My story is unique, as is your story. It is a story that has unfolded under the providential care of the Heavenly Father. I came to faith in Christ as an 8-year-old growing up in a Southern Illinois coal town. I was baptized by immersion soon after and became a member of a local church. The next year, something happened that shaped and set the course for the rest of my life. I went to a mission camp. There I sat under the spell-binding teaching of Southern Baptist missionary legend, Dr. John Abernathy.

Dr. Abernathy was then on his final furlough before retiring to Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was a missionary is his sixties. I was a boy barely nine years of age. Dr. Abernathy served the later years of his missionary career in Korea, but his legacy was established during his time of service in China before the communist takeover. That week at missions camp, he told me stories of his life among the Chinese, his being shot by Japanese soldiers and being saved by Chinese Nationalist soldiers, and, most importantly, of his involvement in one of the great revivals of the 20^th century, the Shantung Revival. As a child, I spent that week with him in rapt attention asking him questions and listening to his stories. He placed in my young heart a passion for the Great Commission. When my mother came to pick me up from the camp, he walked with me to the car, placed his hand on my head and said to her, “Mrs. Johnson, I believe this young boy might be called to Christian missions.” From that time forward, I never had any question about it. I was made by God to be involved in His mission to the nations. It was then I knew that I had a call from God.

Providentially, life went on. I entered the ministry, was married, and started a family. However, the call to missions was there, lying dormant below the surface of my life waiting for the chance to bloom and grow. That reaffirmation of my call came at 27 years of age, at about the time of the birth of my son. Stephen was born with some health challenges. Caron and I did all that we could to care for him and nurture him with our limited resources. However, to my disappointment, I was told by our denominational sending agency that we could not be appointed due to his health condition and our indebtedness paying his medical bills. I had given up all hope of serving in international missions. It seemed that the door had been irreversibly closed. Then, God in His gracious providence renewed my call and acted by His power. Two things happened in a short period of time: God said to go to the nations and my son’s health was restored.

One evening, Caron and I were visiting with Steve and Deanne in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  (Be sure to go back and read Part 1 of this Blog post, if you missed it last week.) As we were about to leave, Steve, knowing my love for reading, said: “Hey, I have a book, that I would like for you to read. It is about one of your Southern Baptist missionaries who served in China.” I thanked him for the book, took it home and began reading it. The book was titled, The Shantung Revival. To my surprise, on the inside cover was the handwriting Dr. John Abernathy. He wrote a personal note to the recipient of the book.  (Who that original recipient was, and how it got from that person to my friend Steve, I will never know.) Not only that, but as I turned the pages, Dr. Abernathy’s notes were in the margins of the text. Literally, on every page, it was as if I were hearing his voice from my childhood speaking to me again. At the same time, I heard God speaking to me, telling me that His call had not changed. That book came to me at the time of my deepest despair by the hands of a friend. Why at that time? I have only one answer, God willed it. I told Caron that I did not know how, but I knew that God wanted us to be missionaries. To do that, she reminded me, we would need a miracle to heal our son, which is, in my opinion, precisely what happened next.

Our son, whose emergency C-section brought him into the world a couple weeks ahead of schedule, had been subject to allergies and lung infections from birth. He was subjected to a battery of tests and found to be allergic to host of things. Allergy therapy followed, but he was always dogged by the specter of pneumonia, of which he had recurring bouts. Slowly, we noticed improvements and two and half years later we decided to reestablish contact with our denominational mission agency. The doctor there remembered our case and requested an update on our son’s present health status. To my amazement, the doctor called us into his office and shared with us: “Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, your son seems to have marvelously recovered. It appears that he will no longer need on-going allergy therapy.” Believing all things are under God’s control, I have no doubt that my son’s treatment and healing was superintended by the gracious providence of God Almighty.

God has taught me the following lessons from my experience, and I would suggest that they are applicable to your life as well:

• God has a plan for your life. He really does. You are not here on accident. That plan might or might not involve you moving to another country. However, it will involve your glorifying God wherever you are in whatever circumstances you are. For now, you are where you need to be. Learn the lessons that He has for you where you are. “Don’t get discouraged if the task or ‘call’ does not come immediately. Remain faithful in what He has told you to do, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may appear.^[1]”

• Put yourself in places where can God can speak to you. For me, it was at a missions camp. For you, it might be at a local church, a special conference, etc. However, don’t think it is only a special few that have providential encounters with God Almighty. God speaks to us all. It is incumbent upon us to learn to clearly hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. Be involved in missions though your local church. God speaks most clearly when we are engaged in His work.

