Because You say so, I'll Follow

For my creativity class, yes a class teaching your creativity..hmm, we have to write a paper on a creative person in the field we are going into. My professor was listing off attributes of a creative person and the three he listed off fit someone perfectly for me; visionary, effort, risk-taker: Nate Saint. Yesterday as I continued my research I thought I would watch, "End of the Spear." I had seen it before only I forgot last time I saw it, I wanted nothing to do with missions. As I watched the excitement of those five men as they made their plans my excitement rose with them. Then to see them leave their families... (from the movie) young Steve Saint asks, "If the Wawadoni attack will you defend yourself? Will you use your guns?" and Nate's response, "Son we can't shoot the Wawadoni, they're not ready for heaven." I was no longer just watching a movie but realizing, as I have before, this will be my life. I praise God for the times that I have with my friends and my family now but there will be a day when I have to say, "goodbye" at least for several years at a time and possibly forever. I'm not trying to dramatic but realistic. As the movie continued, my excitement grew once again as they had their first encounter with the Wawadoni people and then fell hard as those 5 men where martyred. It was the realization, again, that this is my life. From the day I realized the depth of my sin and pleaded for forgiveness, I committed my life. For when God saved us He did save us so that we might be free and give Him parts of our life but rather our whole entire lives...and then to be a disciple,

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple...So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26-27, 33)

Any one who does not renounce all that he has; things, money, jobs, dreams, parents, siblings, nieces & nephews, spouse, your life... Any one who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. This costs me my life...Those five men realized that. This life is bigger then fame, a good job with good money, then family, then living, but it is about God and HIS plan.

As these realizations spun through my head, and I praise God for this because I know if it were I these words wouldn't have come to my mouth, I prayed, "Lord, still I will go. If only one person comes from my death, so be it. I will go."

May this be true of my life:
I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit,testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to my myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received form the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:20-24)