As I entered the Muak Lek hospital check-in and waiting area, I immediately realized how difficult this task was likely to be. At the best of times I don’t feel comfortable in hospitals. I do not speak or read Thai. Yet here I was at a Thai hospital seeking a medical certificate necessary to renew my Thai driver’s license.
Scattered around the room were four or five different desks with signs and numbers indicating what people were to do, all illegible to me. I glanced around for someone who might be able to help. One lady appeared willing to help, so I showed her my expired driver’s license. She immediately figured out what I was trying to accomplish and pointed me to the correct line. After I obtained my check-in card and queue number, she directed me to the next step in the process, which anyone who could read Thai could have immediately figured out.
Oh yes, missionaries are dependent and vulnerable, especially until they learn the local language and establish trust relationships with the people they live among. I have great respect for our career missionaries who have learned Thai or other heart languages of their people. I found learning calculus much easier than learning Thai. I am thankful that Thai people are very gracious and willing to take time to try to understand and help me.
After a short time at the hospital, I was able to obtain the medical certificate I needed, travel the 25 miles to the driver’s license office, and secure a new license, all in less than four hours. Last year the initial process to obtain a driver’s license took two and a half months, so I was relieved.
As I reflect on dependence and vulnerability, I realize that God wants us to recognize and acknowledge our vulnerability in this sin-infested planet. He asks us to be willing to depend on His power for deliverance from sin and for wisdom to live our lives in harmony with His will. In Thailand we are asking Thai Buddhist people to become vulnerable, to separate from the comfortable ways of their religion and to learn to depend upon a God who will entirely change their worldview. Why would they consider such a radical change? This is the mystery that only the Holy Spirit can bring about, but God asks us to be part of the process. As we become immersed in the lives of the people we live and work with, our lives must transparently reflect the quiet confidence and assurance of God’s love. Are we willing to be vulnerable? Can we learn to be dependent and not stubbornly push our own agenda?
We were talking recently with two of our missionaries in India who are working with a family that is seeking healing for their son. This family is beginning to understand that their gods have not been providing solutions. Yet they are conflicted. If they accept the Christian God, how can they live their lives without performing the religious pujas and acknowledging the power of the devta? Indeed, how can anyone serve two masters? Why do we keep trying? Is it because we are afraid of relinquishing control and becoming dependent and vulnerable before a God we don’t really trust?
Yesterday we visited the home of a family where the young mother of twins had prayed for the healing of her daughter who has cerebral palsy. She is struggling with being able to trust a God who hasn’t answered that prayer the way she asked Him to. Though she can see how God has blessed and freed her husband when he committed his life to Him, she seems to have rejected the God who “refused” to heal her daughter. It seems too much to trust a God who asks for such vulnerability.
How do we relate when God’s plan seems to be dissonant with our logic? When you are entering retirement, is it logical to abandon your retirement plans and go to the mission field? If you have just finished professional school, shouldn’t you take some time to get your feet under you and establish financial stability? Why would God ask you to turn your back on apparent security and move your family to India, Kurdistan, Turkey, Cambodia or Mali?
God has not commissioned us to stay with what we know, with what is comfortable. In fact, He asks just the opposite. Saul the scholar, the passionate defender of his religion, was confronted and literally struck down on the road to Damascus. Consider how Saul/Paul analyzed what was happening and what God was telling him. What were the key elements that shifted his worldview away from an exacting religion of works? He grew up in a religion where there were clearly defined rules for every aspect of life. As a devout Jew, he believed that obedience to these rules brought him merit in the eyes of God. Now God was asking him to make a profound change. God asked Saul to reach out in faith, to believe, and to depend completely upon Him. God often requires us to struggle with trials, asking for faith and trust even when we see no immediate evidence. At those times we must turn to our relationship with God and move forward in faith and confidence because we have seen Him working in the past, and we have learned to trust Him.
Please be willing to step outside your comfort zone, to relinquish your independence and to accept God’s commission to go to all the world.
