risks. People who lay down their lives to follow Jesus, end up taking risks. Like walking on water, or feeding thousands of people with some kid’s lunch. Or waiting for the Holy Spirit to come – when no-one has any idea what that looks like! We need to stop thinking He’s only present when we see miracles – because the Lord promised never to leave us or forsake us. He will go with us, wherever we go in His Name, and He always keeps His promises.
However in those times when it seems as if hubby and I have run out of enthusiasm for moving around from one place to another, and we are slowly getting toward empty — then He just simply takes over, particularly when we confess that we are hopeless without Him and we need His wisdom …like brother James suggested in his book. That’s when wisdom flows everywhere, and we just stand back and watch Him move. I love those times, they are the best.
One of those fantastic times happened at the beginning of our journey, when we first arrived in Victoria, utterly exhausted. Hubby gave away a half a dozen bookmarks, and a block of chocolate to the cleaners. Their leader was so overjoyed she raced off to our cabin and hugged me – she said this: “Nobody ever thinks about the cleaners!” Hey guess what lady?? Jesus always does!!
Another one happened because the TV and DVD in our cabin didn’t work. So two guys came to fix it and then one of them suggested we all watch some porn to see if it was working now. I laughed and said: “Boy, are you going to feel bad when you find out what WE do!” Then we told him, and we all laughed together! You just never know who the Lord is going to bring along next, like two rough Aussie blokes and 2 weak wobbly little missionaries.
Only a few days ago, hubby took bibles and bookmarks into yet another caravan park office, and after a few minutes talking, he gave the lady behind the desk, a bookmark. She burst into tears and started sobbing: “You just don’t know what this means to me,” she said through her tears. You know, that book mark was not that good, trust me! It’s the Lord!! Jesus wants people to know He loves them, and He’s not dead – He’s alive!
So far, and we are on day 6, we have given away nearly all our bibles, 341 things in 6 days and 3 of those days were hard travel days. And we, Mr and Mrs We-haven’t-got-a-clue, are simply doing whatever He tells us to do. We were able to give that sobbing receptionist one of our books that talks about knowing Jesus, as well as a heap of bibles for that park. Then somebody else came in, which kind of terminated the conversation and changed the atmosphere. The window of opportunity may be very small, but Hubby is brilliant he jumps right through it!
Travelling around by car is difficult, the roads aren’t great to start with! And it means we don’t see a lot of people in a day, as we have to cover a lot of ground between towns … where there are only emus, kangaroos, and deer – would you believe? Australia is a land with lots of space, so that means a lot of driving. We have driven about 1500 kms, to places that often don’t even have churches. Places where faith is not a part of any conversation, so if you bring up Jesus it usually takes people by surprise.
The Lord wants to be so much a part of our lives that we talk about Him quite naturally. Like I said to the man when he wanted to play a porn DVD – that we didn’t have (!!!) – “Sorry mate, HE wouldn’t like it.” And I pointed to the ceiling. We need to defer to the Source, first, last and always. Bye 👋.
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