Submission, Surrender and the Path to Africa
August 13th, 2010
There are an estimated 147 million orphans in the world.
Last fall I shared that God was asking me for full submission. Submit my plans, submit my tendency to control. I didn’t know what, but I knew something was coming.
Now I know…we’re going to Africa, to Ethiopia. Actually, we’ll be going twice next year. On the second trip, we’ll be bringing home a new family member….our son.
Believe me, I can tell you all the reasons this makes no sense. In my conversations with God, I tried to use my analytics, my persuasion, even my ability to negotiate. It’s funny how skills that are so highly valued in the business world are so totally useless with the Lord.
I told him surely he’d rather ask this of my great stay-at-home mom friends. He told me that he didn’t ask to use Aaron, he asked Moses to go.
I told him that it wouldn’t be smart…think of all the unknowns. What if this had a negative impact on my two beautiful, happy, healthy girls? As a parent, it wouldn’t be responsible. He told me that he asked Abraham to lay everything on the altar…even his children.
So I can tell you all the reasons this makes no sense, but I can tell you one reason that it does….God asked us to. So we’re going. We’re scared. We’re excited. We’re humbled that God would use us in this way. Above all, we’re not in control, and it’s so much better that way.
