Archives for April 2018

Following Where He Leads

 

“The British are coming, the British are coming.”  It is one of the best known call to arms in all history. It was a call to war, a call to fight, to gather with the other soldiers against the enemy. But, most importantly, it was a call to follow the general wherever he led them in a pursuit of freedom for all people.

Throughout history, there have been numerous amounts of call to arms. However, the call of the Lord to his people is the most important. He’s called each of us to a specific task – one that has been planned out before the beginning of time. Yes. He calls you. He calls me. And, he calls us to aid Him in the spread of His gospel to all the nations – to join Him in His mission and to follow Him wherever He leads.

He calls us all in many different ways and times as well as for different tasks. The Lord opened my eyes to the great need for the Gospel around the world, even at an early age. He instilled in me a desire for every tribe and nation to know and praise Him forever. Through reading missionary stories as well as praying for the nations with my family, I was constantly reminded that not everyone had had the chance to hear about Jesus. Even though I didn’t know how I was to serve God, I knew it was His will that I was supposed to follow Him.

In God’s perfect time, He placed someone in my life that would help me get started in the exploration of what the Lord would have me do for Him.

It all started in an amusement park. No, I’m not joking. We were surrounded by people, roller coasters, noise, food, and just craziness in general. But, the Lord can use anyone, anywhere for His plans – even a young lady at an amusement park. This young lady was visiting the park with us and she and I happened upon a conversation about what she did for work. She happily informed me that she was a missionary pilot-mechanic. I was intrigued as I listened and talked with her about it, delighted to discuss and learn about what God was doing through pilots all around the world as they flew missionaries to parts of the world that were previously inaccessible. This experience ignited my passion for following Him in His mission once again as I looked into what it would be like to become a missionary pilot.

I pursued this new interest with passion, believing that it was what God had called me to do. After attending a week-long summer camp at JAARS, NC, where I was able to explore what it would be like to fly airplanes, create a flight plan, work with airplane engines, and much more, I came home extremely excited. It seemed as if this was just what God wanted and that I was right on track for what he wanted me to do.

However, over time, as I thought about it, I realized that I was not entirely suited for flying as a missionary pilot. As an extrovert, it would be very difficult for me to fly for hours, on most occasion, by myself. That, along with my growing interest in medicine, and a few other factors, caused me to start to doubt whether being a missionary pilot was really how God had called me to serve Him.

This left me confused and bewildered. Why had God led me to explore being a pilot if that wasn’t what He was calling me to? I felt like I was betraying my passion and abandoning His call on my life. I didn’t understand why I was suddenly feeling called to something else. The problem was, no matter how hard I tried to leave the idea of medical missions, it just kept coming back. This doubt was aided by the fact that my dad was encouraging me to look into medical missions, knowing my personality and what I’d most likely better be suited to do. I tried to figure it out, reason what was going on. But I just couldn’t. Confused and lost, I ended up giving it to God – what I should’ve done in the first place – trusting Him that He would lead me. Yes, I didn’t understand, but He would work things out. I was only in eighth grade after all. I didn’t have to have everything planned out perfectly. He would bring to light, in His perfect time, what His call on my life would be.

As the years went on and I got older, I developed my interests and pursued things that I found that I enjoyed. One of these things that I found was writing. I discovered that writing – both non-fiction as well as fiction – could impact people for the gospel. So, I started a blog this blog, whose theme was the spread of the gospel, educating others about missions, and my journey as I explored God’s call on my life.

Continuing to pursue the passion that God had given me at that time, I eventually ended up planning and starting to write a novel. Even though it was a fictional work, I was overjoyed by the fact that I was able to instill biblical truths into it. Mainly, the truth that our pain will be turned to joy through Christ – that pain is not worthless. I realized that stories were able to teach others about Jesus, too – reaching even people that might not be open to listening to someone talk about Jesus.

And that brings me to where I am today. I am currently pursuing publishing for my novel, Author Rights, while at the same time, trusting God for where He will lead. I don’t exactly know how my current interests will play out in His call on my life, but I do know that He is able and willing to use what He has given me to make an impact on the world for Him. So, I will answer the call to arms, willing to fight for Him, following where he leads.

Hold On To God’s Vision for Missions | The Rebelution

Dear fellow missionary kids,

We’re on a mission. We have a goal. A task to complete.