• You have not been abandoned; you are not an orphan. No one has helped me more in this area than Jack Miller. Miller uses the helpful check list in order to help to assess our hearts:

“If you’re a Christian, you’ve been adopted. God is your Father. You have all the benefits of sonship. You are now a son or daughter of God” http://www.justinbuzzard.net/2009/12/21/orphans-vs-children-checklis/. If this is the case, and it is if I am a Christian, I can never give into despair. I am not an orphan alone in this vast Universe. I am an adopted child of the Great King of the Universe and He will accomplish His purposes in my life.

God has a purpose for your life and He is working to accomplish it. If the Father has spoken to you in the past and you are still waiting for Him to fulfill His Word in the present, do not lose heart. The purposes of the Lord will stand. His providential purposes are sure and He is always right on time, His time. Dr. Henry Blackaby in his book, Experiencing God, quotes  Charles Spurgeon: “When we cannot trace God’s hand, we must simply trust His heart.”

A happy and blessed New Year to all!

Mark & Caron

^[1] Duke, R. D. (2010). God’s Enabling Grace in the Path of Suffering. The Founders Journal: Suffering and Glory, Spring, (80), 25.

 

The year 2015 ended with the special pleasure of having a visit in our home with long-time friends, Steve and Deanne Turley. Steve and Deanne are veteran Assemblies of God missionaries who have served in Belgium for many years. The time together with them reminded me of everything special about Christian friendships that the years cannot dim: free-flowing conversations that are serious and substantive. Conversations that are honest, yet full of confidence in God’s providential mercies. These providential mercies have been made evident in years past and will certainly continue to be made evident in the upcoming years, including the year of 2016. Time with Steve and Deanne reminded me of the special place this couple has had in our lives and how God providentially used them to send us to Brazil 23 years ago. The same providence that has been at work in my life is at work in your life as well. Each of have a mission to accomplish. This post is my attempt to assure you that, “He who began a good work in you will complete it.” How? I cannot say. Will He? Of this, I am certain. My own story is a testimony to His faithfulness. Before telling my story, let me define briefly two important concepts, mission and providence.

Providence. God’s providence is defined by the Westminster Divines in the following way: “God’s works of providence are, his most holy, (Ps. 145:17) wise, (Ps. 104:24, Isa. 28:29) and powerful preserving, (Heb. 1:3) and governing all his creatures, and all their actions. (Ps. 103:19, Matt. 10:29–31)^[1]” Simply stated, providence is the teaching that God has all things under His control, including the details of my life, for good and for ill. Because it is God who is control, I can be sure of three things:

• I can trust God’s providence because He is all powerful. The God who made the vastness of the universe can and does control the sometimes seemingly chaotic details of my life and your life.
• I can trust God’s providence because He is all wise. I think that I have an idea as to how the universe should be best governed, but the fact is that I am woefully limited by my finite sinfulness. God knows no such limits. He really does know what is best for me and this vast universe that He created.
• I can trust God’s providence because He loves me. Jesus said that He would not leave us as orphans. We are His and He is ours. In all things, we have the confidence that He will never leave us or forsake us.

Mission. What is mission? There are a host of understandings of what this simple word means. Those understandings range from the simple idea of being sent to do a task to the possible actions and activities that might characterize and compose that task. However, for the purpose of this blog post, I am using a simpler understanding of the term, a definition of that comes from the world of leadership training. Your mission is what you should be doing, what you should be doing in every area of your life.

The word mission is derived from the Latin word, “missio” to be sent. This in turn begs the question: Sent to do what? What should I be doing? Answer that question and you know the mission for your life in every area of your life. Speaking from the perspective of Christian ministry, Aubrey Malphurs gives this helpful definition: “A mission is a broad, brief biblical statement of what the ministry is supposed to be doing.”^[2]

Substitute the words family, person, company, organization, etc. for the word ministry, and it will make no difference. The operative word is “should.” Your mission, before God, is what you should be doing in your life and with your life.

This inevitably leads to a couple of basic questions:                                        “How I can know what is my mission?”                                                                       “How can I remain faithful to that mission once that I know it?”

I will address the question of how you can know your mission in a separate post. But for now, I assume that you already know what your life mission is but you are facing barriers that seem insurmountable in seeing that mission accomplished and become a reality. This was the case in my life when God used Steve and Deanne to rekindle my call to missions. I will share more about that chapter in our pilgrimage to missions in the next blog post. Be sure to check back next week for Part 2 of God’s Providence and Your Mission

^[1] The Westminster shorter catechism: with Scripture proofs. (1996). (3rd edition.). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[2] Malphurs, A. (1998). Developing a dynamic mission for your ministry (p. 33). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.