Just Thinking . . .

I've been asking myself lately, what do I love to do? Many parts of my job include things I don't love. Meetings. Deadlines. Budgets. Yuk. Hate it.

The parts I love include listening to people, encouraging people, and sometimes even rebuking people. I realize I am particularly motivated if they are the type of people who are passionate about proclaiming God's name to the ends of the earth.

The first type of person: When I sense that someone is willing to pour out his/her life for the glory of God, for the spread of His kingdom, then I will do whatever I can to help that person succeed. I can be very patient, even in extremely trying circumstances.

For the past year or two, I have been very motivated as I have helped some students from unreached people groups to learn English so they can be equipped to reach their people. I have invested hundreds of hours, probably thousands of hours in this task. And I thought it was great fun, not work. They were diligently equipping themselves to be more effective for their King and I wanted to diligently help them.

For the past several years, I've also been discipling students and staff who want to invest their lives for God's glory. If I sense that someone is "all out" for God's glory, then I want to go "all out" to help them while they are with us at IGSL.

I also love to go to remote places to visit them after they graduate, stay online late at night to chat with them and encourage them, connect them with others who can help them and spend time in earnest prayer for them. I love, love, love doing that!

The second type of person: It's much harder for me to invest in people who seem to be more concerned with being comfortable in life. There are a lot of those people around! But I am learning that God can use me to motivate the second type to become the first type. I've seen it happen. And it's thrilling when it does! But it really takes eyes of faith for me to see the potential in those people.

It takes even greater eyes of faith to see that meetings, budgets and deadlines can also be part of the bigger task of helping more people to be "all out" for God's glory. I really need God's help to see things through His eyes.

Just thinking . . .