“I’m a high school dropout, and I’m dumb, so if you want me on your team, you’ve got a lot of work to do,” I prayed.
This was my weak-minded prayer in 1994 when God began to deal with me about ministry. I was a preacher’s kid. I grew up in ministry, and I had seen the joys and the horrors of being in ministry. The people in the world judge you more harshly than they do themselves, but the church people do the same, and honestly, being in ministry was not in my dreams or plans; however, I had been going to the church of this fire-cracker woman pastor, Rev. Sue Allred, and God kept tugging on my heart as I watched her minister. She was this frail-looking older woman, but she preached like she was a ripped Navy Seal on a mission.
God continually reminded me that He made me strong and a leader, but I kept reminding God that I’m dumb and uneducated. I didn’t know what God had in mind, but it became almost scary because I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to handle all He had in mind.
My dreams were simple: I wanted to get married, have kids, and be a stay-at-home mom, and I wanted to sing. I loved to sing. See, simple! …or so, I thought at the time.
But God–He never has plans that are easy or simple. Don’t believe me? Pick up a Bible and read it. He calls shepherd boys to fight in hand-to-hand combat with bears, lions, and giants. He asks people to go to war with not enough soldiers. He has given people callings and commands that have caused them to have to go into prison, lions’ dens, hiding in caves, and furnaces of fire. He has led them on paths to survive shipwrecks and abandonment by family and on islands. He has called a man to marry a woman who would never be faithful to him, and He has asked people to give up everything to follow Him.
Seriously, these stories are not for the faint of heart, and from the outside looking in, these stories may look like God is cruel.
But then, you get to know this God. Before you realize it, as you read these stories, you start to fall in love with Him, and these stories start to transform your heart because you realize these people willingly walked through this in pure devotion to this God. Your eyes begin to open to the fact that this book is not a collection of stories, but it is rather one long story that shows us how we were separated from our Creator and His plan through Jesus to restore us to Himself. It shows His unending love for us, and how He chooses the least likely people to do unimaginable things to fulfill that restoration.
So, then came my calling–was I willing to simply say yes and allow God to do these unimaginable things through me? My education didn’t matter. He could fix that. He needed to remove the indoctrination of the world anyway, so He might as well teach me the correct way to view life, the world, and my purpose while He was at it.
And as for the rest, well “…God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” I Cor. 1:27
So, I finally said yes, and God has done some of those crazy unimaginable things in my life. I have been to places I never thought I would go. I have led people, on-on-one, to Jesus. I have spoken before small groups, Sunday School classes, youth groups, children’s church groups, and churches–small and enormous. I have spoken at conferences of a few hundred and a few thousand, wherever God has opened the door for me, I have been willing to allow Him to use me to fulfill His good purpose, and yet, I have only just begun to see all God has in store for me–the highschool drop-out, the college graduate, the ordained minister, the woman who simply said yes.
My journey isn’t over, in fact I’ve barely just begun, and yet, it all started by simply saying, “God, here are my dreams. I’m willing to follow yours if you still want me.”
So, now, we travel speaking where God leads us, to uplift, encourage, and build up saints to serve here in America. God is calling so many into ministry here, and He’s waiting for their yeses, and as we are faithful to do that, God uses those people to equip us to go to Romania to begin this new work of sharing Jesus where they are still waiting to learn of this incredible God through this simple woman and man who simply said yes.
This is God’s amazing plan, that in His great love, He chooses to use unworthy ones to spread His love around the world to every tribe, people group, and language–so everyone can come to Him and truly LIVE. ❤️
Missionjosiah.org
Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 1:21 NLT
HappygoMisty 