Hi friends! On today’s episode of Draw Near to Me, we will begin part 2 of Michael’s faith journey. For those who prefer to read, today’s content is also posted below. As a recap, part 1 ended with Michael and Sarah being challenged to discern whether mission work was what they were called to. One of the leaders from YWAM told them that if it was not truly from God, then life as a missionary would chew them up and spit them out. They had to know for certain what God was telling them. Since this is a man’s testimony, my husband, Jeff, will narrate Michael’s story. If you enjoy this post, please share it with others using the share button below and consider doing a free or paid subscription. With that, let’s dive into part 2 of Michael’s story. Enjoy!
Sarah and I still felt called to be missionaries. We were not testing the waters to see what happened, we were committed. Over the next year we spent about 9 to 10 months preparing to go to the YWAM training school located in Nashville. It was not a simple process. Sarah and I had to find homes for our pets, quit our jobs, and sell our house. We knew we were headed down this path and, in some ways, set it up so that there was nothing to come back to.
Of course there were difficulties. We made a lot of mistakes along the way. Sarah and I were young and new in the Lord. When we first started, we did not have any real support system around us to help us as we fundraised. A lot of people did not understand our decision.
Behind the scenes there was also a pressure building. We knew this was our opportunity to become missionaries, but that alone did not always seem like enough. The idea that we needed to immediately figure out our exact long-term calling weighed on us at times. What was the specific country or type of work we were called to? We still did not know.
God took us many places over the years, but we began our missionary journey at the YWAM training school. The educational process there can be different for people based on their goals. Some people come and only do the discipleship training school (DTS), which is the initial course that takes about 6 months. Some then continue to receive additional equipping.
DTS focused on setting up a foundation of who you are, who God is, what the Bible is, etc. Years ago, in the 1970s, missionaries often left the field due to moral failures. Issues that stemmed from the person, their identity, and their own walk led to problems. DTS was created to help shore up the personal foundation of each missionary before they were sent. It emanated from the realization that it was pointless to teach missionaries a bunch of additional skills if their foundation was not strong enough to handle what they faced in the field.
Everyone who became YWAM staff had to go through a minimum requirement of completing DTS. Afterward, there was an opportunity for trainees to assess what their next step was. Was there a calling to go do mission work, or had their path changed and they wanted to do something else? The completion of DTS served as a jump off point between the training elements that anybody did versus a more involved preparation for the mission field.
After completing DTS, Sarah and I began the leadership and ministry development school. It was all about leadership, how to do ministry, how to set things up, manage budgets, approach biblical leadership, etc. It trained us in the more practical things. After that, we came on staff at YWAM.
While working for the organization, we were exposed to training that allowed us to continue to grow in our ability to lead. This occurred before we were ever thrown in the deep end or put in charge of things. In addition to working at our YWAM location that we were based out of, we conducted a 2–3 month outreach overseas. That experience forced us to put into practice what we learned. It allowed us to grow through that training.
Even though we had jumped in and fully committed to YWAM, I still felt like there was a piece of the puzzle that remained unsolved. Obviously, my job centered around missions and what it looked like to be workers in God’s harvest, yet I did not know how to explain to people what I was doing. This was especially the case with people on the outside of the church. It was not as if I was doing nothing. I was evangelizing and doing things associated with missions, but that was often not received as a sufficient answer. People asked, “What are you actually called to? What are you going to do in the long run?” We didn’t have a solid response and that felt difficult in a lot of ways.
A lot of people work from paradigms of a 5-year or 10-year plan. When some meet the Lord, they know right off the bat what their specific calling is, and that’s awesome. However, I feel like there are also a lot of people that come to know the Lord and they don’t know what the exact path is. There is often a process that we are still in as we figure out what that’s going to turn out to be. We fell into the latter category.
Sarah and I were newer Christians. We were asked by pastors, and people supporting us to go on mission, what our five- or ten-year plan was. I had a difficult time not knowing that piece of the puzzle. I knew I was supposed to be a missionary, but I did not have my specific calling all figured out. In fact, sometimes I felt like I was still in the process of just learning how to follow Jesus on a daily basis.
