During my tenure as a Way Ambassador, I developed my ability to trust in God. I’ll admit, I’m analytical and a classic overthinker. When making decisions, I like to think through all the options thoroughly and try to optimize to find the best solution. Thinking things through is good to a degree, but too much analysis can sometimes get in the way. At the end of the day, no amount of thinking on my end can beat God’s solution to a situation.
One area in which I learned to trust God more was follow-up and undershepherding. During my tenure, I acquired many contacts, and there was simply not time to reach out to all of them on a consistent basis during this fast-paced program. Most of the contacts tended to fizzle out, and sometimes it was hard to tell if people were hungry for the Word. But God always knows who’s hungry! I had to learn not to stress about inviting every person to every event or trying to send the perfect text. I can plant and I can water, but ultimately, it’s God Who gives the increase (I Corinthians 3:6).
Near the beginning of the tenure, I made friends with a coworker who expressed a desire to come to our fellowship to learn more about the Bible. She visited our fellowship a couple of times and seemed to enjoy them. However, she stopped coming to fellowship after the first couple of visits. Since she switched jobs, I didn’t see her at work anymore, but I continued to reach out. After many weeks of inviting her to various fellowships and events and visiting her a couple times at her home, I eventually made the choice to focus less time on texting her to make more time for the people who did show spiritual hunger.
One day, I had the thought to reach out to her to ask if we could get together. We made plans for her and her husband to come over the following Sunday after their church. That Sunday morning, she texted me asking if she and her husband could come to fellowship. That weekend happened to be when another team member’s family was visiting, including their four young children. It was also the time that she and her husband broke the news to us that they were having a baby!
The timing of everything could not have been more perfect. My friend and her husband instantly bonded with the visiting family and got to talk about becoming parents and how sweet parenting can be when you have God and the household. It was such a sweet time together! Only God could have made that connection.
Meanwhile, another woman our team witnessed to was unresponsive for the first month. One day, God worked in me to reach out to her to ask how she was doing. She responded that she was going through a lot. The very next day, one of our teammates ran into her at the park, and he urged her to go to fellowship. We invited her to a café Bible study, which she thoroughly enjoyed, then she came to her first fellowship the very next day and loved it! After just a couple of weeks, she was sitting in her first Foundational Class. She shared that she had been searching for years for someone to teach her how to understand the Bible, and finally she was being taught. It’s so cool how God worked in the situation to make sure this spiritually hungry woman could get the Word.
I feel so free now knowing that I don’t have to twist myself into knots to bring people the Word. God wants people to be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2:4). So, I don’t have to figure this out on my own; I have God as my partner. If someone is hungry for the Word, God can work in me, the person, and/or the situation to make sure that person gets what they need. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to grow in my partnership with God during the program. I can accomplish so much more for God when I trust Him and let Him do the heavy lifting!
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