The Mission After the Mission Trip :: Reba Matthews
Not many people write about the journey after mission trip….With so many emotions and what God has been speaking to me, I needed to write about it.
Right now, it’s Day 1 since coming home. After 30 hours of travel (between Bangkok, Tokyo, Chicago, Moline, and Dubuque), I arrived to my hometown in Iowa last night. I caught up with some sleep last night…14 hours worth! While my feet are back in Iowa, my heart is not here. It’s not only in Thailand but in all the remote places, the dark places where people are hurting and crying out for life, healing, hope, and whether they know it or not….their hearts are crying out for Jesus, Who can make all things new.
These emotions are no surprise to my arrival home. A day or two prior to the trip ending, I thought to myself: “ I don’t want to go back home. I don’t want this mission trip to end. It just began.” Instantly after thinking this, God spoke softly to me. He informed me that I have a mission trip back home as well. I reflected on His simple, short response. What does this look like? I am not exactly sure. I don’t have a blueprint but I do have a start.
My start is to pray for the people in Thailand that God showed me in person and to also pray for those that are hurting whom I didn’t meet. My heart is to see His Kingdom come. To me, that is depicted as: to see the hurt (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually) healed. To give hope to the hopeless hearts. To deliver the news of salvation to the lost. To encourage the faint of heart and help renew a faith in them. To empower/give strength to the weak……Ultimately, I want to see the captives set free.
I realize this is only possible through the His power alone. He is the deliverer of bondage, and He is the One who sets people free. I realize that while my schedule from Thailand is transitioning back to my “normal” everyday schedule before I left, there is something different: I have changed. My heart has changed…….It’s hard to describe. I feel God has started a new chapter in my life and things will continue to change.
So, today(Day 1, back home), I am going to start putting the puzzle pieces of this new journey together. It will take time; but it starts with one piece, and then putting the next puzzle piece together with the last one, and then another with that one, and another… My starting pieces look like this:
the team
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Pray more. My prayer life has been LAZY. I am waking up my prayer life and becoming more active in it. There’s such power in prayer and to not pray is undermining it’s power.
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Expect GREAT things. I have lessened God and His abilities. With disappointments in this life and resulting lack of faith, I have put God in a box. I have believed He is not capable of what He can do. Going forward, I am going to see my God as not a small God but a BIG God for who He really is.
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Be aware of those who are needing love here in US. It’s so easy to get caught up with myself and my agenda. For now on, I want to live beyond myself and become less and less selfish with my time and energy. My other blog explains this more fully.
These are my starting pieces. So, while I yearn to be back in Thailand, God has sent me back home to live in the mission field here. I will start with the puzzle pieces I have now. Piece by piece He will give me and eventually it will become more of His beautiful design He has for me in my life. (Jeremiah 29:11)
