Episode 74 - Trusting God in the Unknown

In an outrageous act of recycling, this week I thought I'd share an article I wrote for the MAF monthly prayer devotion about my current situation (to read the original or to sign up to receive these devotions each month by e-mail, click here), so here it is...

There was once a guy called Paul. You’ve probably heard of him. He brought Christianity to Europe and wrote much of the New Testament. But, sometime before all that, he felt called by God to tell the Good News about Jesus Christ to what is now modern-day Turkey. Turkey and the surrounding area was the socio-economic hub of the world at that time, so making an influence there would be a way of influencing the world. It was a big job and one that Paul was no doubt excited about. However, only a short way into his journey, he found that he was unable to share God’s Word there.

In some ways, I can relate. At the beginning of 2015, I felt God call me to go to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to serve the people there with my engineering skills. It wasn’t that I thought this would be a good thing to do, or that it was something of which God would approve. No, God made it irrevocably clear that this was what He wanted me to do. It happened with a clarity I couldn’t doubt and a certainty that I knew I’d need to hold on to in the future — although I didn’t know why at the time.

Getting stuck in

In the summer of 2016, I moved to PNG and began to work with MAF there. I very much enjoyed myself, settled in well, and like to think that I made an impact for God’s glory there too. But after six months, I became ill and had to come back to England to be treated. Much about my illness still remains a mystery. The prognosis for my recovery in the future is good, but when this will occur is totally unclear. I am very much in a time of uncertainty.

It is easy to question whether I misunderstood what God was telling me when I felt called, but I know this is not the case. It’s easy to feel that I failed in some way, that I wasn’t strong enough, but I know this was always God’s work and it was only because of His strength that I’d be able to achieve this task – a strength that I know never fails. It’s easy to feel lost because, well, I am. But that’s okay, because I’m travelling with God and He doesn’t just have the map, He made it!

The Bible doesn’t tell us how Paul felt when he was unable to carry out his plans. It’s also unclear as to why Paul wasn’t able to share the Good News about Jesus. It does however tell us that God was the author of this interruption. It also tells us what Paul did next. He carried on! He tried to preach throughout the whole region and, when he wasn’t able to, he moved on to the next. He carried on and on until he found himself at the very tip of Turkey. From there, God led him to bring the Gospel to Europe, which would remain the social and economic hub of the world for the next 2,000 years. It was something Paul could never have known at the time, but was something God had planned all along.