We have now spent about 3 years in full-time preparation mode for living our lives overseas (and several more even before that). With our hopeful departure date less than 7 weeks away, you can imagine we are pretty busy. We have most of our luggage, we are beginning to hoe through our belongings, and we have even begun saying goodbye’s. It’s getting real, y’all!
However, there are moments, like the other night, where I sit and ask myself “what are we doing and why?” I get so busy with the preparations, that I often forget the purpose. I have the head knowledge that people are living without Christ in Tanzania and all around the world. I read books that talk about the countless men, women, and children who are dying each day from preventable diseases, many of whom are entering into a Christ-less eternity. I have even looked some of them in the face. Yet still I forget the “Why?”
Because I have this head knowledge, it seems like the right thing to do to go, doesn’t it? I have tasted and seen the goodness of God and I have experienced the peace that passes all understanding and others have not. Going and telling seems like an easy solution, yet those are the moments when duty seems to creep in and precedes pure delight.
I want to be driven to tell others about Christ not because of duty. Not because it is the right thing to do. No. I want to GO because my delight is found in Him and others need to know that Jesus whom I delight in. I don’t HAVE to go to Tanzania. I GET to. What an incredible privilege I have been given. I don’t want to forget this!
I am reminded more and more each day what a fight it is to fix my gaze on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of my faith, rather than the distractions of this world. Even the distractions of preparing to serve Him. May we pray for one another. May we take our eyes off the things of this world and fix them on Jesus. He is the only thing that will last and those who we tell about Jesus are the only “things” we can take to heaven with us.
Thanks for listening to my thoughts and taking this journey with us as together we learn, grow and prayerfully become a little more like Jesus.
Together Making Him Known,
Jamie (for the Sharpes)