Or do we? Many times, it seems as if we aren’t working to achieve this goal. We get bogged down. Forgetful. The enemy uses the troubles of this life to make us lose sight of the prize for which we’re fighting for so hard. We take our eyes off the goal–off the prize.

I must be honest, I have done this so many times. It’s sad. So often, I have forgotten why my family lives away from our original home. I lose sight of what God has called us to do.

However, it is important that we never lose sight of this. We need to remember why we are here. Why we’re not at home with our friends, in places that we love, in places that are familiar.

When we cry at night, wanting so badly to see our loved ones and our hearts ache oh so desperately for home, we need to remember what was so important to uproot our families and make us leave behind almost everything we knew. We need God to refill us with his Spirit so that we might complete the task he has set before us.

So what is this mission we’ve been given? You see, If we don’t even know what our task is, how are we to keep our eyes on it?

 

The rest of this post can be found here: Hold On To God’s Vision for Missions on The Rebelution

Toddlers and Our Dirty Hands | Isabelle Ingalls

“Bell-wup, Bell-wup!” my little brother calls, his toddler feet pattering across the wooden floor. Almost four and talking so well, yet my name has retained its babyish suffix. “I have dirty hands!” he proclaims sadly, holding them up for me to see. So I’ll help him up onto his stool in front of the sink, turning on the water and providing soap at the correct times.

But I sigh good-naturedly as I do so. Because this is the third time he’s done the exact same thing in fifteen minutes. And each and every time, no matter how hard I look, I can’t find anything on his hands. There’s no dirt. There’s no mud. There’s no smudges. He’s been playing with a mask, so maybe he brushed some glitter off, but even that I cannot see.

Yet he’s insistent that his hands are dirty. And if his hands are dirty, he knows they need to be washed.

Now, a toddler wanting to be continuously cleaned isn’t a big deal (in fact, I should probably be thankful, because the next little one will likely be the exact opposite). I’ll laugh at him and let him splash around and delight in the water that flows so freely out of the tap. But he’s not the only one who gets messy.

Because my hands are often dirty too. Not with physical dirt and germs, but with sin. With mistakes. With wrongs.

And yes, we know we all sometimes slip and land in the mud, the mire coming up to our elbows. We know we need to be washed then. But often it’s the little dirt that we pass over. I tell a little white lie (as if such a thing exists). I allow my anger to make me snap out, to just cross that line for a moment. I cut those corners because I just don’t feel like it today. I slip into gossip and condemnation. But we don’t see those as big deals. If someone else looked, they couldn’t really see it. But it’s still there. We still feel it. We still know our hands are dirty. Yet we allow it.

“It’s not a big deal,” we tell ourselves. “It’s just something little; I don’t need to go wash.” But that’s not true. We all know what happens when we don’t scrub our hands with soap and water. Germs and dirt build up and creep in. They start to make you sick, affecting every part of your body. Your strength is weakened; your energy is sapped. If that’s true with the physical, how much more so with the spiritual? When we allow sin to cling, its stench can start spreading to everything else.

Fortunately, the blood of Christ is the best cleanser there is.

The cross isn’t just for our big mirey disgusting sins, it’s for all of them––because in God’s eyes, all of them are. His renewing isn’t just for Sunday morning and revival tents, it’s also for Wednesday woes and backseat bickering. We can’t come to him too often. There’s never an over amount of cleansing. Three times in fifteen minutes isn’t too often to wash yourself. We need Him every hour, every moment, every breath.

Yes, some days it seems like the need to return to His cleansing flow, again and again, is endless. If you’ve never had one of those days, then you’re either a saint or have never worked with children. Or siblings. Or just people in general.

But that’s okay. Because He calls us to come. Come and laugh in His love, rejoice in His forgiveness, delight in the living water that flows so freely. Douse yourself daily in His grace, come ever to the fount of all goodness.

We’re just little children, lisping out our pleas to our Lord. But when we come to Him, crying Abba, holding out our dirty hands, He gently leads us to the fountain and cleanses them Himself.

 

Isabelle Ingalls is a 20-year old writer seeking to see the reminder and reflection of Christ’s glorious Gospel in all of life. As a homeschool graduate, when she’s not writing, you can find her working with children, singing and dancing around the house, and discussing theology with friends over hot chocolate. A writer for both The Rebelution and Top Christian Books, she shares on singleness, adoption, Narnia, thunderstorms, stories, and Christian Living at her blog Seeing Everything Else.

For His Great Name