Thankfully, we were surrounded by wise people that we sought insights from, especially within our YWAM circle. They helped us put some language to things to help us through this struggle. One guy, who was amazing, was with YWAM years ago and had been a pastor there for over 30 years. He explained to us that people’s faith journeys could occur in stages. This was also true of those called to ministry.
He reminded us that there are those that answer the call early, in their teens or 20s. At that stage in life, many people felt like they had to be 25 and running their own non-profit or organization. If that wasn’t the case, then they felt like they had missed the boat. While that happened for a few people, the fact was that it was not the reality for the vast majority. As a result, it was good to be okay with what God might be calling us to do, even if it felt experimental.
Sometimes, through the process of saying “yes” to different things, we learn more about ourselves. At times, we may even discover what we shouldn’t do by being open to trying something out. For example, some people come in with the idea that they should work with kids; however, once they actually begin that process, they realize that they hate it. What is built up in their minds can be vastly different from what the actual day to day looks like for that ministry.
The pastor continued. He said, “You’ve got to be okay with saying yes, making mistakes, but allowing that to refine who you are. The main thing is to build a habit of obedience to the Lord.” He told us that oftentimes we used our 20s to try different things and learn how to listen and follow God. Then, in our 30s, we have learned enough about ourselves that we can begin to start homing in on certain things. However, this was accompanied by the knowledge that there were likely aspects about us that we were still figuring out. It was not until our 40s or 50s that we probably hit a greater knowing of who we were, what we were best at, and what we were actually called to do. His insights were a relief. It was a perspective that embraced things as a process rather than an immediate knowing.
During this time, there was an encouragement to us through the story of Abraham and Sarah that kept coming up over and over again. It was this idea that it was okay to be like them. While I am not comparing myself to Abraham whatsoever, what resonated was that he was a guy who was called in Genesis 12 and he then immediately stepped out and went. However, as we learn more, we realize very quickly that Abraham was not a complete character right off the bat. He was a pretty messy guy. He had moments where he did something amazing. Then, the next moment, he was giving his wife away to a random stranger because he was afraid for himself.
There was an up and down sequence in Abraham’s life, but over several decades we saw God working things out of him, almost discipling him. It was through that slow process that Abraham became the father of faith that he was called to be when he first got called. That idea resonated with me because it felt like what our life had been. When God called us, we had to be okay with going even though we did not know what the destination looked like.
A lot of times, especially within YWAM, we had a minimum two-year commitment at a particular location. At the end of the two years there was an opportunity to review what had been done. It gave people the chance to pray continually over where God was calling them. Was He asking them to stay at that location and type of mission work or was it time to be sent elsewhere?
Many people renewed their commitment at a certain YWAM site and remained there for at least another 2 to 5 years. For Sarah and me, whenever we hit the 2-year mark and prayed about where God wanted us, the answer we received from Him was to go to another place. We had others praying alongside of us and they often confirmed what we had heard from God, both in terms of leaving a YWAM site and the direction of where to go next.
There was probably one time over the years where we were praying with others during that transition stage and went against what they discerned. We knew we were supposed to move on, but we were getting one location while other people in our circle were getting a completely different one. We didn’t listen. To be honest we should have. It was one of those Abraham mistakes where you realized later that we had made that decision because it was what we wanted, not because it was the best call. However, that was also part of the valuable lessons we learned over the years.
After we left YWAM in Nashville, we felt called to the location in Jacksonville, FL. That was our first stint there and we stayed from 2011-2013. While we were there we went to Beach church and Eleven22, since they were both integrated as one church at the time. It was our home church that we eventually returned to years later.
While in Jacksonville, I was in charge of training others to be sent out into the mission fields. We took teams over to different locations, sometimes for specific projects. It was also when our first two kids, our twin boys, were born into what was essentially the mission field. Soon we would be taking them all over the place from city to city and country to country on mission for months at a time.
To be continued.
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